Admission open MA (Honours ) Sociology (2012 - 2013)

ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai was established in 1919, and is the oldest post graduate teaching centre of sociology in the country, and the second oldest in Asia. As the alma mater of a large number of sociologists who have played a significant role in institutions of teaching, research and policy making all over India, it has been a leader in the field. Its early growth coincided with the formative period of the discipline in India upon which it left its mark. It continues to be an important influence on colleges and universities in the country. It offers MA and PhD programmes, and is among the largest in the country in terms of student enrolment. The average student admission in MA Part I are about 80 students, and at any given time, about 150 students are enrolled in the department.
A distinctive feature of the Department is its inclusion of anthropological training as part of the Sociology courses. It has a long established practice of including papers in Anthropology and several specialized courses with a substantial anthropological content. The faculty members through their specializations cumulatively bring to bear expertise on a broad range of themes and topics on the teaching and research programmes of the Department. The Department has been selected for the Special Assistance Programme (SAP) by the UGC for the five year period 2004-2009. The two thrust areas for the Department identified under SAP are: (1) Marginalized Groups and Communities (2) Sociology of Environment.

Historical Legacy
The Department of Sociology was established by the well known ecologist and town planner Sir Patrick Geddes. He retired in 1924 and Prof. G. S. Ghurye became the Head. At that time, the Sociology Department was part of the School of Economics and Sociology. From 1954 it has functioned as an independent Department.

Having a wide range of interests, Geddes, the first Head, was also imbued with a vision far ahead of his times. This is evident in his approach of seeing all living things in the context of their natural environment, leading him to combine biology, sociology, town planning and geography. He emphasized on fieldwork for his students and enabled them to get practical experience. Despite his relatively short tenure, he continues to be a source of inspiration for students of sociology, architecture and town planning in India and abroad.

Ghurye's initial training was in Sanskrit and Indology, but influenced by Geddes, he pursued higher studies in Anthropology under the distinguished anthropologist W.H.R. Rivers at Cambridge, and later under A.C. Haddon. Under the impact of the growing nationalism of the time, he weaned Sociology away from its colonial moorings and focused on Indian problems and issues such as caste, race and tribe. His attempt to combine Indology with anthropological perspectives was one of the major contributions at the time. He also helped in the professionalization of Sociology in India. In 1952, he established the Indian Sociological Society, which is the apex disciplinary body in the country and started the journal 'Sociological Bulletin', which continues till today to be the voice of the profession and one of the major academic journals in India.

Ghurye guided 55 students for the doctorate in Sociology, probably the highest for any single sociologist. He trained many eminent sociologists who have contributed to building the discipline in India - Iravati Karve and Y.B. Damle who subsequently moved to Pune University, M.N.Srinivas who started the Sociology Department in the Delhi School of Economics, M.S.A. Rao who also went to Delhi School, A.R. Desai and D. Narain both of whom became Heads of Department in the University of Mumbai, I.P. Desai who went on to the Centre for Social Studies, Surat, M.S.Gore who went on to head the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and subsequently became Vice Chancellor of the University of Bombay, Suma Chitnis who became Vice Chancellor of SNDT Women's University and Victor D'Souza who was Head of Sociology at the Punjab University.

The work of Geddes and Ghurye is regarded as significant to the discipline nationally and several books and PhD theses have been written on them.

Prof.K.M.Kapadia succeeded G.S. Ghurye in 1960. His book on family and marriage in India became a classic in its genre, a reference book for succeeding generations of students. On his premature passing away in 1967, Prof. A.R. Desai became the head. His contributions were in the areas of peasant movements, rural sociology and the trade union movement. He developed the Marxist perspective in Indian Sociology and is known in India and outside for his work on Indian nationalism and his critique of the class character of the post independence Indian state.

Prof.J.V.Ferreira, an anthropologist trained at Vienna, succeeded A.R. Desai in 1976. He was one of the founder members of the Indian Sociological Society and was its first secretary. His writings are in the fields of theory and methodology. His work on totemism in India is noteworthy. He was succeeded in 1982 by Prof. D.Narain whose fields of interest included the sociology of knowledge, culture and personality and the sociology of the family. On his retirement in 1991, Prof. A. R. Momin became Head and continued till 1999 when rotation of headship was introduced in the University. In addition to his longstanding engagement with issues of social science theory, A.R.Momin has written extensively on a variety of topics including multiculturalism, national identity, cultural history of Islam and medical anthropology. He has been associated with several national level committees of the Anthropological Survey of India, UGC and I CSSR.

Subsequently, the Department has had four Heads, all of whom are part of the current faculty. Prof. S.K. Bhowmik became Head in 1999, followed by Prof. P.G.Jogdand in 2002. and Prof.Indra Munshi, from 2005 to 2007. Prof. Kamala Ganesh is the current head.

The contribution of some of the past distinguished teachers have been honoured by festschrifts and memorial volumes by the faculty and students of the department. These include a festschrift in honour of G.S. Ghurye on the occasion of his 60th birthday and on his 80th birthday (Aspects of changing India: Studies in honour of Prof. G.S.Ghurye 1976 ), a centenary festschrift in his memory (The Legacy of G.S.Ghurye 1996), a volume in commemoration of K.M. Kapadia (Explorations in the Family and Other Essays 1975), a festschrift for Patrick Geddes (The Outlook Tower: Essays in Urbanisation 1976), and a festschrift volume in honour of A.R.Desai (Emerging Contradictions in Indian Society 1995).

Past seminars and conferences
Over the decades, the Department has hosted several important national and international conferences and seminars bringing together scholars from all over the country and also from around the world.

The Golden Jubilee of the Department was celebrated in 1969 with an international seminar on Modernisation of Underdeveloped Societies?which was a topical issue at the time. Scholars such as Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Merton, David Mandelbaum and many others - well known for their thinking on the question of modernization of traditional societies - attended the Conference, whose proceedings were later edited into two landmark volumes.
As part of the platinum jubilee celebrations of the Department, an International Seminar on Cultural Pluralism, Ethnicity and Nation building in South Asia was organized in 1995. Renowned scholars S.C.Dube, M.N.Srinivas, Y.B.Damle, Bhiku Parekh, Jan Breman, Theodore Wright Jr. and Gerald Berreman were among the participants. A volume based on the papers presented has been published.

Some of the important seminars and conferences that have been held in the last ten years are:

*Workshop on Gender Relations Framework in collaboration with the British Council, 1996
*Seminar on Sociology in Western India, 1999
*National Seminar on Marginalised Communities: Social and Linguistic problems (in collaboration with the Institute of Indian Culture, Mumbai, and the Department of Linguistics, University of Mumbai), 2000
*Seminar on 'Social Movements in Western India: Issues and Perspectives' (in collaboration with the Institute of Indian Culture, Mumbai), 2001
*National Seminar on 'Confronting Inequalities: Muslim OBC Communities' in collaboration with the All India Muslim OBC Organization, 2002
*Seminar on 'Understanding Secularism in Contemporary India', 2003
*International Conference on 'Ethnic Identities and Ethnic Conflict in Multi Cultural Societies', 2004
*Seminar in honour of Prof. A.R. Momin, 'Celebrating Syncretism', 2005
*National Seminar on 'Reservation or Affirmative policy in private sector: Issues and concerns', 2005
*Workshop on 'Migration, marginalization, ghettoization and identity crisis : Theoretical perspectives and practical insights', (in collaboration with the University of Bonn), 2005
*National Seminar on 'Tribals, Forests and Livelihood Issues' March, 2006