Confronting Reflexivity: Sociological Trajectories of Teaching Sociology in Liberal Arts Spaces

Introduction

While I write this, I am reminded of my school days, when disciplines claimed to be more scientific and important. As a child, I was intrigued by different subjects nervously claiming to be ‘a scientific discipline’. I wanted to pursue medicine and never imagined my future as a sociology student. Before I begin to write about the space of sociology in Liberal Arts, based on my last two and half years teaching at Jyoti Dalal School of Liberal Arts (hereafter JDSoLA) in NMIMS University, it would be pertinent to describe my journey of becoming a student of Sociology. I joined a PhD Program in the Sociology discipline in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, hoping to follow my academic pursuits in the philosophy of justice, political theory and Indian politics. Despite pursuing a practice-oriented master’s in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), these expectations were my own volition. However, institutional rigour and my PhD supervisor’s methodological commitment to sociology made me realise that I need to commit to the discipline to do academic justice to my PhD project.

My journey in teaching Sociology began before my PhD thesis submission in November 2019. The then Dean, himself an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and a sociologist, reached out to me to teach the ‘Sociology of the Future’ course as a visiting faculty. The summer of 2020 was full of uncertainties as I was not only seeking a full-time teaching position but also on the brink of finishing my PhD. I decided to accept the Dean’s offer to teach sociology courses as a visiting faculty and was offered courses on Citizenship and Migration Studies and Sociology of Environment and Development. As the academic year progressed, I facili- tated other courses like Sociology of India and Classical Sociological Thought. This article is grounded in primary observations while teaching various socio- logy courses, supervising undergraduate research projects, and scholarly works informing sociological imagination beginning from Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, Peter Berger and discourse on the future and teaching of sociology in India.

The second Section will focus on teaching sociology in India finding a new turf-Liberal Arts schools, and whether it is an invitation for critical sociology or the beginning of an identity crisis for students. It will compare the teaching in liberal arts spaces to the teaching done at the undergraduate level in public universities. The third Section will explore students’ voices to engage with the reflexivity and crisis of relatedness. The concluding section will revisit the ongoing debate of skill-based sociology or critical sociology, generating new questions for reflexivity and social location of both the practitioner and the student in place of the new space offered by Liberal Arts institutions.

Sociology Teaching Finding a New Turf-Liberal Arts Schools—An Invitation to Critical Sociology or Beginning of a Crisis of Identity?

In this section, I will explore what it means to teach sociology in the domain of liberal arts. The description of JDSOLA is based on my experiences and anecdotes. However, I have gleaned information from websites of other liberal arts universities like Ashoka and KREA, about the syllabus and fee structure, in order to understand the students’ class location and compare that with Mumbai University which also offers sociology courses. This section aims to contextualise the discussion of the identity and reflexivity of sociology students, which will be analysed later.

To begin with, I would like to clarify the deployment of the word ‘fringe’. The debate on sociology in India was centred on the central and state universities that had been prominent schools in the past (Bombay School, Lucknow School). In contrast, other universities were regarded as the periphery of sociology teaching. The technical institutes did not enter this debate since their primary focus was applying sociology to solve society’s problems complementary to technology. However, sociology taught in liberal arts spaces does not fit with the technological institutions, nor can it be associated with the state universities. The faculty in Liberal Arts schools and their teaching in this new domain demand a new lens to view the subject. In my opinion, the fringe represents the outer boundary of all sociological work in India, ranging from classical canon and theory to the relationship between Sociology and Anthropology. Thus, though liberal arts spaces keep pace with the sociological teaching done in core universities, their limited outreach to students from a particular class keeps them on the fringe of sociology teaching.

The then Dean’s background helped him gain support from Mumbai University, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and IIT Bombay in 2020. The sociologists from these institutes were invited to the Board of Studies meeting, and their inputs became significant in framing the syllabus of the courses. These spaces supplied a steady pool of people like me, seeking to begin their academic careers. The Dean was in touch with Sociology professors from IIT Bombay, and thus, I found myself teaching at JDSoLA. The course on Citizenship and Environment has the unmistakable imprint of an IIT Bombay professor. One can find the blend of anthropological writings and sociological theoretical works that this IIT Bombay professor deploys to engage with his students from different backgrounds in institutional electives. Another significant influence is the diverse coverage of the geographic location of scholars. Authors were not confined to Europe, the US and India but included other parts of Asia, Australia and Africa. The wide range appeals to young students who find sociology stimulating but are not committed to it. The Dean’s joint PhD training at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and King’s College London further helped to take forward this approach. His ability to forge a confluence of personalities at the helm allowed the school to proceed with offering Sociology as a specialisation with eight courses to choose from—two as foundational compulsory courses—Sociology of India and Sociology of Environment and Development, and the remaining courses offered to students either specialising in Sociology or choosing it as an elective. My familiarity with the students and their feedback on my previous courses prompted me to take a full-time faculty position.

