Between tradition and modernity: A sociological reading of Bimal Mitra’s Saheb Bibi Golam
- Sociological Bulletin
- 73(2), Apr, 2024: p.170-188
In his book Modernization of Indian Tradition, Yogendra Singh advanced a ‘paradigm for an integrated approach’ to analysing social change. Drawing insights from this paradigm, this lecture delivered in his memory analyses the dialectics of or the relations between tradition and modernity. It is based on a sociological reading of the historical novel Saheb Bibi Golam by the Bengali litterateur Bimal Mitra. It elucidates fiction as ethnography and provides a corrective to the conventional polarisation between fiction and social research.- Reproduced
Modernization of Indian tradition, integrated paradigm, social change, dialectics of tradition and modernity, Yogendra Singh, sociological reading, Saheb Bibi Golam, Bimal Mitra, fiction as ethnography, historical novel, tradition-modernity relations, social research, fiction and sociology, cultural transformation, ethnographic fiction, literature and society, symbolic interpretation, postcolonial India, sociological theory, narrative analysis, Indian modernity, memory lecture