This post provides links to the whole series on this subject, book recommendations and note to non-social science graduates. The series is meant for those with little or no social studies background.The Indian educated society is characterized by an overwhelming respect and adulation for engineering, medical, and other physical sciences field. Of all these fields, medical usually provides direct contact people of various genders, caste, and class. There is something to be said of experience of flesh that informs and reforms the heart.
But other fields are neither provided with preliminary social studies education nor have much opportunity to do so. Worser, since graduates in these professions tend to respected as “intelligent” beings, they oftentimes consider social studies as a successful lay opinion based on how well-you-debated the subject, supported by, if one is lucky by a couple of books.
Social studies is a discipline of the mind with its associated influence on the heart. It is a gradual understanding of human society in a variety of ways, of learning to systematically analyse it and interpret a situation in a thoughtful way, rather than a forceful I-ONLY-KNOW way.
May I request some respect for this field?
Book Recommendations (my series is an oversimplified set to reach out to some of you. But these books will truly open up the issue as it needs to be studied):
M.N. Srinivas: Social Change in Modern India
Gail Omvedt: Understanding Caste in India (From Buddha to Ambedkar and beyond
Dipankar Gupta: Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society
Amartya Sen: Identity and Violence: Illusion of Destiny
Links to posts with summary in this series:
- When Culture is Imitated: In this post, I explain how caste struggles are spread across hierarchy and that such struggles are more struggles of jatis or communities who attempt to slip into various caste identities.
- When We Liberals are Casteist: this post, I bring to the fore the concept of Privilege and how to reflect on our privileges gained through caste positions.
- Identity and Violence: In this post, I discuss how violence and identity are correlated and how by the practice of disidentification we can reduce our tendency to retaliate
May all beings in this world be at peace.
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