Talking Sociology

Description

A well-known name in contemporary sociology, Dipankar Gupta’s wide range of scholarship and popular columns have justly earned him the reputation of being one of India’s leading public intellectuals.
Talking Sociology provides a complete panorama of Gupta’s life and works and his contribution to Indian sociology. In this book of conversations, he shares insights into the key areas of Indian sociology, such as the problem of social stratification, citizenship and democracy, and the caste system and ethnic groups in India. It also discusses the influence of prominent thinkers on Gupta’s works, such as Claude Lévi Strauss, Talcott Parsons, André Beteille, and John Rawls.
The ninth in the series of Ramin Jahanbegloo’s conversations with the prominent intellectuals who have made a significant impact in shaping the modern Indian thought, this book discusses Gupta’s array of work and its redefinition and reconstruction of the central concepts of sociology, taking it beyond its disciplinary boundaries.

About the Authors
Dipankar Gupta was a professor in the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics and also taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, for nearly three decades.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is the executive director of Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, and vice dean of Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana, India.

Table of contents

Contents

Dipankar Gupta: Making Sense of India and Modernity

I From Bihar to Delhi

A Bengali Household
Growing Up in an Apolitical Family
Nehruvian Times and the Partition Effect
An Agnostic Indian
The Art of Being a Bengali
An Unhappy School Boy
A Mumbai Man
Entering Academics and the Delhi School of Economics
Appreciating Philosophy
The Joshi Influence
The JNU Years
Politics at JNU


II Thinking Sociology Doctoral Work

The Emergency Years
Learning Experiences in the West
Becoming a Regular Teacher
Ethics and Business
Reading Emmanuel Levinas
Contributions to Indian Sociology
Thinking with the French Culture
The Impact of Lévi-Strauss

III Citizenship and Democracy Revolution from above

The Comparative Mood and the Indian Laboratory
The Role of the Citizen–Elite
Gandhi and the West
Gandhi and the Political Grammar of Democracy
Exoticizing Gandhi
Thinking Non-violence Today
Gandhi, Nehru, and the Constitution
Ram Mohan Roy and Saint Simon
Fraternity and Empathy
Citizenship and Indianness

IV Caste, Village, and Modernity

How to Judge Rural India
Are We Moderns?
Orientalism and Caste
The End of Caste?
Caste and Elections in India

V Communalism and Ethnicity

Sikh Identity Politics
The Sikh Identity
Nation States and Their Enemies
The Sacralization of India
Nationalism and Grievances
The Role of Sociologists in Democracies

VI Modern Institutions and Cultural Spaces
Space, Non-space, and Secularization
The Sacred in Indian Politics
Religion and the State
Reason and Progress

References
Index
About the Authors