UNDERSTANDING SOCIOLOGY

  RAYMOND FIRTH   ü   Raymond Firth was born in 1901 in Auckland, New Zealand ü   Educated in economics at Auckland University, College. ü   In the mid 1920s Firth moved to London to pursue a Doctorate at the London School of Economics, where he came under the influence of Bronislaw Malinowski. ü   Malinowski meticulous studies of the Trobriand islanders of New Guinea were among the earliest field work based ethnographies. ü   This was the time when the basic concepts and approaches of anthropology was being formulated. ü   French sociology was under the sway of Emile Durkheim ü   Lucien Levy Bruhl -investigating cultural effects on thoughts and logic ü   Franz Boas and Alfred Kroeber emphasized the concept of culture a collective system of belief and practice. ü   British Social anthropologist concerned about society’s functional integration derived from empirical studies of small scale societies. ü   The...

  EDMUND RONALD LEACH (1910-1988)   Widely known British anthropologist but embraced French structuralism. He was influenced by the ideas of Levi Strauss’s and wrote a lot on French Structuralism and Levi Strauss’s to popularize his ideas in Britain and elsewhere. However later, he also became one of the greatest critiques of Levi Strauss’s structuralism. Leach sometimes labeled as Neo-Structuralist for making changes in the ideas of structuralism and giving it a new form. Born on November 7, 1910 in Sidmouth Studied at Marlborough college, later admitted to Clare college Cambridge. Leach had no initial training in anthropology He studied mathematics and engineering. After graduating he joined British trading firm John Swire & Sons (later Butterfield and Swire) with operation in East Asia. He gained his PhD at the London School of Economics in 1947. When Leach went to LSE as a student of anthropology he met various eminent anthropologists like S.F. ...

                 SUBALTERN PERSPECTIVE: DAVID HARDIMAN   Subaltern perspective  looks into those who are neglected and marginalized and contrasts it with the elite perspective . Italian Neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci initiated the concept of subaltern in his Prison Notebooks to signify marginalised people. The Subaltern perspective stands for understanding the society through conditions of  subordination of people belonging to the different caste, class, age, gender, race etc.  It seeks to present an alternate image of society through the viewpoint of the masses usually unrepresented .   The subaltern studies which emerged in India as a post-colonial theory is about re-writing history of the people. This project is mostly credited to Ranajit Guha and his colleagues such as Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman, Shahid Amin, Gyanendra Pandey, David Arnold, Sumit Sarkar and Dipesh Chakrabarty. The subaltern hist...

  TIME AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE : MEYER FORTES     ü   British Social Anthropologist ü   Birth: 25 th April 1906 ü   Nationality: South African ü   Academic Advisor : B Malinowski   v   Known for his investigation for West African Societies. v   After studying at the University of Cape Town in South Africa Fortes received his PhD in psychology for London School of Economics. v   In 1932 he turned from psychology to anthropology and studied under B. Malinowski at the London School of Economics. Books : Dynamics of clan-ship among the Tallensi Kinship and social order He studied various tribes among them Tallensi and Ashanti are important. Besides that with E.E. Evans Pritchard he studied eight tribes of Africa State societies                                    State...