To understand the audience of sociology, it is relevant to discuss their demographics. The number of students opting for liberal arts undergraduate programs is consistently rising, with the intake ranging between 80 and 110 students. All students are obligated to take two foundational courses—Sociology of India in semester one and Sociology of Environment and Development in semester three. From semester four onwards, students can opt for two courses in Sociology as part of their specialisation or as an elective while specialising in other subjects. Here, the mystery for me begins. When the Dean taught sociology courses, five to seven students took sociology as a specialisation in the third year, and fifteen to twenty more students chose it as an elective. The number of students opting for sociology dwindled with the departure of the Dean and a Canadian sociologist who taught briefly at the school in 2020. Before I was offered the full-time position as Assistant Professor in February 2021, the school did not have full-time faculty in Sociology for some time. Seeing the steadiness of faculty again, three students have opted to specialise in sociology this year. The school gets the maximum number of students to specialise in Psychology, Economics, Marketing, Journalism etc. The unusual observation is the juxtaposition of the increase in students choosing electives in sociology courses and the simultaneous decline of students specialising in it. To illustrate, when I taught the Classical Sociological Thought course in July–December 2020, I engaged with a group of twenty-two students, all studying it as an elective. The following year, I received only nine students, one specialising in Sociology and the remaining eight from Literature and psychology. However, when I write this, I am facilitating this course for the third time and teaching twenty-six students, three of whom specialise in sociology.

The Citizenship and Migration Studies course has seen an upward swing. In July 2020, I received twenty-seven students, while the following year saw an unusually high number of forty-six students out of an eighty-student batch. It is, however, essential to note that despite this number, only one student chose to specialise in the subject. I have witnessed a similar trajectory with the Sociology of the Future course. When I began teaching the course, it was compulsory but has since been changed to an elective. So, when I taught this course as an elective, I received thirty-three out of eighty students. I am facilitating it for the third time and have received a new record of seventy-three out of ninety students, but this could also be because of their familiarity with me since their first semester. Nonetheless, familiarity with my pedagogy cannot be the only reason to opt for this course when only three students specialise in sociology from this batch. The Contemporary Sociological Theory course has steadily increased the number of students opting for it from twenty-four to forty-seven in 2021 to 2022. The Gender and Sexuality course consistently draws close to forty students. Similarly, the Economy, Polity and Society course attracts thirty-five to forty-five students. The increasing number of students selecting sociology as both a specialisation and an elective does not corroborate with the immediate academic priorities of students after graduation. Students engrossed in sociology have opted for masters in Development Studies, Public Policy, Journalism and Psychology. Though they enjoy the subject, they feel pressured to pursue more money-making opportunities.

A fee comparison with BA students of Mumbai University can permit us to understand the class and identity of students pursuing liberal arts in prominent institutions, such as Ashoka University, KREA University and JDSoLA. KREA University’s School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences (SIAS)’s website mentions the tuition fee of ₹753,000 per annum, along with the additional cost of living expenses, ₹170,000 (Fee Structure, KREA University, 2022a). Thus, it is close to ten lacs per annum and thirty lacs for the whole program. Ashoka University charges ₹1,037,000, ₹1,089,000 and ₹1,143,000 for the 3-year undergraduate program for the cohort of 2022 (admissions: ASHOKA university, 2022a), which comes close to ₹33 lac rupees for the entire program.

However, this cost also includes living expenses. JDSOLA’s fee structure is not mentioned on the university or school’s website, but it is less than the fee at KREA and Ashoka. However, high living expenses in Mumbai may compensate for the lower side fee. A student’s family spends approximately the same as a peer doing an undergraduate program at Ashoka and KREA. There is a contrast in the fee charged in public universities. This can be used to analyse the reflexivity and crisis of relatedness with the issues and narratives discussed in Sociology courses. The latest fee structure available on the Mumbai University website for the BA first year is ₹3,680 for the general category student and ₹380 for reserve category students (Mumbai University Prospectus, 2014, Mumbai University, 2022a). It is important to note that Mumbai University, and most public universities, do not offer liberal arts undergraduate programs. Thus, this comparison is the closest approximation to understand the social location of students studying sociology at the undergraduate level. The annual fee at a state university for an undergraduate program is less than 1% of the annual fees of the undergraduate program at Ashoka, KREA and JDSOLA. Though I do not have adequate data to support the comparison in living expenses, the considerable disparity reflects the wide gap between the two sets of students.

