Social Sciences

Contemporary Social Dynamics

The activities of the Social Sciences Department are conducted with an Indian and south Asian regional perspective. A special attention is given to local repercussions of globalisation and trans-nationalisation processes, expressed notably through the birth of new ideologies, by the adaptation and transformation of national policies, by the emergence of socio-political movements, or by the practical application of economic, social or sanitary models, considered as universal.

The researches are of a multidisciplinary nature, combining notably, demography, anthropology, economics, law, political sciences and geography. A close collaboration between researchers of various disciplines, driven by the desire to study a common subject, allows a refined study of the social changes in the region. Among the themes explored, are the new economic solidarities, issues related to religion, health, healthcare systems, social and spatial mobility and also urbanisation.

Current programs :

Axis 1. Health and Societies

• The regional programme "Societies and Medicines in South Asia" examines healthcare traditions, giving particular attention to their social and political dynamics, to issues of identity and to their practical and epistemological transformations. The general objective is to understand how contemporary therapeutic spaces are constructed, identified and legitimated.

• The programme "Spatial Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases" (malaria, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, leptospirosis) focuses on a transect from Chennai to Pondicherry and offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of risk dynamics (using Remote Sensing, GIS).

Axis 2. Economy and societies

• The programme "Built-Up Areas in India (e-GEOPOLIS)" aims to promote a systematic corpus of statistical data related to the dynamics of urban growth of the Planet. The project is contextualized with the use of 2 large existing databases: Geopolis and Archives Terrae Statisticae (ATS).

• The program "Labour, Finance and Social Dynamics" attempts to analyse the formation of new forms of service arising from a growing number of initiatives (public schemes, NGOs, grass-roots organizations) that attempt to manage, "as best as possible", decentralisation on the one hand, and poverty and inequalities on the other hand,with a focus on their legitimacy, impact and limits, as well as the discourses and ideologies within which they take place.

• The programme “Hierarchical hidden markov structure for dynamic correlations: the HRSDC Model” aims to analyse the treatment of clusters of volatility in the large groups of financial data, by focusing on the correlation clusters. There are two levels of issues to be addressed:

1. The form of the dynamic we give to the DCC model

2. The estimate methods

This programme has been the object of a request for PICS to the CNRS for 2010.

• The "MEM vector model" is a programme of financial econometrics, with applications to the data of the Indian financial market. The aim is to establish the properties of the estimators of parameters, in a model with multiplicative error. These large multi-varied models are still little studied. Given that the distribution of joint probability for non-negative random variables is not calculable, except special cases, we adopt two strategies to manage the MEM vector model. The first would be to use copulative functions to link marginal distributions, the second would be to use the approach of Heyde (1997), Bibby et al (2004).

• The programme « Growth and Convergence Clubs in Indian States, 1965-2002»: Among the large developing and transitional economies, India’s political and geographic structure makes it one of the most interesting cases to test the convergence/divergence problem in growth theory and its applications. The fact that a large economy with considerable heterogeneity can have different regions growing with widely different trajectories gave rise to concerns about “unbalanced growth” and regional disparities.

Axis 3. Environment and society

• The "Social Management Water" program analyses the impact of development policies on local water management and examines the difference of perception between farmers and developers about water issues. The underlying idea is that it is important to know how the farmers think in order to understand how policies can be effective. The program takes place within the broader issue of the sustainability of water availability.

Completed projects

  The south Indian program "Transmission of HIV/AIDS from Mother to Child" explores the social, sociological and psychological logic of the three modes of transmission of AIDS from mother to child: pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding. The studies also concern individual, associative and governmental preventive measures.

  The program "Urban development of Indian territory" is focused on the dynamics of Indian megalopolises, secondary metropolises and small and medium-sized towns. It examines the formidable territorial transformations that accompanied the process of economic liberalization begun some twenty years ago.

  The program "Industrial Dynamics" explored the conditions that have favoured industrialization in northern Tamil Nadu and the social and spatial impacts of this economic growth in a region that remains essentially rural.

  The program "Population and Space in South India" examined social and demographic changes through micro level spatial analysis. It was centred on a variety of themes such as decline in fertility, gender discrimination, reproductive health, urbanization, etc.

Contact: Dr. Eric Denis, Head of Department