Notes from APU

Attendance Functionalism Till now we studied general topics. Function of Education in Modern Complex Society. Terms and concepts in sociology Stop me when you feel you've not understood. I am calling it basic outline because this theoretical approach is used to understand why/how society emerges from a mass of individuals. We can see individuals everywhere. Its one way to theorize society. Why in society there are certain institutions, structural features. Sociology and anthropology. These are very closely linked subjects, esp. Social anthropology and sociology. I will present a general outline of this topic. Teacher needs to present argument in full, but as of now a general outline will be presented and we will enrich it later. Also, we aren't doing MA sociology. So we will look at education from the lens of sociology. Keep taking notes. This is how you will understand what you've not understood. First thing is, that a society functions like a system. ...

Some video links: Erikson's psychosocial development Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development 8 Stages of Development by Erik Erikson Overview of theories of development

( Handwritten notes by Roshan ) You gradually realize you find comfort in some areas. Relationships Just imagine the number of interactions you've gone through. If you want to study something you will have to understand the distinct phenomena. Counting frogs Weighing frogs If we imagine that the relationships we build are random, then studying If we need to study something it needs to have some stability If everything is so random, there is no pattern, there is no stability, it doesn’t have distinct characteristic, how shall we study it? What gives stability? Routine: If you do same thing again and again. A group routine. There is a general routine that office timing is nine to five. Its true for Blore, Delhi, Lucknow and Pune. ( Element of Humour ) Understanding patterns. Habits: Give stability to your interactions. These habits could be individual. Customs: Generations after generations. Various things we have been doing in simila...

Where to begin from? One Viewpoint: From the dawn of humanity, whenever human being came into existence.. For how long have we been here. Around two million years ago.  Second: Whenever settled agriculture starts that could be the dawn of History. Third: When writing and urbanisation, civilisation start. What in your opinion would be the start of History? Fourth Viewpoint: The big bang theory. Could not the History have started from the time the universe got created? From where does History start? It depends on what we want to look at. If Dawn of Humanity History: Study of the past The Thumb: The distinguishing thing for the humans. 2 million years is just too big a period. If geologists study the history of earth, who studies about humans? 2 million years is not our domain. When we had a permanent address, that's agriculture. Would a life of hunting and gathering be better? Better, is subjective. What would you define as better? Insistence, dif...

Settle Down Good Morning All. You all are very well behaved and quiet. My name is I and I am going to teach you PoE. Moodle Page for this course. Please take a look at the Moodle Page. You already have a compendium of the readings. The page for this course will contain the notes that I may upload. It won't contain readings. They are already available for you. Office Hours are hours during which you can just walk in or ask for any help, meet with the instructor. Make an appointment with me. I do suggest that you email me outside office hours. If I am working on something, I may not be able to attend to you. So today I hope not to do very much. Is this the scariest course? How many of you have studied philosophy? We will have a bit of epistemology. Aesthetics ( how things appear ), ethics. Topics such as The Learner, the human being, democracy, epistemology of education. Fairly new and challenging. Challenging is good, you need to challenged. Philosophy s...

Recap Ni We discussed what we study in Sociology. We study about social facts. Social fact is a fact that we interpret with our consciousness. Role of Women keep changing from society to society Stopping at a red light. Social facts keep changing. They may be present simultaneously. There should be stability, certainty, generality. When we assign certain symbols for certain things. Generality: Ya Durkeim said about the social fact that it has certain complications. Its a product of human consciousness. If you see a begger, you recognize what his or her needs are. Social facts keep changing. If it keeps changing, then why is it changing. This generality is limited by time and space. Human is a cultural being. Culture creates symbols which leads to social facts. Social facts are social constructions. Human beings use memory tools. We can extend our biology, our memory. Not just physical biological capacity, but mental biological capacity. Niz Social fact is somethin...

Attendance So how were the three days? I am not going to talk about that. Did you enjoy it? Okay so, I've decided not to ask today to summarise previous week's class. This week you also went for the three days school visit. We will have practicum exercise for SoE. You will go to same school with some exercises. Out of eight days, three are non school exercises. One is watching documentary. One is movie show. Last practicum day. One is something that is a surprise. Mostly very small things to observe. My belief is that larger sociological question cant be answered by one or two observations. I will tell you what to keep in mind. I will tell you what to ask, how to ask, because an improper manner of asking question might make people uncomfortable. I will brief you about that. Course Structure on Moodle. Once the question "What is Sociology?" is resolved, we will move forward. I will give you some initial ideas. Tomorrow I will spend some time on...

SoE Inform the faculty of your absence in advance. Recap Society is not simply the aggregate of individuals. Society is counter-intuitive. Durkeim's point. He systematically argues it. Six individuals is not a society. A society will have an entity more than the six individuals. Kiran: Trying to figure out what sociology is. Sociology is the study of something, figuring out what that thing is. Let's categorise it. Behaviours, structures, organisation. Keep Things Simple. Prachi: In the last class we tried to define sociology. We defined certain examples, table and dance. Social institutions, structure, behaviour. Newton: Underlying principles governing *** Did you go through the books on sociology? [ Download sociology NCERT books ] Topics that we study in sociology. Market, is also studied extensively in economics. Culture, is studied in anthropology as well. Delimiting the definition of sociology. Which questions could we lea...

Take Notes! Keeps your mind active! Manoj ; SoE Second class of the semester The way you start a course, You provide structure, expectations, round of introductions My mental faculty is not agile enough to remember all the names. Gradually we will get to know about each other. Course structure I assume that the class is diverse and people are from different background Unpacking Sociology What is sociology? CBSE, NCERT ( Sociology ) [ Watch videos about sociology ] Sociology is all inclusive. Different experiences in the class with be meaningful and helpful for this course. What is sociology? When you raise any question, what kind of answer do you expect? panopticon In real life we never ask a what question with a familiar object. We ask a what question when we encounter everything new. Have you watched 3 Idiots? What is a machine? Why do professors and textbooks bring this kind of definitions. ...