An informal conversation with students indicates that they come from middle-level successful business families that can afford this investment and further support their education at the master’s level. This further education might be necessary for those who specialise in social sciences, Psychology, etc. However, it might not be possible to thoroughly glean the extent to which families can invest in this since the university does not collect data on students’ families’ income. For such students, NMIMS University serves as a launching pad to explore scholarships for a master’s or gain work experience with the NMIMS brand and seek Master’s admission thereafter. Many students in JDSOLA are from Mumbai, and since there is no additional accommodation cost, this provides the families with more choices to invest in. These demographic differences in economic status will emerge during the crisis of relatedness when students undertake the study of marginalised people based on gender, caste, tribal identity or any other central marginalised position. Sociology—and disciplines like it—have always attracted the middle class and thus largely upper-caste students. However, as I will discuss in the last section that students studying in liberal arts spaces have relatively less engagement with social movement-driven sociological engagement.

I would now like to compare the approach of teaching sociology in other liberal arts spaces with sociology taught at an undergraduate programme at Mumbai University. Ashoka’s joint department of Sociology and Anthropology harkens back to GS Ghurye and MN Srinivas’s ideas of typing Social Anthropology and Sociology together. The discourse ranges from social theory to empirical work, philosophical anthropology and other recent trends in Sociology. It continues the tradition to bridge the gap between macro, micro and individual lived experiences in culture and society (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, ASHOKA University, 2022b). Another page describes the intent of teaching Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka:

The Sociology and Anthropology Programme at Ashoka will train future scholars and professionals to be engaged observers, attentive readers, clear writers, and rigorous social analysts. Over the course of their study, our students will develop a critical awareness of changing social values and practices, the capacity to think relationally, and the skills to draw out vital but often invisible connections. In this way, they will learn how to describe and explain complex social processes. Above all, we are convinced that our students will engage with the world and come to inhabit it in ways that open up new possibilities for shaping shared futures. These possibilities are at the heart of what we think it means to nurture an anthropological imagination. (Undergraduate Programme in Sociology and Anthropology, Ashoka University, 2022c)

One can see a clear emphasis on being a good observer, writer, social analyst and rational thinker. In the last section of the article, I will return to this emphasis when I discuss the crisis of relatedness experienced that demands one to think of Bordieusian reflexivity (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) for students being trained in liberal arts spaces. An overview of the specialisation in sociology at Ashoka University reads—to do a major in Sociology and Anthropology at the undergraduate level in Ashoka, a student needs to complete twelve courses. The core courses go with the established teaching in sociology to cover sociological concepts, the state, stateless societies and the problems of power, gift commodities and exchange of value, a course on magic, science and religion, and one on kinship, friends and enemies. There is also a course on anthropological methods. A student preferring to do a minor has to complete only six courses out of the larger pool (Undergraduate Programme in Sociology and Anthropology, ASHOKA University, 2022c).

KREA does not explicitly mention sociology on its website. However, one can infer a few trends from the extensive description of the undergraduate program in Social Studies. It highlights an interdisciplinary approach focusing on modern social theory to understand social realities and engage with intervention to make the world better. Social studies that claim to be anchored in Sociology and Social Anthropology emphasise macro-theoretical understanding and engagement with lived experiences. The issues discussed include urban studies, environment and globalisation and technology (Social Studies at KREA, KREA University, 2022b). However, I reiterate that one is left with the struggle to locate students’ identities in knowledge production and dissemination. One notable course is the History of Social Theories, which can give a glimpse of scholarship produced in a given temporal context to understand the scholar’s location. This can help the student locate the text and engage with the sociological work. The compulsory courses are similar to those offered by other universities. The course, ‘Researching the Social’, can also offer a reflexive position to students. A list of sample electives, such as the Future of Migration, and a course on the tradition and the Modern, encourages interdisciplinary perspectives (Social Studies at KREA, ibid., 2022b).

Now I would like to draw a comparison of teaching sociology at Mumbai University. One can find the syllabus, readings and course objectives of sociology courses through the circulars issued from time to time at Mumbai University to update the syllabus of sociology courses taught at the undergraduate level. There are two papers listed for the first year. The foundation of the Sociology paper has two parts. The first engages with the discipline’s early development, and the second focuses on the conceptual categories of sociology, such as family, kinship, religion, culture and socialisation. The listed readings are primarily beginner’s texts by prominent commentators like Anthony Giddens. It is interesting to see that to make readings inclusive, there are also readings listed in the Marathi language. Field trips and educational tours are incorporated to understand the sociological concepts. Similarly, a second paper titled Fundamentals of Sociology engages with social interaction, social stratification, social control and collective behaviour (N UG/19 circular of 2020–2021 of Mumbai University, Mumbai University, 2022b). The course objectives make one wonder that though the insertion of comments emphasises undertaking field trips as part of learning, course objectives do not reflect the students’ reflexivity that shapes sociological imagination.

