Page 32 - DLIS407_INFORMATION AND LITERATURE SURVEY IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Unit 4: Historical Development of Sociology and History Disciplines

and K.P. Chattopadhyaya who held important academic positions in their respective universities of Notes
Bombay and Calcutta till the 1940s. Influence of Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown came later and they
remained relatively unknown till the end of World War II. Radcliffe Brown studied the Andaman
Islanders. During this period several European sociologists such as, C. Bougle, M. Mauss and Max
Weber wrote on India relying on secondary sources.
Dhanagare (1998 : 37) says that the institutionalisation and professionalisation of sociology and
social anthropology in India have two clearly identifiable phases — Before 1950 and after. Moreover,
1950-52 is also a watershed in a historical sense that it was then that free India embarked on programmes
of planned development.
The pre 1950 phase was essentially a phase of multi-level syntheses. It was not without significance that
both the disciplines had their beginnings in the two cities of Bombay and Calcutta which symbolically
represented colonialism. The beginnings were more or less simultaneous in the second decade of the
present century (R. Mukherjee, 1977 : 1-193).
During the first two decades of the 20th century two Indian scholars, L.K. Ananthakrishna Iyer and
S.C. Roy made their mark in anthropology. Both lacked formal training in the discipline, but their
achievements were not worthy. Anathakrishna Iyer studied the castes and tribes of Cochin and
Mysore and also a study of the Syrian Christians of Kerela. Roy, who was a lawyer by profession,
wrote monographs on some of the tribes in Bihar. He was also a ‘champion’ of his tribe. In 1921 he
founded the journal, Man In India which is still in circulation. He also wrote a book called Caste, Race
and Religion in India (1934).

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. Sociology is a “humanistic” social science even through it aims at objectivity
in …………….. .
2. Sociologists have studied different human groups’ in particular historical circumstances and
drawn generalisations about ……………. from these studies.

4.2 Contribution Made by Prominent Authors in Development of
History

As we studied in the above section that history is a discipline of science, which concerns with the
study of the human race in previous times, with regard to scientific discoveries, important events,
documented findings, and archaeological evidence. The discipline of history deals with the study of
events and development in particular time periods or geographical / regional historical studies. It
can be further categorized in sub-fields such as social history, diplomatic history, gender history and
even history of people.

Caution History is the significant part of social studies curriculum all through the world.
For example, in most of the school history is taught form grades four to higher
studies. In England, history forms the backbone of the social studies curriculum
from primary through secondary schools.

Most of the more recent North American study on learning history has concentrated on either
expert-novice studies or on the relationship between teachers and students for the way of teaching

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