SOC101 | Sociology I

Think of sugar or potatoes – everyday features in your kitchen. We think of these familiar, socially domesticated edible entities as our own. But both sugar (that we casually add to our morning chai) and potatoes (that go into most Indian curries) are alien to this geography of South Asia; they came from foreign lands. How did people interact with foreign foods over long periods of time so that today they seem very obviously our own? How are qualities of the domestic, familiar and the foreign, unfamiliar negotiated, as each society builds boundaries around itself and yet, leaves those boundaries somewhat porous? How do societies come to stable conclusions about which practices, beliefs, institutions define who they are versus who they are not? What methods do scholars use to find out about collective expression of human life? These and related questions are at the core of this course.

This course is an introduction into two related disciplines – sociology and social anthropology. This course emerges from the idea that any professional and academic training cannot be complete without a good understanding what society is and how it might function in diverse locations across the world. Whether a student is going to complete a degree in law, technology, management, social sciences, or the sciences, a basic understanding of the nature of the social world would equip her to approach diverse professional settings. How are social worlds shaped? How do social worlds impact political and economic institutions and processes? Is there an undeniable difference between societies that grow out of modernity, and those that live in the realm of tradition? In this course, students are taken through an introductory invitation into the world of sociology and social anthropology. Questions about society at large and its broader role in shaping the human condition, are addressed in this course through a range of older, classic texts as well as recent, contemporary ones.