Semester three has a course on Indian Society: Structure and Change. This paper covers sociological writings from G. S. Ghurye, A. R. Desai, M. N. Srinivas and Dr B. R. Ambedkar. It also lists sociological trends in the field of religion and gender in India. There is a regional focus on Maharashtra to understand local issues. The reading list is longer, unlike conceptual papers and incorporates the readings of prominent contemporary sociologists like Satish Deshpande and Sharmila Rege, which are accessible for beginners. Additional papers on sociological issues in contemporary Indian society engage with the issues of health, crime, environment and sustainability. The third paper, Sociology of Development, discusses the issues from a contestation point of view that emerged as a response to the economic-centric development narrative executed in India after the independence. The last paper includes sub-disciplines, such as Sociology of Education, Sociology of Media and Geriatric care (Circular N AAMS (UG)/39 of 2020–21 of Mumbai University, Mumbai University, 2022c). The ultimate test of this knowledge is the final examination. Thus, despite the emphasis on field trips, students might be left with no choice other than to demonstrate their semester-long understanding of sociology through written examination. There is no provision for participative activities or writing assignments that can permit students to engage with the text at their convenient time and may promote continuous learning of the concepts.

A third-year paper, ‘Theoretical Sociology’, includes thinkers, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim and contemporary sociologists like Garfinkel and Goffman. A paper on Anthropological Thought is reminiscent of the close association between sociology and anthropology advocated by Ghurye and Srinivas. These two papers are followed by a list of gender, sociology of work, informal sector, environment and other issues debated in Indian Sociology. Two papers on qualitative research methodology in sociology emphasise the need for more ethnographic and anthropological understanding (circular titled N UG/13 of 2018–19 of Mumbai University, Mumbai University, 2022d). Having set a context of sociology teaching in liberal arts spaces and Mumbai University, I will now return to students’ voices in JDSoLA while engaging with sociology.

Student’s Voices: An Invitation to Reflexivity and Emergence of a New Sociological Space

As I have previously stated, my location in the sociological world was marred by anxiety, but COVID-19 allowed me to divert the extra time from the social world which helped make my transition to teaching relatively smooth. This permitted me to observe students’ engagement with sociology when the home has been turned into a site of the classroom, university and an alternative space for peer support. Students expressed keen interest in engaging with the concept of family, given their long and close association with family during the pandemic. I want to highlight the contribution of my students’ writing that demonstrated both engagement with text and concepts and reflection upon the concepts with their present situations. Though the well-written pieces were no surprise, I did not expect to see students specialising in marketing demonstrating the craft of sociological analysis. This gives hope for the sociology of consumption to become a meaningful discourse in India.

However, this enthusiasm was short-lived since the brightest of students eventually drift to the world of management or marketing, despite pursuing an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. Students approach sociology in a supplementary way while they specialise in Literature, Journalism and Development Studies. However, I am afraid to state that the approach is very confined for marketing students since sociology comes as a last resort when other courses are unavailable in a given semester. Thus, sociology comes as an additional platform to supply more information to understand brands and sales boosts. Divya, ¹ a second-year student has the potential to become an anthropologist or sociologist given her reflexivity with the text, real-life situations and involvement in narrating the text. She argued publicly in class that the association of marketing and sociology can permit one to understand the social implications of a product or brand on people and society. She further adds that keeping a distance from marketing will deprive sociology of a point of view to understand people’s lives and their actions, especially with consumption.

I do not wish to undermine students’ intent to make a career in marketing, but a school of thought always insisted to keep the sociological discipline authentic and ‘pure’, although studying consumption has been a trajectory since the times of Veblen and Bourdieu. However, instead of a theoretical or perspective-based understanding of consumption, students want to deploy sociological understanding to enhance the product’s visibility and sale. It is pertinent to see Wendy Brown’s argument that education has become a human capital, and efforts taken for education are as a return on investment and not an intellectual curiosity or to develop personality (Brown, 2015). Brown’s argument reflects the trend seen in the classroom. Nonetheless, it intrigues me that a student who begins with the intellectual aspiration of perspective-based learning deserts it for more skill-based courses. However, students specialising in marketing defend their position. They argue that sociology courses help broaden their perspective-based understanding, though their research priorities suggest otherwise.

