Image: Courtesy of Dev N. Pathak, Sociology, SAU.
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.


Class of 2011, Department of Sociology, South Asian University; Image: Courtesy of Dev N. Pathak, Sociology, SAU.

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)
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