UNDERSTANDING SOCIOLOGY

  LOUIS PIERRE ALTHUSSER     Ø   L Althusser – a French Marxist Philosopher (of Jewish origin) Ø   Born in 1918 in French Algeria Ø   Father was a bank manager whom he saw as an authoritarian figure. Ø   He got his name from his paternal uncle who died in World War I. Ø   He believed that his mother wanted to marry his uncle but due to his death married his father instead. Ø   Believed that his mother treated him as a replacement of his dead uncle which results in deep psychological problem in him. Ø   After his father’s demise Althusser’s mother along with Althusser and his younger sister moved to Marseilles. Ø   Althusser performed brilliantly in his school. Ø   In 1939 he admitted to Ecole Normale. Ø   Due to World War II his studied disrupted. Ø   During German occupation of North and East France- Althusser was put in German concentration camp for five years. Ø   The Nazi occupatio...

  USE OF NATIVE CATEGORIES IN THE ANALYSIS OF INDIAN SOCIETY   ü   During the colonial period many British and European scholars were writing on Indian society and culture. They used conceptual categories which were Eurocentric in nature. For example the word ‘caste’ came from Portuguese word ‘casta’ . Britishers used it both for Varna and Jati. ü   It created confusion because they were different concepts and products of different period. ü   Some of Western scholars tended to distort history and imputed meanings to Indian reality in the abstract as it to perpetuate colonialism. ü   According in Yogendra Singh (Atal, 2003) most of the categories used to understand Indian society have also some Western   influence. ü   Initially, categories like caste, tribe and nation; caste class and power; mind, body and wealth were used by the researchers without following a rigorous methodology that requires conceptual clarity and dependable too...

  CAPTIVE MIND- INDIAN SOCIOLOGY – AN INFLUENCE AND RESPONSE TO THE CAPTIVE MIND   CAPTIVE MIND= ACADEMIC IMPERALISM Historically : Sociology and social sciences mainly developed in the West to encounter the problems of Industrial revolution, French revolution and Enlightenment. (in the form they are institutionalized) Auguste Comte : in his Course de philosophie Positive (1830) sought to reconstruct social order through the ‘positive’ and ‘exact’ science of sociology free from other modes of explanation like theology and metaphysics. The discipline of sociology emerged out of 1                     the forty years of intellectual anarchy that prevailed following French Revolution 2                     solutions to problems thrown up the Industrial Revolution Western constructi...

  INDIGENIZATION OF INDIAN SOCIOLOGY   Indigenization is the act of making something more native, transformation of some service, idea etc to suit a local culture, especially through the use of more indigenous people in different spheres.   The essence of sociology and its uniqueness as a social science lies not in its subject matter but in its theoretical and methodological orientation. In the west the theoretical and methodological orientations of sociology have undergone dialectical changes both through accretion and revision. These changes can be viewed and interpreted as sustained response to challenges thrown up by the changing socio-economic and political conditions there. These changes in Western sociology have encouraged the proliferation of several paradigms. In India sociology, as it is known and practiced today, has not been an indigenous discipline. It came into the country to serve the missionary and administrative interest of the colonial rulers. As...