Social Trends
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Social Trends is an interdisciplinary refereed journal, published annually by the Department of Sociology, North Bengal University. All rights reserved. No part of the articles, excepting brief quotations in scholarly works, can be published/reproduced, without the written permission of the editor.
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Item Open Access Leisurely Consumption and Freedom in Everyday Life(University of North Bengal, 2024-03-31) Bhowmick, ArunimaThis paper comes as an initiative to unravel the areas, like leisurely and especially leisurely consumptions, popularly associated with freedom and show how those could become the very source of unfreedom. Upon discussing the nuances of the neoliberal society and its entwined practices of consumption, I have tried to highlight the dialectical relation between freedom-dependency. The desire to be free is universal and perpetual, but this very desire is fraught with tendencies of dependency. Therefore, metaphysics and science both together have tried to explore the desire to be free and consequently encountered conditions and notions of the unfree. This paper wants to unclog notions of “absolute freedom” and “relative freedom” from the popular imagination, hinting at the everyday sources of unfreedom and associated negotiations to secure either form of freedom. Thus, build a commentary that reflects as it recites the micro experiences of remaining vulnerable to power, both normative and culturally transpired, and then finding counter-power positions of liberation—as mere illusions leading to further unfreedom.Item Open Access Material Objects, Materiality and Social Lives(University of North Bengal, 2022-03) Bhowmick, ArunimaScholars have long invoked ideas of totemism, fetishism and anthropomorphism as ways of conceptualizing the relation between humans and their material world. All perspectives, I believe, offer modes of ‘being’ for both the subjects and objects, transcending and shuffling subjectivity with desired objectification as and when socially necessary and culturally permissible. Neither the human subjects nor the material objects remain constant subjects and/or objects across space and time. subjectivity is objectively constituted and reciprocally, objectivity is also subjectively articulated. So, what becomes essential here is the appearance of objects and the meaning they entail, as assigned by the experiencing subject to the objects it manages, engages with and feels through and for them. The experiences arise in an intersubjective negotiation, whereby the material object is transported from its natural to a culturally-defining set up, then again returned to its ‘nature’ over time. The object travels through a life along with its subject, followed by periodic injunctions of sociability and renewal of its being. This cyclical journey from cultural significance to objectification to acquiring subjective agency and then returning to its naturalness again, the object produces a social life that’s no less significant than that of its human associates. This paper shall remain an epistemological exercise for brining into foray these notions and empirically delineating a similar discourse.Item Open Access Rituals and Adolescent Practices in Schools of Kolkata(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2021) Bhowmick, ArunimaExtracurricular activities (ECA), as formulated and administered by the school authorities, either have strong mandates of the state and its higher education agencies or are catapulted by the socio-cultural demands nurtured by the market in terms of ‘high-value’ education. This leads to a varied experience in terms of what is enumerated and what is practiced. An eschewed observance in terms of grandeur can be seen across different types of schools. Interestingly the constant feature that cuts across all these variations is a larger belief system supporting these celebrations, guided by some grand moral imperative and parallel cultural adaptations based on their indigenous institutional affiliations. Above all, a process of ritualization is at play in all these ceremonies, often oscillating and at times overlapping between the religious and the secular.Item Open Access Culture shock at universities : suburban students and their experience of marginality(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2017) Bhowmick, ArunimaMarginality is a condition of disadvantaged individuals and communities that arises due to unfavourable environmental, cultural, social, political and economic factors. The vulnerable situation that they confront can be either societal or spatial, very often, both. This paper seeks to understand predicaments and vulnerabilities of students coming to universities in metropolitan Kolkata from the margins of the city, more often referred to as the “suburbs”. The study is an attempt to relook marginality in the face of globalisation and dissect the context of regionalism in this light. The study has gathered strength from case studies of students coming to universities from these regions and an account of their conditions and sense of discrimination has been recorded. Their sense of marginality finds manifestation in difference of language, more precisely their speech and diction, fashion and most importantly lifestyle. Tracing the origin of the concept of marginality back to the one who coined it, Robert Ezra Park (1928), young students were found placed between multiple cultures and their negotiations give rise to a “hybrid” personality or the marginal man. Students from suburbs might not necessarily have pronounced class differences with the local residential students, but their possession of “cultural capital” and further access to it in the universities often become a ripe condition for furthering marginalization. Finally, the paper engages in addressing the vital question — whether to uphold “affirmative action” and support the marginal status, or create a collective of poorly privileged?Item Open Access Understanding Happiness: Secrecy and Fantasy as Modes(University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Bhowmick, ArunimaHappiness as a social concern, extending into a field of study, has been a phenomenon of the last three to four decades. This departure was seen with economists finding correlates to patterns in consumption and psychologists locating social indicators of happiness to support mental wellbeing. In fact, the term “wellbeing” became a more precise and acceptable one for providing a holistic understanding of happiness 1970s onwards. My focus in this paper is to travel back from this era of social indicative research and locate the position of classical thinkers of Sociology with regard to happiness. Thereby finding a platform to address the epistemological problematics in handling “happiness” as an object of social research presently. Sociology has seen a long absence of research in subjective wellbeing, though there has been perennial enquiry into the position of the individual in construction of society. The debates brought to focus by economists like Richard Layard on happiness fosters enough challenge to the ideas of subjective wellbeing and the objective social indicators used to explain the same. However, this position has a very strong emphasis on one’s “understanding” and “expectations”, both indicative of a regular journey between objective attributes of happiness and subjective negotiations. This paper tries to find ways into this negotiated world of secrets that lies on the other side of the objective reality, arriving at a social that offers its own methodological tools and ontological position for explaining the disjuncture and convergence in ideas of happiness.Item Open Access Teaching culture, transforming selves : insight into life-skill lessons offered at government schools(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2020) Bhowmick, ArunimaThere is naivety in considering that the awareness imparted on a desired lifestyle, health, hygiene and emphasis of its higher cultural value always goes down as planned, without any dissent. There are always contradictions between the idealized training and the socio-cultural context of the students expected to learn and practice the same in their everyday lives. Thus, values circumscribing suitable lifestyle seek validation by undermining an opposite set of values, guided by several socio-cultural and politico-economic considerations. This paper at large will make attempts to surface this majoritarian and universal control over value education that exists even today, standing at the crossroads of neo-liberal economies and liberal democratic political formations. It will also try to flag occasions ripe with possibilities for resistance to a given moral order from the subjective/subaltern experiences.