Centre for the Study of Regional Development,
School of Social Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Invites you all to a Seminar on
Patrick Geddes Vs. G.S. Ghurye: Knowledge Formation in/about India
by
PROF. IRFAN AHMAD
(Ibn Haldun University, Türkiye)
Date : September 23, 2024 (Monday)
Time : 3.00 PM
Venue: Room No. 134, Carto Lab, CSRD, SSS III (Ist Floor)
Abstract: Initially and for long, Patrick Geddes (d. 1932) – a geographer and specialist in town-planning from Scotland – who established the department of sociology at Bombay University was considered as the father of Indian sociology/anthropology. However, in most accounts later Govind Sadashiv Ghurye (d.1983) began to be described as the father of Indian sociology/anthropology. In this talk, I discuss hows of this change and its profound implications in the knowledge formation of Indian society at large. This change is important for many reasons, most notably because it marks the foundational moment in the formation of sociology as a discipline and the ways in which this moment shaped its subsequent trajectory. The key hypothesis I present is this: there is more of a continuity rather than a rupture in the transition from colonial-orientalist knowledge formation to “post-colonial” era.
Brief Profile of the Speaker: Irfan Ahmad (PhD. Cum Laude, University of Amsterdam) is Professor of Sociology at Ibn Haldun University. Earlier he was Senior Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute, Germany. He has taught, among others, at Monash University, Australia and University of Amsterdam. Author of two monographs – most recently, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (University of North Carolina Press, 2017) – he has (co)edited four volumes on democracy, (Il)liberalism, anthropology/ethnography, and nation form and globalization. A public anthropologist, he has been interviewed, inter alia, by Al-Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, Frontline, New York Times, Outlook, SBS, and TRT World. In 2023, he delivered the Roy Rappaport distinguished lecture for the Society for the Anthropology of Religion (of AAA) conference at the University of Victoria, Canada.
