Anthrobuds

  National Seminar "In an Uncertain World: Anthropology and Anthropologists Department of Anthropology, on 27.02.2024 The Department of Anthropology in Collaboration with IQAC of the college has organised a one-day National Seminar on "In an Uncertain World: Anthropology and Anthropologists" at Dr APJ. Abdul Kalam Government College. The main speaker was Prof. Subhadra Mitra Channa, Retired Professor, Department of Anthropology, Delhi University.  The concept note is as follows: In and Uncertain World: Anthropology and Anthropologists   One of the major aspects of the disciplinary self-reflexivity of anthropology is that it often stops, reflects back, criticises and progresses. Anthropologists often note an existence of disciplinary crisis and strive for the future. We can think of the death and revival of urban anthropology with spatial turn or publication of “ Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography” by James Clifford and George E. Marcus as one o

  Anthrobud Volume 2(1) February 2024   Click here for the Entire issue in PDF

  My encounters with Japan Prof. Abhijit Guha Prologue To a Bengali born and brought up in India Japan is not a very well known country like England or United States of America but not an almost unknown one like Liberia or Lesotho. I came to know about Japan and its native name  Nippon  as the ‘country of the rising sun’ from my school geography book. It was rather curious for me learn that the Japanese also take rice like the Bengalis but technologically much more advanced than us in the making of sophisticated gadgets, like cars, at a much lower price, which they sell in the world market. My father once told me that the Japanese cook rice in hollow bamboo, which they take with fried prawn in cylindrical forms and they even eat bamboo! That was really curious for me. Later, I came to know about Marshall Arts of self-defence of Japan like Judo and Karate, which became popular in Kolkata during my school and college days. I viewed a classic  Kagemusha,  a 1980 film by Akira Kurosawa

  Why is it always the “MAN” and not the “WOMAN”? by Ankita Majumder (Sem I, 2023) Everywhere you go, you look, even in the textbook that you’re reading, there has always been the mention of man and not woman. My question in this topic is why? Why is it always the “MAN” being praised by the public and not the “WOMAN”? From time immemorial we came to notice that in this male dominated society the achievements of woman have been neglected by the public many times. There is a vast range of achievements that have been conquered by the woman but not many people seems to know about those achievements. Just like how we remember 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐆𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐠 who invented the printing press but we don’t know about 𝐇𝐞𝐝𝐲 𝐋𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫 who invented a frequency hoping technology to guide missiles during WWII which later paved the way for wireless communication technology like wi-fi, GPS etc. Just like how we remember 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 who invented the fungus p

The Winter Days Are Over    by Ankita Majumder (Sem I, 2023) Photo courtesy: https://fineartamerica.com/art/paintings/abstract+winter+scene It is safe to say that our mother nature is strange and us human beings are even stranger. Why you may ask? Till a few days ago also the winter air was thickly coated with fog and the cold winds were blowing at an unusually high speed. There weren’t any sound of people on the streets after a certain amount of time. The shops wouldn’t be opened up until it was 11:30 a.m. or so. Although people would be out for work, the vehicles would be running, going to places but still there would be a thick layer of silence and a feeling of strangeness would linger around. The sense of lonesomeness felt very strong. It was as if during this winter season, the whole city has been wrapped around in a sheet of black and white colours. But on 31 st January, 2024, it was different. Different in a sense that it could be seen the that winter days are about to en

  The Department of Anthropology in collaboration with ICAS:MP or the M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies - an Indo-German research Collaboration has organised a two-day research colloquim "Metamorphoses of the Political: Voices from the Margins of West Bengal".  The concept note is as follows The department was fortunate enough to get some of the most important intellectual personalities working on West Bengal today. See below. However, they have worked as discussants to improve already well researched articles prepared by a bunch of young scholars on the caste questions see below: The department is indebted to all the committee members (as follows): The aim of this workshop was to go beyond the two major theoretical positions, first, the Bengal exceptionalism which claims that caste question is never the political dynamics of West Bengal, and second, a conception that caste question ends at Matua or Rajbanshi movements only. Instead the paper pr