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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    Social Construction of Motherhood through the Iconography of Devi Shasthi: The Goddess of Fertility
    (University of North Bengal, 31-03-2021) Sarkar, Suparna
    In Bengal, Shasthi-Broto (worship of Goddess Shasthi) is popularly practised by married women for long life and well-being of children. The Broto rites involve the ritual narrative (Broto-Katha) associated with the Broto, which defines motherhood by a set of normative social roles that are assigned to a woman. Motherhood is an idealized status given to a woman from time immemorial. A woman becomes a mother not only by the biological act of delivering a child but also by conforming to the expected role assigned by the society. Mothering may be viewed medically as giving birth to a new born baby nurtured in the womb but sociologically it refers to an expression of a culture which embodies a value system that society assigns to a woman. Thus, the concept of motherhood is a social construction. In this paper, I will explore this social construction of motherhood by analyzing the iconography and narratives of Devi Shasthi the goddess of fertility among the Hindus.
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    Travails with motherhood : auto-ethnographic exploration of being a mother
    (University of North Bengal, 31-03-2020) Chatterjee, Ananya
    Motherhood is as much as a sociological as a biological and physiological construct. Each and every human society has its values, ideas, duties and responsibilities attached to mothering and motherhood. Even though the concept of family is changing with the emergence of alternative forms to traditional patriarchal family, the raising of children is still perceived to be the sole responsibility of the mother. The expectation that women will become mothers, forms part of the normative discourses governing motherhood which construct women’s sexuality and identity through their reproductive function. Cultural representations of the idealised and sometimes “yummy” mummy (middle class, attractive, healthy, sexy and heterosexual) contrast with depictions of ‘bad’ mothers proliferate in the popular press. The ideal mother is constructed as selfless, nurturing, subsuming their own needs to attend to their children’s demands. The motherhood experience of the working mothers often deviates from the dominant model of motherhood. In their experience of alternative motherhood, they are often marginalised in their family and close kin circle which holds on to the patriarchal definition of motherhood. In this autoethnographic essay I have explored how my experience of motherhood has redefined my identity of mother while passing through a course of negotiations and conflicts with the idealized standards.
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    Not born a Mother, but Naturalized into One: Experiences of Motherhood, Reality and Challenges
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Sachdeva, Swati Akshay
    Motherhood is constructed as a biological outcome based on the assumption that when a woman becomes a mother, she is naturally equipped to be one, while its complexities are rarely highlighted. Feminist writers on the subject argue that motherhood is a social, historical and cultural construct rather than a natural consequence of the maternal instinct (Burman 1994a). Motherhood presents itself as a natural outcome because a mother’s personal and unique experience of motherhood interacts to a large degree with the social and cultural representations of motherhood. To be a perfect mother is a natural disposition, requiring little or no effort because mothers work on instincts. Generally accepted notions about motherhood do not change quickly or easily because many of those who concern themselves with issues central to motherhood fail to acknowledge or even recognize that motherhood has this social and historical character (Atkinson 1991). Mothers are trying to live up to something that is placed on them by themselves or other significant people. There is quite clearly a gap between what we claim to know about motherhood and what mothers themselves experience as mothers. Women’s experiences as mothers, their inner perspectives are rarely examined. As a result, little is known about how women experience motherhood. The lived experience of motherhood often, if not always, contradicts the glorified representation of motherhood. Mothers have never really been given the opportunity to express the complexity of being a mother and therefore there are hardly any personal accounts or narratives on how mothers engage in a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of meanings around motherhood, whether their everyday lived experiences contradict or are disjunctive to these ideal images Mothering as a complex and diverse experience and living up to an ideal is problematic. This paper explores the experiences, confessions and personal account of the researcher by looking at the subject of motherhood from the point of view of her relationship with her own mother and mothering her children. There is discussion around ideal representation of motherhood, a mother’s expectations and image of motherhood and how these are challenged as the researcher, engages in a process of deconstruction and reconstruction of meanings around motherhood