The mandate of the course is to introduce the discipline to students from diverse trainings and capabilities. The course is intended to introduce the students to a sociological way of thinking. It also provides a foundation for the other more detailed and specialized courses in sociology.

This paper introduces the processes and modes of construction of knowledge of India. Further, it aims to draw attention to the key concepts and institutions which are useful for the understanding of Indian society.

The course aims to provide a general introduction to sociological thought. The focus is on studying from the original texts to give the students a flavour of how over a period of time thinkers have conceptualized various aspects of society. This paper also provides a foundation for thinkers in the other papers.

This paper aims to draw attention to the variety of ideas and debates about India. Further, it critically engages with the multiple socio-political forces and ideologies which shape the terrain of the nation.

This course introduces the students to some major theoretical debates and concepts in Political Sociology, while situating these within contemporary political issues. A key thrust of the paper is towards developing a comparative understanding of political relationships through themes such as power, governance and state and society relationships.

The course lays primacy to the understanding of religious over individual religions. Drawing heavily from classical writings on the subject it reinforces importance of the positions developed in these texts. Implicitly numerous interconnections can be at-tempted between various themes, manifestly the overarching concern of the paper is to follow up the linkage between social and religious through different registers mentioned in the outline.

The course introduces gender as a critical sociological lens of enquiry in relation to various social fields. It also interrogates the categories of gender, sex, and sexuality.

The course provides an understanding of the social and cultural bases of economic activity. It highlights the significance of sociological analysis for the study of economic processes in local and global contexts.

This course aims to introduce general principles of kinship and marriage by reference to key terms and theoretical statements substantiated by ethnographies. The course looks at the trajectories and new directions in kinship studies.

Representations of Kinship and Marriage in Biographies, Popular Culture and Films would be examined by students through weekly presentations and term papers.

This course introduces students to Sociological Study of Social Inequalities. It acquaints students with principal theoretical perspectives on and diverse forms of Social inequality in articulation with each other.

The course introduces the students to the classics in the making of the discipline of sociology through selected texts by the major thinkers.

The course is a general introduction to the methodologies of sociological research methods. It will provide the student with some elementary knowledge of the complexities and philosophical underpinnings of research.

To introduce students to post-classical sociological thinking through some original texts.

The course is an introductory course on how research is actually done. With emphasis on formulating research design, methods of data collection, and data analysis, it will provide students with some elementary knowledge on how to conduct both, quantitative and qualitative research.

This course provides an exposure to key theoretical perspectives for understanding urban life in historical and contemporary contexts. It also reflects on some concerns of urban living while narrating the subjective experiences of urban communities. With case studies from India and other parts of the world this course will help students relate to the complexities of urban living.

This course explores the traditions of enquiry and key substantive issues in agrarian sociology. It is comparative in nature, but pays attention to Indian themes. It also introduces emerging global agrarian concerns.

This course is designed to introduce students to the core debates of environmental sociology, different approaches within the sub‐discipline and how these approaches may be used to understand environmental issues and movements in India.

The course introduces the idea that though work and production have been integral to societies through time, the origin and spread of industrialization made a distinct rupture to that link. This rupture can also be seen mirrored in the coming of sociology as a discipline that considered work as central to the study of society. Based on this premise the paper goes on to provide an outline as to how values and ideals of pluralized industrialism(s) have caused an absorbed multiple transformative shifts to the local and global social networks of the contemporary world.

The course introduces students to the sociology of health, illness and medical practice by highlighting the significance of socio-cultural dimensions in the construction of illness and medical knowledge. Theoretical perspectives examine the dynamics shaping these constructions. Negotiations of health and illness are explored through ethnographies.

Traditions in Indian sociology can be traced with the formal teaching of sociology as a subject in Bombay university way back in 1914. While the existence of a ―Sociology in India‖ and ―Sociology of India‖ have been largely debated in terms of whether it has been influenced by western philosophy, is there a need of indigenization etc., sociologist in India have primarily been engaged with issues of tradition and modernity, caste, tribe and gender. This paper primarily provides perspectives of key Indian sociologists on some of these issues.

This paper introduces the students to the construction of “seeing” as a social process. Through case studies covering various visual environments, the paper allows a scope to contextualize everyday visual culture within larger social debates around power, politics, identity and resistance.

This course encourages the student to read ethnographic texts in their entirety. Any one set of texts from the four pairs are to be chosen. Readers are relatively free to interpret the texts within the parameters mentioned below. Suggested readings can be utilized to frame specific questions while reading the ethnographic texts and writing about them. The examination, however, will be patterned on the parameters mentioned in the outline.

The course aims at providing a sociological understanding of Societies in North East India. It seeks to provide a multi-dimensional understanding of North East India with respect to social, historical, political and economic dimensions. Further, this course aims to provide a sociological understanding of the specificity of world views of diverse communities along with the emerging socio economic processes of the region.

This course seeks to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to Indian society.

Family is one of the vital institutions of human society. It is experienced intimately and debated keenly. This course attempts to introduce students to a range of contemporary concerns pertaining to this institution from a sociological perspective and with an interdisciplinary orientation.

This paper examines the ideas of development from a sociological perspective. It introduces students to different approaches to understanding development and traces the trajectory of Indian experience with development from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Gendered violence is routine and spectacular, structural as well as situated. This course attempts to provide an understanding of the logic of that violence, awareness of its most common forms and tries to equip the students with a sociologically.

This course looks at social movements from a sociological perspective. It introduces the contexts and concepts of social movements and attempts to theoretically locate them through concrete case studies.

This course intends to familiarize the students with perspectives on the social meaning of education and the relationship between education and society. This includes issues of knowledge, comprehension, empowerment and contestation to sites and practices of education.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the students to certain major themes of outlining the interconnections between media and society. The focus specifically is on the transmission and reception of media content and thus the various sections in this paper study the production, control and reception of media and its representations

This course provides a critical understanding of the interface between population and society. It analyses the role of fertility, morality and migration on the composition, size and structure of population. The course addresses the issue of domestic and international population movement and their economic, political and social implication.

Reading and writing academic prose is not the same as the performance of these activities in ordinary language, yet these are the skills that are never taught, except perhaps in tutorial systems (where they exist). Unlike most language courses that lean towards literature or functional skills, this is a crash course in survival techniques for developing literacy in academic language. It consists of a graded series of reading and writing exercises using real‘texts from the social sciences that will enable students to tackle text-related tasks with confidence. There is a conscious attempt to generate synergies by mirroring the reading and writing exercises. 

Through this course, students should learn how to recognize good or bad writing and should be equipped with the elementary techniques for “repairing‟ bad or damaged prose. The course will be preceded by a workshop for teachers. Short extracts for class exercises will be culled from classic and contemporary social science texts of varying levels of difficulty and of different genres and styles. The actual set of texts will be decided at the preparatory workshop. 

This course focuses on doing sociology and social anthropology through forms other than the written, in particular, the oral, aural, and the visual.. It introduces students to film techniques as a form and method of description and argument and enables a comparison between film and the written mode as ethnography. One concern that may be pursued is how the visually challenged encounter, experience and represent the field. The course will be conducted through group work enabling a learning process between the visually challenged and the non‐visually challenged.