Knowing the Social World Perspectives and Possibilities
Contents: Preface. Introduction: Towards Knowing the Social World by N. Jayaram. I. Positivism and the Canonical Tradition: Generalising Social Reality: 1. Knowing the Social World through Census: Reflections on the Conditions of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes/R. B. Bhagat. 2. Analysing the Economic Effects of Age Structure Transition: Towards a New Methodology/M. R. Narayana. 3. Statistical Methods and Political Analysis: Examining the ‘Economic Vote’ in India’s Parliamentary Elections/Siddharth Swaminathan. 4. Randomised Controlled Trials and Programme Evaluations: Our Experience and Lessons/D. Rajasekhar, E. Berg and R. Manjula. II. Beyond Positivism: Understanding Social Reality: 1. Deciphering Development-induced Displacement: Method, Memory and Motive in Empirical Research/Sthitapragyan Ray. 2. Ethnography in the Study of Changing Agricultural Practices: Reflections on Research Experiences and Ethnography/Vineetha Menon. 3. Studying Youth across ‘Tradition’ and ‘Modernity’: A Multisite, Interdisciplinary Endeavour/Mamatha Karollil. 4. Exploring the Underworld: Some Methodological Challenges/Vijay Raghavan.5. Narrative Analysis in Doctor–Patient Interaction: Reflections on the Context/Mathew George. 6. Atlas.ti and Formulation of Grounded Theory: Understanding Entrepreneurship Using Qualitative Data/Anirban Sengupta. III. Forays into Unconventional Sources: Archives, Court Records, Autobiographies and Photographs: 1. Use of Archives in Social Research/Meeta Rajivlochan and M. Rajivlochan. 2. Trials on Record: Understanding Legal Constructions of Violence against Women through Court Records/Sawmya Ray.3. Reading the Social in Autobiographies: A Glimpse into Everyday Life and History/Rukmini Sen. 4. Photography’s Methodological Absence in Social Anthropology in South Asia: Some Preliminary Thoughts for Consideration/Sasanka Perera. IV. The Researcher and the Field: Personal Location and Social Experience: 1. Researching the Khasi: Encounter with the Self/Tiplut Nongbri. 2. Fielding One’s Own: Prospects and Dilemmas in Researching Women’s Collective Organising from Within/Shaila Desouza.
3. Exploration into the Life and Times of Dalits: My Engagement with Dalit Studies/Badri Narayan. 4. The Predicament of a Madiga Ethnographer: Doing Fieldwork in a Multi-Caste Village in Andhra Pradesh/Rahul Choragudi. 5. Travails of Doing Research in India: A Korean’s Experience/Hyun Jung Kim. 6. Knowing Journalism and News Work: An Expatriate’s Experience in an Arab Gulf Country/Jesna Jayachandran. Index.
How does research in the social sciences happen?
Comprising analyses of how research is conducted in specific areas—through examples of problems on which significant work is being, or have been, done—and focusing on the underlying theoretical and philosophical assumptions, the essays in Knowing the Social World offer bird’s-eye views as well as in-depth studies of existing research methods and practices of social sciences.
This book of twenty essays, divided into four parts, explores a variety of methodological approaches. It focuses on both the ‘canonical’ tradition, which upholds the objective nature of reality and privileges positivistic knowledge, and the ‘non-canonical’ tradition, which believes in the constructed nature of social reality and is concerned with producing an interpretive understanding of it
The book discusses unconventional sources of social science research data, like photographs and autobiographies, and covers a range of topics: changing conditions of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; changing agricultural practices; youth in organised crime and the underworld; violence against women; journalistic practices; and economic voting, among others.
Drawing on case studies from all parts of India, as well as from Sri Lanka, Scotland and the Gulf, this comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume will be invaluable to any student and scholar of sociology, political science, history and social anthropology. (jacket)
