Department of Sociology & Anthropology
The Department of Sociology and Anthropology builds on the unique relationship between Sociology and Social anthropology as it has developed and flourished over time. We emphasise the critical empiricism, theoretical engagement and comparative approach central to our best disciplinary traditions. Our department encourages interdisciplinary explorations with allied fields of social thought and inquiry, including history, economics, political science, geography, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, environmental studies, computer science, planning and design, natural sciences, arts and aesthetics, law and media. Some of the areas and themes the faculty work on are contested borderlands, agricultural markets and exchange, mental health clinics, regional cinema audiences, political economy of water, food, hazards and disasters, rivers and islands, infrastructure and informality, anthropology of literature, philosophical anthropology, cities and environment, and the state, bureaucracy, law and violence.
Our department acknowledges the similarities between the disciplines of Sociology and Anthropology. Going beyond stereotypes of the sociologist conducting surveys in a city and the anthropologist doing fieldwork in a remote village, we recognize that both Sociology and Anthropology study relations between the personal and the
political, the micro and the macro, and the individual and the institutional. Sociology and Anthropology teach us to challenge and refine our taken-for-granted cultural assumptions by attempting to understand those of others.
We offer both undergraduate and graduate programmes of study. Our undergraduate programme consists of a major, minor and concentration in Sociology and Anthropology. Our graduate programme consists of a five-year Ph.D. programme with two years of coursework included.
