Research Areas

Prof. Aparna Rayaprol:

Gender Studies: The vast area of gender studies with a sociological focus has been an important site for research in the Department. Gender and power relations, feminist theory and methods, the intersections of class, caste, and culture and community are possible areas of inquiry. Women's studies, its history and contemporary intersections with sexuality studies is an area of interest. Development studies with a special focus on gender is another area where gender inequalities, in health, education, environment and work are studied. The study of patriarchy in social institutions such as marriage, family, the state, religious institutions and the workplace and have been significant areas of research. Sexual harassment and domestic violence laws have been researched in the past.
Migration and Diaspora: Understanding movements of people in both local, regional and international spaces is a major area of research interest. With globalization such movements create new kinds of inequalities that are minefield for students of sociology. Hyderabad, and its historical as well as contemporary forms of migrations is a site of research. The inequalities created by rural to urban migration, immigration and return migration, the Indian state, and its constantly changing policies relationship with its overseas populations and return migration has been an area of interest.

Prof. Purendra Prasad

Agrarian Studies: Research on agrarian studies focuses on the agrarian question primarily to understand the changing agrarian relations and structure within capitalist development. It intends to pursue questions on class and class formation, caste and gender dynamics of Agrarian society, farmers’ suicides, crisis and agrarian movements to assess what new ideas are discernable with in the current rural-urban processes at play.
Political Economy of Health: This area of research prominently brings into discussion the sharpening health inequalities in the last few decades to draw attention to the way globalization has influenced India’s development trajectory. It attempts to explain how state and market forces have progressively heightened the iniquitous health care system and the process through which substantial burden of meeting health care needs fell on the individuals and households, impacting different classes, castes, gender and other categories. It raises questions on commercialization of health, Pharmaceuticalisation, Disability, Gendered Body, Right to Health, Universal Access to Health etc.
Urban Studies: It critically engages with the on-going debates on why and how the existing urban theories have limitations in mapping and theorizing Indian urban processes. Attempts here are to explain the diverse urban scenarios of urbanization in India with a focus on non-metropolitan cities and small towns. It raises questions related to rurbanization, urban informality, spatial and social exclusions which are all deeply rooted in the social, cultural, political, economic setting of the nation state.

Prof. C. Raghava Reddy

Sociology of Disability: Disability as a social category draws of attention of sociologists to understand the social processes of exclusion, discrimination and oppression. This research theme focuses on issues of identity, access, participation, assistive technologies and employment of persons with disabilities.
Sociology of Science and Technology: Social scientists’ engagement with science and technology is not just limited to understanding the impact of science & technology on society. Rather, problematizing science and technology, scholarship in this field highlights the social embeddedness and cultural conditioning of scientific research and technological innovations. This research theme focuses on the social shaping of technology and sociology of scientific knowledge. Within the broad domain of science, technology and society, this research theme makes an in-depth inquiry into questions in the specific areas biotechnology, agriculture, information and communication technologies, and organizations.

Prof. Pushpesh Kumar

Family, Marriage and Kinship: The research on Family, Marriage and Kinship touches upon the continuity and change in traditional kinship, family and marital arrangements among the Kolams of Maharashtra with a specific focus on gender and sexuality. The recent research engages with queer kinship, family and household among the transgender communities.
Gender and Sexuality: This research area focuses on socio-economic and cultural processes, which marginalize and oppress non-confirming genders and sexualities. It also addresses the political economy of life style articulations of ‘sexual freedom’ in emerging consumerist cultures of India and South Asia. The foregrounding of perspectives of the most marginalized within the gender and sexual non-conformist subjects remain the epistemological and pedagogical concerns in the research and teachings. Embodiments and bodily practices of erotically marginalized subjects unravel new ‘oppositional’ ways of understanding and questioning normative constructs of gender and sexualities.
Globalization and Cultural Changes: This research theme focuses on emerging consumerist culture in India and south Asia, youth culture, gated communities, new ways of refashioning conjugality and courtship, marriage, partnership, friendship, multiplex cinemas, shopping, soap operas, various forms of aesthetic labours and spaces of leisure consumption and religiosities in globalizing times.
Pedagogical Practices: The research in this area basically addresses the social science pedagogical practices in regional universities in India. It demonstrates the vernacularization of teaching and research, political economy of academic culture and caste power, local response to standardization of higher education by UGC.

