Science Fiction

The work of Niklas Luhmann can’t ever be simplified, but I certainly did try. This is an email that I’d sent in response to some of my students from my undergraduate “Sociology and STS through Science Fiction” class at Krea University, who had several questions about Luhmann’s work. For some additional context, we just had finished watching the 2013 movie “Snowpiercer”, and were discussing it in relation to a few different readings. Luhmann’s work came up along the way. ...

The transition from being a Sociologist based in the United States to being a Sociologist in India has been an interesting one to say the very least. In my first term here, I was asked to teach a required course that had been titled “Introduction to Sociological and Anthropological Thought”, which has been a vastly different experience from how I’ve been teaching introductory courses on Sociology in the past. It’s somewhat daunting to blend the histories and particularities of (what have now become) two very distinct disciplines. At the same time, it has been incredibly refreshing to work with literature from Indian scholars that I haven’t read in a long time, or at all for that matter. ...