• header Image

Sociologies of Knowledge

Home/ Sociologies of Knowledge
Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Core NA 4

Course coordinator and team: N. Nakkeeran

Summary: Knowledge is a social product and an ‘object’ for sociological, political, and philosophical inquiry. Knowledge synthesis from “material experience and forms of mind”, its deployment, transmission and its crystallization into diverse “ontological states” are social processes that happen in the collective - in history and culture. Knowledge has ideological, normative, affective and technical functions in society. Knowledge has always been a site of social contestation. This course aims to introduce and enable students to reflect on knowledge as an object as well as a process amenable for social science inquiry. Further, the course aims to provide students with an understanding on the complex ways in which knowledge and society/material world interact and mediate each other.

Objectives

  • To introduce and enable students to reflect on knowledge as an object of social science inquiry.
  • To discuss key sociological theories of knowledge and
  • To trace the ways in which knowledge as an object and site of inquiry has traversed in social science theories / approaches.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this course students are expected to have
i. Acquired an understanding on knowledge as a social object of and a site for
social science inquiry
ii. Gained introductory level knowledge on the sub-discipline of sociology of
knowledge and key theories in this field.

Overall structure:
The course is divided into four modules as discussed below.

Module

Topic

Weeks*

1

Sociology of Knowledge – An introduction

4

2

Sociology of knowledge – Key theoretical approaches – 1

3

3

Sociology of knowledge – Key theoretical approaches – 2

3

4

Knowing the world through body, identity, emotion

4

Reading list

  • Darity, WA., (ed.) International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences 2nd Edition 2008 [Selected entries: Barchiesi, F., “Class Consciousness”; Malmgren, H., Nilsson, I., “Consciousness”; Caterino, BJ., “Critical Theory”; Panourgiá, N., “Culture”; Faubion JD., “Discourse”; McBride WL., “Ideology”; Ozor FU, “Social Construct”; Chu HI., “Social Constructionism”; Stehr, N., “Sociology, Knowledge in”; Briggle, A., “Modernity”. Hoogland RC., “Subjectivity: Analysis”; McIvor, DW., “Weltanschauung”]
  • Folescu, M., “Rationalism vs. Empiricism”, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/
  • Gaukroger, S., “Can the study of human behaviour be objective?”, in Objectivity: A very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 79-89.
  • Quijano, Aníbal, 'Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality', Cultural Studies, (2007) 21: 2, 168 — 178
  • Ritzer, G., Sociological Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2023 (Selected topics: dialectics, contemporary symbolic interactionism)
  • Said, EW., “Introduction”, in Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, pp 1-28.
  • Sismondo S., “The Prehistory of Science and Technology Studies” in S Sismondo, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, west Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2010: 1-11
  • Worsley, P., et al., “The Problem of Meaning”, in Introducing Sociology, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, pp/342-355
  • Berger, P., and Luckmann, T., “Introduction: The Problem of the Sociology of Knowledge”, in The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday, 1966.
  • Elias, N., “Sociology of Knowledge: New Perspectives, Sociology, May 1971, vol. 5 No.2, pp:149-68
  • Mukherjee, PN, “Introduction” Methodology in Social Research, Sage.
  • Ritzer, G., Sociological Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2023 (Selected topics: collective conscience, social action and rationalization, values, verstehen,)
  • Sismondo S., “Questioning Functionalism in the Sociology of Science” and “The Strong Programme and the Sociology of Knowledge” in S. Sismondo, An Introduction to Science and Technology Studies, west Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2010: 23-35; 47-56
  • Turner, B., “Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia”, Political Studies (1995), XLIII, 718-727.
  • Zimerman, J., “What is hermeneutics?”, in Hermeneutics: A very short introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp.1-18
  • Cesaire, A., “Discourse on Colonialism”, in Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism, (Trns. Joan Pinkham), New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, 9-65
  • Cohn BS., “The command of language and the language of command”, in Colonialism and its forms of Knowledge: The British in India: Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996: 16-56.
  • Foucault, M., “Part Three: Scientia Sexualis: in The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality, Penguin: London, 1998(51-73).
  • Guha, R., “On some aspects of the historiography of colonial India”, in Selected Subaltran Studies, pp.37-44
  • Hanafi, S., and Arvanitis, R., “Development and place of production of the social sciences: Different forms of compartmentalization”, in Sari Hanafi and Rigas Arvanitis, Knowledge production in the Arab World: The impossible promise, London: Routledge, 2016:209-231.
  • Mignalo, WD., “Coloniality: Darker side of western modernity”, in The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Option, Durham, Duke University Pres, 2011, pp. 1-124
  • Renault, E., “Critical Theory, Social Critique and Knowledge”, Critical Horizons 21:3, 189-204
  • Ritzer, G., Sociological Theory, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2023 (Selected topics: Antonio Gramci, Critical theory)
  • Salamini, L., “Gramsci and Marxist Sociology of Knowledge: An Analysis of Hegemony-Ideology-Knowledge”, The Sociological Quarterly, 1974:15(3) pp. 359-380.
  • Agrawal, A., “Dismantling the divide between indigenous and scientific knowledge”, Development and Change, 1995:26(413-39).
  • Arthur, Mathew. “Affect Studies” In Eugene O’Brian (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • Guru, G., 'Dalit Women Talk Differently', Economic and Political Weekly, 30(41/42) (October 14-21) 1995: pp 2548-50
  • hooks, bell., “On being black at Yale: Education as the practice of freedom”, in Talking Back: Thinking Feminist Thinking Black, London: Routledge, 2015, pp.62-72.
  • Jagose, A., Queer theory: An Introduction, New York: New York University Press, 1996: 1-6
  • Kain, PK., “Knowledge, Culture and Caste: Politics of Knowledge Production in India”, in Vikram Harijan (ed.) Problem of Caste in India: Investigating History and Historiography, Meena: Delhi  2018, pp.374-404.
  • Leszczyk, M., Affect Studies: A Brief Introduction to its Theory and Practice, 2023 , Realigning Reception Takeover, https://classicalreception.org/affect-studies-a-brief-introduction-to-its-theory-and-practice/
  • Longino, H., “In Search of Feminist Epistemology”, The Monist, 1994, 77(4): 472-85, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27903405
  • Renn, J., The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science in the Anthropocene, HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology, 12, pp. 1-22.
  • Waller, L., “Introduction to Affect Theory: Brian Massumi & Eve Sedgwick”, https://www.thenandnow.co/2023/06/15/introduction-to-affect-theory-brian-massumi-eve-sedgwick/

Movies / Documentaries

Pedagogy:

Instructional design

This course will use lectures, presentations, group discussions and group presentations. The course will also use relevant videos / movies to generate discussions in the class.

Special needs (facilities, requirements in terms of software, studio, lab, clinic, library, classroom/others instructional space; any other – please specify):

Video screening facility with audio

  1.  
  • Expertise in AUD faculty or outside: AUD Faculty
  • Linkages with external agencies (e.g., with field-based organizations, hospital; any others):
  • Special Lectures can be organized depending on the availability of resource persons.

Assessment structure (modes and frequency of assessments)

  • 1. Class test (40%)
  • 2. Class Journal, class participation and attendance (20%)
  • 3. End semester examination (40%)
Top