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    Empathy and Embeddedness in Social Science Research: The Contrasting Methods of Malinowski and Elwin
    (University of North Bengal, 31-03-2021) Roy, Sinjini
    Empirical, field-based research in Social Sciences, are neither bereft of empathy (the will to do good to and feel for others) and embeddedness (involving oneself with the process of transformation, while, at the same time, drawing consciousness about it) nor are they obstacles in the way to draw an understanding about social reality. This is the social science tradition that we inherit from Marx and the post-Marxists (the scholars of German Critical School, Gramsci, Althusser and so on), Levi-Strauss, C. Wright Mills, and the feminists starting Simone de Beauvior to Julia Kristeva or Judith Butler. The phenomenologists like Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz have taught us how empathy for others’ subjective experiences and cognition is the central component of the reflexive method through which the subjective knowledge can be transcended into intersubjective (hence universal) knowledge. This is in the space of the humanist social science tradition which does not conform to the “scientific” nonnormative methodological tradition popularized by Comte, Durkheim or Weber. In this paper I have discussed about the essences of the “scientific” (read objective) and the empathetic methodological traditions of two noted anthropologists, Bronislaw Malinowski and Verrier Elwin, which represent two contrasting methods (although one cannot claim that Malinowski never expressed empathy for the native people he studied), and find out if one could strike a balance between the two traditions while highlighting the significance of empathy and embeddedness in field-based research.
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    Elites and Field of Power: Methodological Reflections from Bikaner
    (University of North Bengal, 2019-03) Beri, Suraj
    This paper explains the relationship between elite practices and elite claims. It argues that empirical focus on the discrepancy between elite accounts of their self and their practices can be one of the core areas of the methodological dimensions of elite research. It would demonstrate the complex of nature social inequalities and its reproduction. It concludes by arguing that field work in elite research can be made more fruitful by paying close attention to observational data and hence empirical research may look beyond “what is said” and to reach closer to “what is done”