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 Everyday Life of the Subjects in an Alienating Lifeworld(University of North Bengal, 2024-03-31) Roy, Sanjay K.Highlighting the dialogical and dialectical method of subject formation and engagement with the alienating lifeworld the present paper argues that the self is not only historically and socially constructed within the asymmetrical power relations but also grows up with a unique critical agency that can act, both individually and collectively, to bring about the desired changes in the lifeworld for a responsible and ethically rich “good life”. It is in this duality that the author locates the post-modern politics, where subjects, living a similar precarious life, laden with injustices and violence, can join hands for transformative actions without sacrificing their subjective autonomy or individuality.Item Open Access Aesthetics of Living: The Deepening Crises(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2021) Roy, Sanjay K.A combination of neo-liberalism and right-wing nationalism is out to vitiate democratic orders and citizenship in some parts of the globe. This new order threatens the livelihood of a large majority of the population in one way or the other, destabilizes their livelihood rights, disenfranchises them, constricts their freedom and imprisons their creative faculty in its efforts to enforce a homogenous culture. The prime challenge before the citizens in these countries, therefore, is to defend the individual freedom and agency and right to collective resistance making use of their critical faculty. An ideal benevolent social democratic order, which respects freedom of the subjects and of the communities, upholds the egalitarian and humane ideals and negates any form of coercion or oppression, is everybody’s dream. Such a dream is actualized in some social-democratic countries in the Scandinavian. However, the countries that combine neo-liberal greed with authoritarianism and a monolithic culture betray the livelihood expectations and sabotage the proliferation of an aesthetic life. The task before the enlightened citizens, therefore, is to prepare to be able to decrypt the systemic technology of subversion of human freedom, rights and agency and look for ways and means to preserve the subjective freedom and be a part of the collective moves to create an ideal material and aesthetic order.Item Open Access Sharit K. Bhowmik : teacher, my friend(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2017) Roy, Sanjay K.Item Open Access Discourse formation and praxis in everyday life(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2017) Roy, Sanjay K.In sociology, and in other social sciences, we generally talk about others, while keeping absolutely mum about ourselves. The result is so called “objective” (in most cases manipulated) “scientific” dispassionate “texts”1 which obscure the reality and do not help enriching our collective wisdom. Subjective knowledge (in Weberian sense), drawn by applying reflexive or autobiographical method, which is usually given no respect in the so-called scientific tradition, could be an alternative mode of doing sociology. Discourses in sociology and other social sciences could be drawn from lived experiences, with high degree of embeddedness, which would help understand the dynamics of everyday life social praxis better.Item Open Access Aesthetic imageries : look at the ideas of sartre and levi-strauss(University of North Bengal, 31-03-2020) Roy, Sanjay K.The purpose of the paper is not to do a review of the theories of art and aesthetics but to focus on the contrasting views of the two French scholars, Jean Paul Sartre and Claude Levi-Strauss with a view to prepare the launch-pad for an exploration into the world of art and aesthetics, without which, I firmly believe, there cannot be any form of creation (not even in the field of social sciences). It primarily deals with the contrasting views on the modes of aesthetic creations and examines whether aesthetics is founded on the concrete or is completely an act of imagination.Item Open Access Nuances of Social Relations in Everyday Life(University of North Bengal, 2016-03) Roy, Sanjay K.There are complex and critical and also unconscious nuances of social relations which cannot be captured by conventional anthropological terms such as HW, BZ, FM, FS, MD and so on. The micro sociological theoretical tradition tells us to go deeper into the mind, self and the social ambience to get to the strategies individuals deploy in managing their relations and in presentation of self and in management of impression in the public, in both the front stage and back stage. By applying the autobiographical reflexive method the author of the present paper explores the close and proximate relations and the relations that are not so intimate in the family, in the extended kinship network, people in the friendship network, and the “significant others” who leave a lasting impact on the shaping up of a self. It highlights the tensions and stresses in the relations and the strategies the actors deploy in maintaining the relations in a “desired way”. The paper also discusses the core and the periphery of social relations and explains the logic behind locating the social relations in terms of priorities. Methodologically the paper argues that language is a highly inadequate means to capture the complexity of thoughts about even more complex social relations, yet the social scientists apply strategies of descriptive and interpretative phenomenology in order to construct narratives on social relations from the participants’ points of view.Item Open Access Deserted women in patriarchal sikkim and Darjeeling hills(University of North Bengal, 2015-03) Roy, Sanjay K.; Khawas, BabikaIn patriarchal social orders in Sikkim and Darjeeling Hills, which also have kept into practice many elements of feudal social order, the women are subjected to various forms of discrimination and violence; one manifestation of such a social situation is desertion of women in their 40s and 50s. This is a form of cruelty done on women across classes and communities in rural as well as urban areas, despite the fact that they have served their husbands and in-laws with all sincerity and played their role as mothers. The victim women do not get much support either from the society or from the state or the institutions (including the law against domestic violence) and live with a lot of hardship. In Sikkim the Family Court, State Women’s’ Commission, and NGOs come forward with some support but in Darjeeling Hills there is no presence of any institution that could come forward in defense of the deserted women.