Sociology’s identity gets further complicated and liminal when students have to wait a few years longer than their peers studying journalism, media, or marketing. This dilemma traps sociology in the transition zone of perspective, offering subjects, such as Philosophy, History and Political Science instead of skill- offering subjects, such as management, marketing, Journalism and Psychology. Thus, though they appreciate and commit to the pedagogy and readings that remains primarily perspective-centric, students are continuously battling to derive skill-based benefits from engagement with Sociology. The central question that persistently occupied my mind while engaging with students in JDSoLA was their location in relation to the issues discussed, especially in Indian sociology—caste, gender, tribal issue and agrarian crisis, to name a few. I consider this dilemma to engage with sociology as the crisis of relatedness with the issues and concepts for beginners in liberal arts places due to the changed class location of students. A similar conundrum might be witnessed by students studying sociology in other liberal arts spaces. As for comparison and other social locations, the discussion permits me to say that the liberal arts remain within reach of the upper-middle class in India. Their perspective about issues studied in sociology is altogether different from students studying sociology in public universities. For illustration, reservation occupies a central place in caste scholarship in India from the times of writings of Ghurye (2016), and it got a new lease in 1990s India. Although liberal arts students may be able to appreciate caste concerns and marginalisation based on readings, when it comes to the reservation, their lived experiences might make them see reservations being accessed by the not-so-deserving people.

They support their disagreements by making observations not in written assignments but during class discussions. We also have students bringing the works of Kancha Ilaiah, Arundhati Roy, Ram Madhav and Shashi Tharoor as a spectrum to think about the caste question. They are able to engage with recent incidents of atrocities on Dalits. There is a difficulty in responding to the array of discussions with the ideas of Ram Madhav, Shashi Tharoor and Arundhati Roy on caste as they are put on the same pedestal for academic engagement. I see it as a pedagogic challenge in sociology teaching to negotiate the different points of view in the times to come.

However, Indian sociology can congratulate itself on producing the scholarship on caste not only from the reservation point of view but also by constructing a larger world that interrogates caste through dignity, respect, humiliation, social respect and other social relations. Due to this nature of caste scholarship, students in liberal arts spaces are eventually able to appreciate and read caste beyond the issue of reservation. Though they grasp the plight of tribals due to illegal mining of mineral resources and resultant displacement, loss of culture and cultural genocide, they admit that they relate more to future and youth-led movements like the environmental activism of Greta Thunberg and Disha Ravi.

The crisis to relate with the issues studied generates anxiety as Abhilasha, a second-year student, explicitly stated that she feels like an imposter when she tries to understand the tribal issues while leading a comfortable life in a metropolis like Mumbai. The class location of students in liberal arts may offer a different vantage point of issues debated in Indian sociology based on reflexivity if students trained in these spaces take up sociology as a career. Sociology in India will be all set to bring a new perspective that is not anchored in public university training. It is interesting to observe that students are keen to appreciate the struggles of the marginalised through the scholarship of sociologists trained in public universities in India. However, they are unable to relate these ideas to their lives. For example, Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) and tribal struggle to access land, forest resources and water may generate sympathy, but they resonate more with futuristic young minds when it comes to nature and climate-related issues.

This is a significant shift compared to Amita Baviskar’s engagement with environmental discourse. Baviskar argues that urban educated youth’s priorities shifted in the 1980s, and they prefer to work for sustainable development instead of associating with Naxalism (Baviskar, 1997). Though the commitment to sustainability may remain the same for students getting trained in liberal arts, their primary site of action is shifting to urban spaces. The training in sociology in private universities may be confined to expressing solidarity and sympathy for the environmental cause in tribal areas, but young graduates may not commit to actually going and working there. There is still a certain glamour attached to activism that radiates from Thunberg, but not from these rural landscapes.

Similarly, many students deliberate on investing time in social theory. Abhilasha, an Economics student who engaged in writing, reading and class participation with sociological texts, stated that her motivation to opt for the Classical Sociological Thought course emerged from seeing it as a ‘complementary’ course. As the course progressed, the engagement with texts motivated her to change her mind about the contribution of this course to her academic engagement, and she said that reading these texts offers an entry point into understanding the crisis of prevalining times in which these scholars were writing. Thus, she says that there is a methodological takeaway to gain from the contemporary times in which scholars write.

My last two and half years of teaching sociology in JDSoLA permit me to suggest that sociology is seen as a collaborative subject in association with another specialisation. However, it is struggling to attract committed students who wish to explore sociology further. A discussion with Gautam, a second-year student wishing to specialise in sociology, reflected Wendy Brown’s argument. His struggle was related to interest and future gains offered by the subject. I explained how a master’s in sociology was relatively insufficient to secure a job, but one in Public Policy or Development Studies might be. However, as he went to study further in his third year, engagement with the works of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu changed his mind, and he plans to do a master’s in sociology. He is fascinated with Bourdieu’s idea of reflexivity, enabling him and his peers to confront the crisis of relatedness. Similarly, a few more students who did well in sociology courses are contemplating taking forward the readings of Bourdieu in their respective fields of media and marketing.

