ABOUT

Sasheej Hegde is Professor in the department, where he has been a part of the faculty since 1998. He handles the core teaching on issues of sociological theory, as well as offering courses intermittently on themes like legal pluralism, nations and nationalism, religion and law, and modernity and modernization. His research has ranged broadly over questions in the sociology of knowledge and disciplinary history, the interpretation of modernity, and the critical recuperation of normative political languages. He has published fairly extensively on these subjects, even as his current work has sought to actively cultivate a comparative agenda on law/ethics and constitutional jurisprudence.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

1. 'Manuvadi’ – Keyword entry for Rukmini Bhaya Nair and Peter Ronald deSouza (ed.), Keywords for India: A Conceptual Lexicon for the 21^st Century. London: Bloomsbury, 2020, pp.55-56.
2. Caste and ‘Seeing Double’: The Challenge of Anikhet’s Jaaware’s Practicing Caste (with Sanjay Palshikar). Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 54 (43) 2019, pp. 27-31.
3. Secular Moral/Legal Commitments Revisited: An Interlude by Way of Afterword. South Asian History and Culture, Vol. 10 (2) 2019, pp.226-37.
4. Always Already Secular? Afterthoughts on the Secular-Communal Question. In Sanjay Palshikar and Satish Deshpande (ed.), Sectarian Violence in India: Hindu-Muslim Conflict, 1966-2015. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2019, pp.169-77. [The essay is an abridged version of a longer essay published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2005 with the same title.]
5. Do We (Still) Need a Concept of University? A Critical Note. Social Scientist, Vol.46 (7-8), 2018, pp.29-40.
6. What Humanities/Social Sciences Can Mean: Transmuting the ‘Two Cultures’ Idea. In Mrinal Miri (ed.), The Place of Humanities in our Universities. London: Routledge, 2018, 176-88.
7. Back to the Rough Ground of Rights: Pathways to a Historicisation of Civil Liberties in India (with Amit Upadhyay). History and Sociology of South Asia, Vol. 12 (1), 2018, pp.1-15.
8. The Gift of a Life and Death: Rohith Vemula and ‘Us’. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 51 (49) 2016, pp. 28-30.
9. The Many ‘Truths’ of Reservation Quotas in India: Extending the Engagement. Social Scientist, Vol. 43 (3-4), 2015, pp.61-104.
10. Recontextualizing Disciplines: Three Lectures on Method. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2014.
11. Invoking Sociology at University of Lucknow (1921-1975): Framing Considerations. Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 48 (3), 2014, pp. 409-17.
12. Overcoming Relativism: The Question of the Appraisal of Traditions Revisited. In N. Jayaram (ed.), Ideas, Institutions, Processes: Essays in memory of Satish Saberwal. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2014, pp.71-85.
13. Is Modernity an Unnatural Construct? In Akeel Bilgrami (ed.), Marx, Gandhi and Modernity: Essays Presented to Javeed Alam. New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2014, pp. 13-30.
14. Querying Internalism about Law and Legal Obligation: Classical Indian Orientations. [French version titled ‘Remise en cause de l’internalisme relatif au droit et a l’obligation legale: Les orientations indiennes classiques’ published in Special Number of Droit et Cultures: Revue Internationale interdisciplinaire on Les Cultures a la rencontre du droit: l’Inde (Cultures Meet the Law: The Case of India), Vol. 67 (1) 2014, pp. 61-80.]
15. A Measure of Truth: Proposals for a Method-Centred Research Pedagogy. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.49 (5) 2014: 63-68.
16. Antinomies of Pluralism: Modulating Conceptions of Politics and Agency in India. History and Sociology of South Asia, Vol.7 (2) 2013, pp.109-32
17. A Measure of Truth: Proposals for a Method-Centred Research Pedagogy. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.49 (5) 2014: 63-68.
18. U.R. Ananthamurthy: An Engagement in Tribute. Seminar, Issue No. 662, October 2014, pp. 90-93.
19. The Many ‘Truths’ of Reservation Quotas in India: Extending the Engagement. Social Scientist, Vol. 43 (3-4), 2015, pp.61-104.