Welcome to the assignment for the course :)

Given below are 8 sets of book chapters/ articles from the same or different books, grouped together with a common thread/ theme in mind for each set. These 8 threads arise out of the discussions we have been and will continue to have in the course. Course participants may pick any one set for their assignment, presenting a critical review essay in about 4000 words. The list below is followed by a possible set of entry points that you may or may not use, to enter into the review.

Reading list for a Critical Book Review

1)                 a travelogue and an analysis of the past and our access to it

 a) Introduction 1-42p; Chapter 4,123-166p. From The travels of Ibn Battuta in Asia and Africa 1325-1354 /Ibn Batuta; Rep. ed.; New Delhi : Manohar, 2006.

b) Chapter 4. The Nation and Its Pasts,76-94p. From The Partha Chatterjee omnibus / Chatterjee, Partha;  New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1999.

2)                 violence and knowledge; is knowledge born of violence, is violence born of knowledge

a) Chapter 3. The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance, 61- 88p;

b) Chapter 4. Coping with the Politics of Faiths and Cultures Between Secular State and Ecumenical Traditions in India, 89-128p. From Time warps : the insistent politics of silent and evasive pasts / Ashis Nandy; New Delhi : Permanent Black and Ravi Dayal Publisher, 2001.

3) articulating pain, articulating knowledge; experience and knowledge; is testimony a counterpoint to knowledge

a)Chapter 1. The event and the everyday, 1-17p;  Chapter 3. Language and body : transactions and the construction of pain, 38-58p. From Life and words : violence and the descent into the ordinary /Veena Das; New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 2007

b) Chapter 7. Violence and Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century Rabindranath Tagore and the Problem of Testimony, 210-234p. From Time warps : the insistent politics of silent and evasive pasts / Ashis Nandy; New Delhi : Permanent Black and Ravi Dayal Publisher, 2001.

4) whose knowledge; contexts of knowledge

a) Chapter 1. Introduction: After the Science Question in Feminism, 1-18p. From Whose science? Whose knowledge? : thinking from women's lives / Sandra Harding. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1991 .

b) Chapter Five/ Nativist or autonomous social science: a clash of orientations, 108-122p;

Chapter Six/ Towards an adequate conceptualization of relevance and irrelevance in the social sciences,123-146p. From Alternative discourses in Asian social science : responses to Eurocentrism / Syed Farid Alatas; New Delhi : Sage,2006.

5) is science different today; modes of knowledge production

a)Chapter 1- From Science as Knowledge to Science as Practice, vii p.  From Science as practice and culture / edited by Andrew Pickering; Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1992.”

b)On the Phenomenology of the New Mode of Knowledge Production 27-33p. From The new production of knowledge : the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies / by Michael Gibbons; London : Sage Publications,1994.

6) moving across cultures; science across cultures; orientalism and science; does knowledge travel; travelling theories, composite theories

a) Chapter 6. Bhadralok Perceptions of Science, Technology and Cultural Nationalism, 120-147p. From Domesticating modern science : a social history of science and culture in colonial India / Dhruv Raina, S. Irfan Habib; New Delhi : Tulika Books, 2004.

b) INTRODUCTION: The Alien Insiders, 1-16p. From Alternative  sciences : creativity and authenticity in two Indian scientists / Ashis Nandy; 2nd ed.; New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1995.

7) knowledge and modernity

a)Introduction 2006: The Archaeology of Probable Reasoning, xii-xxxiii p.  From Emergence of probability : a philosophical study of early ideas about probability, induction and statistical inference / Ian Hacking;2nd rep. ed.; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

b) We have never been modern /Bruno Latour ; translated by Catherine Porter; Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1991.

8) a different reason? questioning western knowledge systems

a)Chapter 6. Response and resistance,180-227p. From Science and the Raj : a study of British India /Deepak Kumar; 2nd ed.; New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 2006.

b) The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism, 1-31p;  Modern Medicine and its Non modern Critics: A Study in Discourse, 145-195p. From The savage Freud and other essays on possible and retrievable selves /Ashis Nandy; New Delhi : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Possible entry points into the review

1.                  Choose any 3 of the lectures that help you frame the chief themes of this course. Do a critical review of the set that you choose from the point of view of these themes.

2.                  List the concepts you find in the set that you choose for review. Respond to these concepts in the light of the concepts that have emerged from these lectures.

3.                  Relate the entire discussion to your own interests.

Date for submission of assignment: 25^th November, 2010. Please submit in soft copy.

The texts mentioned above are all available at the CCS library, and once reviewers are decided on which set they would like to take up, copies will be made available to you.

Note (incentive): The best 2 reviews will be published on this blog, and later included in course proceedings to be published following the course. All who complete assignments and attend more than 75% of the course will, of course, be eligible for the course certificate.