Students’ challenge to articulate the reflexivity while engaging with sociological texts based on changing the sociological style of writing offers thoughts to consider the changing contours of sociological imagination. The sociological imagination dimension of sociology teaching should not be considered only from a pedagogic point of view for academic engagement but also from a practical view. As Edward A. Rodrigues argues, the market sees a discipline’s relevance in employability. He argues about the crisis of the capacity of teachers at the undergraduate level in university set-up (Rodrigues, 2011). However, undergraduate students in liberal arts spaces at private universities come with a particular set of reading and writing skills in the English language and are quick to adapt to original writings in sociology. The student’s ability to read original works improves the instructor’s pedagogic experience and leads to the transition of the master’s level engagement. This pedagogic success nonetheless offers disillusionment to the instructor in such spaces, where instructors see many students doing well but are unwilling to commit to further training and keep the discipline alive.

It would be relevant here to chart out the journey of sociological imagination that has influenced the teaching of Sociology in India. Durkheim made a distinction of ‘social’ that was not explored under the disciplines of biology and psychology. Social facts, as argued by Durkheim, as collective beliefs, tendencies and practices, were derived primarily from emphasising the human-human interface (Durkheim, 1982). However, it does not appeal to students since much of their socialisation is shaped by technology-ignited imagination rather than text-based imagination. Thus, it is difficult to relate to sociological imagination invited by text found in the works of Durkheim, Max Weber and later emphasised by C. Wright Mills for exploring it as sociological imagination. Mills acknowledges the increasing role of information in the Age of Fact that bombards people and the need for the skill to negotiate with this overflow of information and acquire skills to reason to make meaning of the world. He also acknowledges the role of lived experiences when he emphasises that the sociological imagination permits understanding biography and people’s history and their mutual relations in society (Mills, 1959). Mills urges an engagement with the overload of information in the Age of Fact, which can be seen now with the Age of Digital Information that, puts an additional burden on the human mind.

However, the text facilitated sociological imagination that is less likely to be undertaken by students of technological and management institutions and may find little hope in the endangered species of Literature students in liberal arts spaces who still invest academically in the traditional image of sociology. However, this hope confines pedagogic engagement and learning. It does not prepare a generation of future sociologists since it is just one part of their intellectual commitment as they use sociological concepts and anthropological texts to bring fiction closer to reality. Moreover, they are not averse to interrogating human relations with technology and nature as a social fact. Now, I would like to engage with the recent conversation in sociology teaching in India based on students’ voices and engagement discussed in this section.

Skill Based Sociology vs Critical Sociology—Generating New Questions for Reflexivity and Social Location

I would like to revisit the discussion from previous sections about teaching sociology in liberal arts spaces. Since the liberalisation process of the 1990s, sociology teaching in India has seen a trend to find its identity outside the regular state universities and central universities in undergraduate and master’s programmes. Liberal Arts have added another institutional platform for sociology teaching, in addition to management and technological institutions in India. Indian sociology must confront a new situation wherein a fresh group of students, coming from a very different social locations, might bring different insights into studying people’s lives.

Recalling students’ take on caste, an argument by Satish Deshpande can be insightful. He postulates that the methodological inertia to study caste by locating in the village, ritual landscapes and kinship renders us unable to explain caste as a modern institution (Deshpande, 2003). However, it can also lead to revived interest to understand caste in urban spaces. Maitreyee Chaudhuri aptly summarises the crisis of liberal arts education and emphasises that sociological tradition should be at the forefront to address this crisis of liberal education:

In the new context of ‘useful’ knowledge, of skill enhancement and market competitiveness sure victims are the four practices that distinguish a liberal arts education, namely, critical thinking, examination of life, encounters with difference, and the free exchange of ideas. A liberally educated person should be capable of principled judgement, seeking to understand the origins, context and implications of any area of study, rather than looking exclusively at its application (Chaudhuri, 2010).

Before I take up the concern of relatedness, it is pertinent to revisit the pedagogic differences that have been empirically attended. Sujata Patel argues that the colonial political project divided sociology and anthropology into ‘us’ versus ‘the other’—sociology as the study of the west and anthropology as to study of non-modern societies. However, from the early days of sociology in India, this distinction was resisted by Ghurye and Srinivas (Patel, 2011a), as has been reiterated through this article, and the association between the two disciplines continues in teaching practices in liberal arts spaces. Andre Beteille argues that sociological inquiry should emphasise the study of the present and not the past (Beteille, 2002). However, given students’ enthusiasm, they are invested in asking questions about making futuristic sociological inquiries in the realms of family, kinship, precarious work and identities.

