Special Lecture: 'Health is Capital'

The Department of Sociology in collaboration with the IQAC, Loreto College organised a special lecture on November 25, 2022 for the Sociology General Elective students of Semesters 1 and 3. The resource person for this event was Dr. Anurupa Mitra, Department of Sociology, Shri Shikshayatan College, Kolkata. Her lecture, entitled “‘Health Is Capital’: A Sociological Understanding of Health and Hygiene through the Lens of Gender and Class in India,” elaborately explained how the concepts of health and hygiene are entangled with the categories of gender and class in the Indian context. Dr. Mitra delved into the cultural meanings of illness and then deliberated on the social construction of medical knowledge and the experience of illness. This was followed by a discussion on theoretical approaches to health. During the course of this lecture, various images were used to solicit preliminary responses from the students, which were then analysed by the speaker from a disciplinary standpoint. The discussions focused on how the consumption of certain ‘medical’ products available in the market innately bring out a new way of understanding health and hygiene, especially when viewed through the sociological lens of gender and class.