SOCIOLOGY@SAU: January 2014

About The Department - Vision and Beyond

Over the last half century or so, a vast body of knowledge(s) on the region has evolved within South Asia that mostly remain within the countries of their origin due to a number of reasons. In this specific context, there is a crucial need to share some of this knowledge in contemporary times when, despite assertions of localisations and mini-narratives, the universal does retain its emphasis through a constant dialectics of the two. The debate between the local and universal or mini-narratives and meta-narratives continue to rage, and is more clearly visible in the context of South Asian context. Even so, we are acutely aware of the non-existence of regular and serious forums for South Asian scholarship in social sciences to showcase our own research and thinking. We are also quite conscious of the fact that the process of establishing sociology in the region has created its own peculiarities which has established close inter-relationships between sociology and social anthropology, history, cultural studies, archeology and other related disciplines. We consider the porousness of South Asian sociology one of its most enduring strengths. On the other hand, we are not unaware of the unfortunate regressions sociology has experienced in different South Asian contexts over the last 30 years or so marked by numerous institutional failures.

It is within the context(s) outlined above that the Department of Sociology at South Asian university, initiated in 2011 witihn the Faculty of Social Sciences contributes to teaching, training and knowledge production. It is not intended to be a mere forum for the production of cutting-edge intellectual knowledge and exchange of that knowledge traversing across national borders in South Asia and beyond. Our expectation is that this knowledge would dislocate the persistence of an imposed framework emanating from the colonisation process and postcolonial politics of knowledge. Despite the passage of over fifty years since the process of official decolonization began in the region, much of the analyses of our problems, situations, histories and dynamics emanate from Euro American academia; this is certainly the case when it comes to conceptual formulations and theoretical approaches that are being employed in exploring the region’s social and cultural complexities often without much self-reflection.

The Department of Sociology strongly believes in the need to reformulate this situation by effectively centering South Asia without naively shunning thought from these established centers of knowledge be they in Europe or North America. We believe in an active and robust engagement with these issues within South Asia. In this context, through the work of its faculty and the research of graduate students, the Department would bring forward the newer forms of knowledge that comprehends and represents the South Asian context with a more authoritative and nuanced voice. We strongly believe in the need to actively intervene in the process of knowledge formation through a constant sharing of knowledge that the region produces as well as through interaction with the world beyond the region.

The courses taught in the Department as well as the research carried out by its faculty members reflect this overall vision and our collective commitment towards innovation, move beyond untenable stereotypes, and explore a new world of knowledge within the discipline of Sociology.

Friday, January 31, 2014

SAU Sociology: Cinema and Society Series -2014 - My Mother India

My Mother India

Image from: http://www.ucfilms.in/subject/culture/my-mother-india/

'My Mother India' is a passionate film told by the child of a mixed marriage and set against the tumultuous backdrop of modern Indian history. With an Indian father who collects kitch calendars, an Australian mother who hangs her knickers out to dry in front of the horrified Indian neighbours, a grandfather who was a self-styled Guru and a fiercely man-hating grandmother - it is no wonder that Safina Uberoi made a film about her family! What begins as a quirky and humorous documentary about an eccentric, multicultural upbringing unfolds into a complex commentary on the social, political and religious events of the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 which tore this family apart.

AWARDS RECEIVED: CRC Award, Dendy Awards – Sydney Film Festival 2002, Script Writing Award, NSW Premier's Literary Awards 2002, Best Long Form Documentary, Australian Teachers of Media Awards 2002, Odyssey Award for Best Documentary, Real: Life On Film Festival 2002, Jury Prize for Best Australian Documentary, Australian Film Critics Circle 2002, Special Jury Award, Hawaii International Film Festival 2001, Special Commendation, Mill Valley International Film Festival 2001, Best Video Production, Melbourne International Film Festival 2001, Best Pitch, Heidtman/AFTRS Award 1998

DATE: Tuesday, 4 February, 2014

TIME: 2:30 – 4:15 pm

VENUE: FSI Hall, Akbar Bhawan

Director Safina Uberoi will discuss the film and answer your questions after the screening

All are welcome

Please have you mobile phones switched off during the film and dicuission

Thursday, January 30, 2014

‘Theoretical Imagination: A Double-edged Sword?’ A Panel discussion convened by students in the MA program in Sociology (Sem 2), South Asian University

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Sociology Seminar Series 2013-14

Inhabiting ‘Childhood’ in Postcolonial India

By Sarada Balagopalan,

Associate Professor, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi

Chair:

Diya Mehra, Department of Sociology, South Asian University, New Delhi

This paper discusses street children’s lives in relation to the local materialization of a global politics of ‘childhood’. The street child -- at once ‘victim’ and yet highly ‘agential’-- signals a certain messiness around assumed vectors of age, care, ability and innocence that this normative ‘childhood’ register works with. Through capturing a moment in which global, national and local efforts combined to improve and transform these children’s lives through school enrolment and new discourses of ‘children's rights’, this paper focuses on the complexity and contemporaneity of their extensive practices of dwelling generated by the exigencies of survival within postcolonial ‘development’. It considers whether these practices of dwelling - which can neither be dissolved through a ‘cultural’ reading of these children’s lives nor resolved within a more technocratic policy norm – might be a productive opening to re-thinking ‘childhood’ more generally.

Sarada Balagopalan is on the editorial board of the journal Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research and has published in several journals including EPW and Contemporary Education Dialogue. She is the author of Inhabiting ‘Childhood’: Children, Labour and Schooling in Postcolonial India.

Date: 29 January 2014, Wednesday

Time and Venue: 02.30 PM

FSI Hall, Ground Floor, South Asian University,

Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri,

New Delhi 110021

ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

(Please have your mobile phones switched off during lecture and discussion)

Friday, January 17, 2014

Sociology Seminar Series 2014

Sociology Seminar Series 2014

Winter Semester 2014

Schedule for the Semester

Date	Title	Presenter
29 January	Inhabiting ‘Childhood’ in Postcolonial India	Sarada Balagopalan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
12 February	Mapping London: Somali Women in Public Space	Hudita Nura Mustafa, Independent Scholar
19 February	The freed Kamaiya movement in western Nepal: a fieldwork-based account	Michael Hoffman, Max Plank Institute for Social Anthropology
5 March	Community identity, cosmopolitanism and the city- being Anglo-Indian and Chinese in Calcutta/Kolkata	Jayani Bonnerjee, Centre de Sciences Humaines
26 March	Subordinate Spatialities: Historicizing Housing, Language and Identity in Wagdara: A Kolam Village in Wardha, India	Venugopal Maddipati, Ambedkar University Delhi
2 April	Sudden Selves: ‘Personality Development', Tupperware and the Making of New Labour in North India	Sanjay Srivastava, Institute of Economic Growth
16 April	"You Call Yourself Gay Because You're Hifi": Critiquing The Political Economy of Sexuality in South Asia	Svati Shah, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Coordinated by Ankur Datta and Diya Mehra

Time: 02.30 PM

Venue:

FSI Hall, Ground Floor, South Asian University,

Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri,

New Delhi 110021

ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Akbar Bhawan, South Asian University, Chankayapuri, New Delhi 110021

Phone: 24122512; 24122513; 24122514

Webpage: http://www.southasianuniversity.org/Faculties/FSS/FSS.html

Official Departmental Blog: http://sociology-sau.blogspot.in/

Sociology Students’ Blog: https://sausociology.wordpress.com/

SOCIOLOGY@SAU