Patel argues that sociology remains an empirically oriented science, and the methods to organise and interpret data are at the core of inviting new changes to sociology (Patel, 2011b). However, Sujatha flags the challenge of the use of language skills. Sujatha points out that when students have limited ability to express themselves in English, they resort to survey/quantitative techniques to undertake research. Conversely, students studying in the metropolis sociology department deploy methods of narratives and in-depth interviews that demand good writing skills in English (Sujatha, 2010). However, given students’ English skills in liberal arts spaces, more ethnographic and anthropological writings will gain prominence. Sujatha also indicates that the language of the sociology texts, mostly in English, prohibits learning since most modes of internal assessment would not work due to the barrier of linguistic expression (ibid., 2010). The latter is easily accessible to students pursuing sociology in liberal arts spaces. Chaudhuri highlights the trend in the Centre for the study of Social Systems (CSSS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) of methods used in sociology, from survey method to textual analysis and participant observation (Chaudhuri, 2011). The students with limited language skills in English are pushed to the margins in textual analysis, dialogic teaching and reflexive writing.

As previously mentioned, Mumbai University undergraduate sociology courses have 100% semester-end written examinations despite the mention of field tours. Despite the syllabus keeping pace with recent scholarship in Indian sociological discourse, teaching at Mumbai University lags behind. George Jose argues that classroom teaching is based on understanding Indian Society through memorising a set of notes that describe Indian society. With this nature of pedagogy, the academic expectation of ‘reflexivity’ is out of the question. Jose points out another pedagogic limitation due to the claim of making sociology more inclusive by resorting to notes and easy readings for the students, which may lead to them graduating without understanding core concepts in the discipline and without reading a single text in sociology (Jose, 2003).

Liberal Arts students engage with the text in the internal assessment, which reflects their advanced language skills, and these writings constitute a significant source to drive me to attend to the question of reflexivity of the students. The reader should be reminded of the symbiotic relationship between sociology and anthropology in the citizenship and migration studies course that I discussed. However, given their ability to engage with the text and their social location, it can lead to a more anthropological leaning toward sociology for those interested in pursuing academics. Given the advanced language skills of students in liberal arts spaces, their engagement with the original works is quite early, and the classroom teaching is dialogue-oriented. Recall Abhilasha’s curiosity and search for academic motivation to study canons in the Classical Sociological Thought course. Her dilemma represents other students in liberal arts who are going to pursue careers in practice-oriented disciplines, which made me think to offer them academic justification to undertake this journey. However, this insistence does not resonate with students since they are inclined towards immediate gains with their academic engagements.

Although this generalisation may not be accurate for all liberal arts spaces, these academic expectations are slightly different from students doing sociology in public universities since teaching there is influenced by social movements. Chaudhuri argues that sociology teaching and research in CSSS were significantly influenced by temporal sociological priorities of class, development, nation and state in the 1970s. Caste, globalisation, gender and tribe issues took centre stage in the 1980s and 1990s. She argues that these issues animated sociological engagement both in and outside the classroom (Chaudhuri, 2011). Similarly, Edward Rodrigues argues that the practitioners of sociology must focus on critical engagement and reflexivity to make it a meaningful discipline to understand human society. However, he further states that this requires not only critical engagement with sociological texts but also an urge to interact with the existential position of students (Rodrigues, 2011), which opens the question of students’ reflexivity. If sociological engagement moves in tandem with the priorities of sociology in public spaces, the reflexive engagement of students with these texts in liberal arts spaces can also be an area of inquiry in terms of their commitment to public issues.

The question of reflexivity and relatedness remains central to the possibilities of new areas studied in Indian sociology when graduates from these spaces will pursue sociology as a career. Shiv Visvanathan argues that the sociology of science did not emanate from the scholarship of philosophy, sociology, or the hallowed halls of universities but got its academic motivation from social struggle (Visvanathan, 2011). It will be interesting to see the engagement of liberal arts graduates in the social struggle to supply motivation for further sociological inquiries. Invoking Dalit women’s lived experiences, Sharmila Rege argues that sociological categories stood in separation from lived experiences, and sociology continues to produce knowledge to exercise power. The entire process legitimises the exercise of knowledge production (Rege, 2011). However, students engaging with sociology in liberal arts spaces find themselves in a bind since there is more separation between knowledge production and the people’s lives studied. Patel argues that A. R. Desai, who articulated the cause of the ‘informal sector’ for the first time in India, wanted the sociologist to be an activist and an analyst (Patel, 2011b). Reading it along with Bordieusian reflexivity, the question of being an activist while pursuing sociology catalyses the social analysis among students in their writings that generate the crisis of relatedness.

