Department of Sociology

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The present Department of Sociology was established as a combined Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology by the University of North Bengal in 1976. Professor Niren Ch. Choudhury, eminent anthropologist, was the first Professor and Head of the Department who provided the leadership in the formative years of the Department.Professor R.K.Bhadra and Dr.Namita Choudhury were associated with him since inception of this department and helped in the process of its development. The bifurcation between sociology and anthropology took place in 2001 and thus the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology was renamed Department of Sociology and a separate Department of Anthropology was established under the Science Faculty. From its beginning the Department of Sociology has been training students for three courses: M.A., M. Phil. and Ph.D. The Department has produced more than 30 Ph.Ds and more than one thousand Masters. Besides the two main programmes the Department invites visiting faculty, from the reputed national and international universities and the faculty of this department visit the universities abroad on visiting faculty programme and for attending seminars/conferences. The teachers of the Department encourage students to take part in academic discussions outside the class-room interaction and encourage them to present papers in seminars/conferences. In recognition of the good work done by the Department the University Grants’ Commission (UGC) has granted the Special Assistance Programme (DRS – 1) in 2007 which has facilitated undertaking a good number of research projects on issues relating to gender question and the problem of ethnicity in the North Bengal region. The Department has been organizing a national level seminar every year on the gender and ethnicity related issues, which constitute the focal theme of the SAP. As a part of the programme the Department publishes Occasional Papers and edited volumes based on the research articles that are produced under different SAP related programs.

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Has files: YesSubject: search.filters.subject.rationalization of family size

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    ItemOpen Access
    Life of the Middleclass Aged in the Light of Changing Family Relations: A Study in Kolkata
    (University of North Bengal, 2018-03) Roy, Sinjini
    The present paper explores the life of the middleclass aged in Kolkata metropolis. The life of the aged has been studied in two different locations – in the family setup and in the old-age homes – in a comparative mode. The uniqueness of the study lies in the observation that the kind of life that the aged live depends much on the changing family situations. The composition of the family, the marital status of the aged, the dispersal of the family members and the household arrangements, the health status of the elderly, the kinship and neighbourhood support systems impact the life of the senior citizens significantly. One of the key findings of the study is that the aged women, especially those who have been single, are more vulnerable to take refuge in the old-age homes. Another key finding is that the aged move to old-age homes as the last resort, when the family care system breaks down completely, particularly when they lose their spouses and have broken health. I have found in this study that although the dispersal of the younger members is on the rise the aged take this as a logical and welcome development, although it takes a toll on the conventional care system in the family. I have also found that the stigma that was attached to old-age living is withering and the aged and the larger society have started accepting it as a rational solution to their real-life problems. My study does not support the widely held perception that the middleclass aged are the victims of the growing calculative rationalism and inhumanity in the younger generation.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Changing Social Relations in a Metropolis: The Perception of the Middleclass Aged
    (University of North Bengal, 2016-03) Roy, Sinjini
    In recent years urban middleclass families are experiencing rationalization of family size, rationalization of living arrangement and large-scale dispersal of younger members in search of livelihood opportunities. The question of sociological significance is that whether all these leave a disintegrating impact on relations in the family, on the kin-group or on the neighbourhood relations. The present paper, based on empirical findings, observes that the middleclass in an urban setting face a number of stresses but they understand the value of familial and social relations, and even neighbourhood relations, in order to thwart the potentially disintegrating social forces. In the face of dispersal of the lone child in a distant city, the aged couple fall back on each other, support each other with a great deal of empathy to combat the challenges of old-age.