Dr. V. Janardhan

Ethico-Political Sociology: This area of research is a confluence of the ethical/moral and political/cultural dimensions of sociology’s engagement with power, politics and the state. The content of this confluence translates into a teaching course on ethics and sociological theory and prospective research in this area.
Marxist Sociology: The focus here is on teaching and writing about the rich and complex sociological concepts, categories and theories that the Marxian paradigm has developed historically in social studies. The greatest strength of Marxist sociology has been in the study of contemporary industrial (and 'post'-industrial) societies, particularly going by the sociological insights obtained in the process by Marxian theorists, which makes this a fascinating area of inquiry and teaching.
Sociology of Capital, Industry and Labour: The aspects of teaching, research and writing in this area include corporate business organizations, their business strategies and structures, located in the social structural contexts; capital-labour relations; capital-state relations and related issues. This is also a multi-disciplinary area involving economic and political sociology, political economy, industrial relations, management theory, and law particularly labour and corporate law.

Dr. Satyapriya Rout

Water (in)security and Governance:Water is the elixir of life, source of livelihood, input in production process, element of religious practice and discourse, and above all a site for socio-political contestation. While universal access to water has been acknowledged as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is important to understand that such access to water is often mediated by social relations and existing power relations. This area of research on water engages with the critical questions of political economy of access to water, water inequality and (in)security and issues of institutional arrangements for efficient, equitable and sustainable water service delivery.
Environmentalism and Environmental Movements: This area of research engages itself with the recent societal dissent to environmental degradations, which in many occasions have produced livelihood insecurities. It investigates social roots as well as social responses of environmental problems that have emerged in the west as well as developing societies like India. This theme of research also problematizes the essentialisation of Indian environmental movements as struggles against loss of livelihood emerging out of developmental projects. Moving beyond livelihood, this theme examines the broader contours of Indian environmental movements by way of looking at their organisational structures, networking arrangements and framing processes.
Community based Natural Resource Governance: Contemporary rural and tribal societies have responded the recurrent environmental degradation and the consequential livelihood insecurity in a varied manner. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, which labels local communities as destroyers of their immediate nature, contemporary research on natural resource governance emphasises the potentials of local communities in conservation and governance of their immediate environment. Placed within the broader discipline of environmental sociology, this theme of research looks into the issues of property rights, common pool resources, institutional arrangements and current policies concerning governance of natural resources such as forest and water.
Decentralised Governance and Development: Decentralisation, in the recent decades, has emerged as one of the dominant paradigms of governance in most of the developing societies, and seeks to address the inadequacies of centralised and bureaucratic forms of governance on the one hand, and to act as a means to achieve the wider goals of participatory, people centric and inclusive development on the other. This research theme attempts to examine the potentials of decentralised governance to deepen the process of democracy as well as widen the process of development. This research area also raises pertinent questions on tribal self-governance, implementation of Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996 and empowerment of women and other marginalised groups under systems of decentralised governance.

Dr. Hoineilhing Sitlhou

Ethnicity Studies: This area of research focuses on the interface between State, Nation and Ethnicity, and examines various debates and issues on ethnicity like ethnic identities, insurgency, sub-nationalist movements, minority group, immigration, marginality, citizenship and militarisation.
Religion and Culture Studies: The research focuses of this theme is on the intersection between religion and culture, particularly in the way religion shaped cultural practices and vice-versa in different societies of India especially North East India. Within the broad theme of Religion and Culture Studies, particular emphasis is being addressed to the following areas: Christianity; Dalit Theology; Religious Conversion; Religion and the State; Post Colonial Studies on Religion; and Women, Religion and Patriarchy.

R.Thirunavukkarasu

Nation and Nationalism: Primary focus of my research has been Sociological exploration of the conceptual duo - Nation and Nationalism. The nature and dynamics of colonialism, colonial administration, modernity and natives’ responses particularly the metamorphosis of caste under colonial rule with special reference to the Tamil speaking areas of the erstwhile Madras presidency have formed the core of my primary research concerns
Political Sociology of Caste: Studies on the genealogy of caste in India has had tumultuous journey. My focus has been the influence of colonialism especially the colonial modernity in transforming the nature of contemporary caste especially in the 20^th century Tamil Nadu. The structural transformation of caste groups during the later colonial era particularly among the marginalized communities constitutes important part of my research. My current focus is on the cultural construction of an economic activity which is often camouflaged in caste terms.
Social Movements: Different forms of collective mobilizations since the early 20^th century are another part of my research interest. While major focus is on different forms of anti-caste protest movements, I focus on several other movements such as linguistic movements and anti-globalization movements.