In a review essay of Maitreyee Chaudhuri’s edited work Sociology in India: Intellectual and Institutional Practices, Sasheej Hegde refers to the ‘bottom-up’ perspective offered by a set of sociologists to emphasise the need for reflexive exercise in sociology teaching and research-informed by personal space of knowledge and experience (Hegde, 2011). Moreover, Hegde also refers to the changing context in which sociology is practised in India, shifting from a nationalist framework to ‘global capital’. He reminds the reader that performativity rooted in reflexivity does not occupy central space in most sociology practitioners in India and urges them to pay more attention to performativity in the subfield of the Sociology of Knowledge (ibid., 2011). He claims that critical reflections can provide the space to understand the problems and tendencies of research and sociology teaching in India (ibid., 2011). To understand a very different social location of students in liberal arts spaces, as discussed in previous sections, it is pertinent to read what Bourdieu argues about how the anthropologist performing anthropological analysis is true for the sociologist since he does not advocate for the distinction between sociology and anthropology. His quote permits us to contextualise the need to study sociology teaching and practices in liberal arts spaces:

What needs to be objectivised, then, is not the anthropologist performing the anthropological analysis of a foreign world but the social world that has made both the anthropologist and the conscious or unconscious anthropology that she (or he) engages in her anthropological practice- not only her social origins, her position and trajectory in social space, her social and religious memberships, and beliefs, gender, age, nationality, etc., but also, and most importantly, her particular position within the microcosm of anthropologists (Bourdieu, 2003).

Drawing from his fieldwork in Kabylia and Bearn, Bourdieu argues that the familiarity derived from personal experiences with a similar context prior to undertaking the research permitted him to understand and explain the peasant societies’ practices as a researcher. He argues that the actors are not burdened with the project of theorising as a researcher is, since they are engulfed with practice. This social experience prior to undertaking sociological inquiry permitted Bourdieu to read practices concurrently while doing fieldwork or to interpret them later (ibid., 2003). Similarly, Bourdieu undertook the methodical exercise of reflexivity to undertake the sociological inquiry of the primarily Parisian academic world in Homo Academicus, where he deployed his prior experience to objectivate the reading and to understand the practices of the Parisian academic world (Bourdieu, 1988, 2003). The emphasis on the location of the sociology practitioner and reflexivity is not a new trend in Indian sociology, as I have already discussed, but going back to Bourdieu’s quote invites us to think about the ways we may be witnessing a new microcosm of the sociologist in India.

The reflexivity and social location of new entrants in sociology offer an opportunity to revisit the persistent debate of skill-based sociology teaching or critical sociology that focuses on knowledge production. Ramesh Bairy argues that sociology teaching in India faces the dilemma of making it less reflexive or critical to serving the role of knowledge producer for the powers at the helm in the market and NGOs. However, he emphasises that any aspiring modern social formation needs fundamental sociological knowledge produced about itself. He further sees this challenge for sociology from the pragmatic point of view to prepare sociology graduates to meet the skill sets required by the market and the development sector in a liberalised economy. He sees the classroom as the most important site to re-invent sociology. He reminds the reader that the crisis of sociology emanates from the situations in 1990s India, that in order to address the crisis, the discipline needs to take market and development sector spaces seriously instead of complaining about the deteriorating quality of new entrants in the discipline (Bairy, 2022).

These observations about practices of sociology teaching in Indian Sociology need to be reconceptualised in the context of sociology teaching in liberal arts spaces. One cannot complain about the quality of new entrants to engage with the text or anthropological narration. However, the crisis lies in whether these entrants will head to produce knowledge for the market and development sector or will pursue pure/fundamental knowledge production in sociology. Suppose we see this in contrast to students studying sociology at Mumbai University and other state-run universities. In that case, one is reminded of Bourdieu’s conversation with a Belgium based Political Science academic in a documentary on his academic life- Sociology is a martial art, where he laments that now someone willing to do critical or knowledge-based sociology is in a similar position the way artists were 20 years back—artist needed to fund their craft. He adds that, for doing critical sociology, either one should come from a well-to-do family or one’s wife should be in a well-paid job to fund one’s commitment to doing critical sociology (Carles, 2001).

In the Indian context, students studying sociology in liberal arts spaces are relatively better off, and their continuous engagement with sociology will further need investigation to understand the question of relatedness and reflexivity. It will occupy the centre space in debates in the sociology of sociology in India in the coming times. This academic attention can derive motivation from Hegde’s argument that the nationalist framework and globalising tendencies in India have enabled the undertaking of an empirical intellectual history of practices in sociology in India (Hegde, 2011). This observation still finds resonance with the emerging new space of liberal arts for sociology teaching and research in India. However, suggestions extended in this article are subject to a few limitations. One issue perhaps worth keeping in mind is that of numbers. Students that I have described are, at least in the near future, going to be a small fragment of the sociological community in India. Moreover, it is possible that this ‘crisis’ is not new. With good English and primary education, equipped students went to the Delhi School of Economics, JNU and University of Hyderabad. What is perhaps new is that the middle-class bracket which can afford a liberal arts education offered in private educational institutions is much larger than the middle class that accesses prominent public institutions. This article has attempted to invite the practitioners and scholars of sociology to think about reflexivity in a new space of sociology teaching to contribute to the empirical intellectual history of sociology teaching in India.