M.A. in Health, Gender and Society

This course aims to study the ways in which medicine, its practice, institutions and its principles are enmeshed in social relationships and structures. Drawing from an existing and emerging engagement in the field of science, technology and society studies, medical anthropology and psychology this course introduces students to the ways in which medicine and its practice comes to be marked by social negotiations. The course brings together disciplinary conversations in Psychology and Anthropology to reflect upon clinical practices surrounding health and other aspects of the body.

This course seeks to establish the value of a gender-relations approach to understanding the design and implementation of public policy. The course will introduce students to historical trajectories in the evolution of this approach, and their impacts on the Indian scenario. Although development has always been a gendered process, historical approaches to its imagination has not been adequately reflective of the impact of gendered structures on the experience of deprivation on multiple counts. The course seeks to address this gap by familiarising students with local and comparative experiences on this count. The main axes of the course will include a conceptual module on changing discourses around gender and development, and specific modules on public policy pertaining to poverty, labour and livelihoods, health, education, and environment. Pedagogy will be lecture and discussion based, with well-defined readings and other resources.

The course will be discussing population planning, infertility and assisted reproductive technologies, the sociological study of obstetrics and gynecology, the gendering of reproductive bodies, and birthing practices across cultures including midwifery and caesarean sections.

With a focus on the definitive nineteenth century that laid the foundations of modernity, this course will examine the way in which literary representations portrayed wellness as a gendered reality and sickness as a sexual category. The aim will be to understand the crucial role played by literature historically in the emergence of modern gendered understandings of health which ultimately determine the socio-cultural medical support available to persons of non-dominant gender identities

One of the primary objectives of Behavioural Sciences is to understand behaviour in controlled situations. Behavioural sciences rely heavily on quantitative research methods. Quantitative research methods are extensively used in studies in behavioural sciences. This course will help research scholars get an in-depth understanding of different quantitative research methods and the basic assumptions behind those methods. Topics covered: Introduction to Quantitative research methods, Different types of data, Ethical issues in behavioural research, Research process, Defining the research problem, Research and theory building, Experimental method, Survey method and questionnaire design, Research Designs, Determining the sample size, Sampling techniques, Measurement and scaling, Descriptive and univariate statistics, Multivariate analysis.

This course will familiarize students with challenges and politics that ensue during the process of qualitative research. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to critically understanding the anthropological method of constructing the research problem, the field and its subjects. The second half will focus on certain specific concerns that the anthropological method grapples while encountering disasters and pandemics, caste, and its own turn towards activism.

This course explores the ways in which social and cultural factors determine experiences of health and illness. A cross-cultural perspective of health issues at various levels- household, locality, nation-state and global, will be explored. Development of medical anthropology as a field, and various theoretical frameworks that have shaped research in the last few decades will be studied. Through ethnographic examples, the course will enable students to understand the debates and discussions within medical anthropology, and draw connections to the larger debates in anthropology itself. Topics covered will include medical pluralism, increasing medicalisation of health conditions, impact of gender on health, and new medical technologies.

The world’s population of older people is growing, and population ageing is one of the most important determinants of global health. To understand global ageing and development, this course will draw perspectives from demographic, economic, sociological, and health aspects to equip students with the skills and competencies needed to work in ageing research. Additionally the course will provide you a thorough grasp of the effects of ageing on persons and populations, as well as the consequences for policy, practise, as well as the demands and challenges that this brings.

This course discusses mental health with reference to social, developmental, cognitive, educational, and clinical perspectives on gender. Research findings and theories covering these subdisciplines will be presented. Implications on clinical outcomes such as stereotypes in diagnostic criteria, treatment, and recovery, and mental health in different life domains will be highlighted.

The objective of this course is to introduce the applied econometric methods and research designs commonly used in empirical microeconomic research. This course starts with the assumptions of the classical linear regression model. It then discusses the basic properties of ordinary least squares estimator. It further discusses the implications of the relaxation of the various assumptions of the classical linear regression model. It moves on to the discussion of selection bias that typically arises in impact evaluation studies. It then discusses the role of Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) to address the issue of selection bias. In the end, it introduces the tools such as Instrumental Variable (IV) estimation, Differences-In-Difference (DID) and Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD).

This course aim to introduce the basic concepts in statistical testing, and data visualization. Topics will include: Probability, Descriptive and Inferential Statistics, Parametric and Non-parametric tests. Course will provide detailed theory, assumptions and method related to various hypothesis testing tools for example: Measures of central tendency, Correlation, Regression, ANOVA, and Linear Models.

This course starts with a discussion of the supply and demand for health and health care delivery. It then introduces the role of asymmetric information in the market for health insurance leading to adverse selection and moral hazard. It further introduces the concepts used to assess health technology. It then discusses the range of policies, such as nationalized health care and social health insurance, available to different countries to solve the problems that arise in both the health care and health insurance markets. In the end, it will focus on the economics of health externalities. The pedagogy will be through a combination of lecture sessions on conceptual areas, discussions of related research papers, and regular assignments/quizzes. The students are expected to complete the assigned readings to participate in the discussion sessions. The following list of topics should give an idea about topics that we expect to cover in class. However, it may change depending on the students’ progress, their ability to learn the subject, and if any specific needs required to be addressed.

This course foregrounds the need to incorporate the question of social justice, in research on mental health and disability. Drawing on recent work in the critical and discursive traditions in psychology and allied disciplines such as anthropology and disability studies, this course will train students to examine and analyze contemporary theory and research in disability and mental health from critical perspectives. In the course, students will read qualitative and ethnographic studies on people experiencing shared suffering in different domains including but not limited to disability, disasters, mental health, social suffering, political violence, trauma, etc. Questions of value and justice will form the bedrock of the course. Readings will illustrate the importance of taking into consideration local contexts and engaging with marginalized voices in order to address development issues in the Global South.

Positive Psychology is a relatively new approach that focuses on positive psychological aspects as opposed to the clinical/psychopathological perspective of traditional psychology. This course will provide an outline to the basic concepts of positive psychology emphasizing specifically on happiness and strengths. The focus will primarily be on one’s understanding of well-being and journey towards it. Answers to the questions raised, will be discovered through an integration of theory and research findings in the area. Relevant concepts will be introduced and their relation to happiness will be examined. These include character strengths and virtues, post traumatic growth, resilience, and positive relationships. Strategies in achieving a state of subjective well being and meaningful life would be explored.

This course aims to introduce students to what are chronic diseases and the various factors involved in their management. The course consists of two modules: 1) a theoretical, taught module that includes topics ranging from patient education to supportive care systems, and 2) a practical module where students are expected to visit hospitals and conduct a study.

With a focus on the definitive nineteenth century that laid the foundations of modernity, this course will examine the way in which literary representations portrayed wellness as a gendered reality and sickness as a sexual category. The aim will be to understand the crucial historical role played by literature in the emergence of modern gendered understandings of health which ultimately determine the socio-cultural and medical support available to persons of non-dominant gender identities across vectors of class, race, caste.