• Ramkrishna Mukherjee was a distinguished scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, and an adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Binghamton.
• Born in 1919, Mukherjee was educated at Calcutta University (M.Sc., 1941) and Cambridge (PhD, 1948).
• He worked as the Chief Research Officer at His Majesty’s Social Survey, London (1948-49), and as a Consultant to the Government of Turkey (1949) and the London School of Economics (1952).
• He began his career as guest Professor of Indian Studies at Humboldt University, Berlin (1953-57).
• From 1957 to 1979, he was a Research Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta.
• Mukherjee was a member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (1974) and an advisor to many social science institutions and journals in India and abroad.
• He served as the President of the Indian Sociological Society (1972-74) and was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association (1974-78).
• His research experience spans India, Bangladesh, U.K., France, Germany, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, and Uganda.

Methodology

• Mukherjee’s main concerns are systematic and inductive sociology, diagnostic research, and related methodology.
• He recommends using the diagnostic mode for the best possible explanation of social reality.
• Like D.P. Mukerji, Ramkrishna Mukherjee emphasized the significance of the dialectical model for studying Indian society.
• In his later works, Mukherjee shifted from dialectical-historical to a probabilistic nomological approach for studying social reality.
• He describes his approach as ‘inductive inferential’, which is neutral to the type of propositions (whether Marxist or non-Marxist) one chooses to test and verify.
• According to Mukherjee, the role of history and dialectics in sociological research stops at the formulation of propositions. These may help in taxonomic formulation of categories or social indicators, but beyond this, the logical principles of test and verification must operate independently.
• Mukherjee (1972, 1977) used systematic quantitative methodology to measure kinship distance and the extent of change in family structures in West Bengal.

Works

• Mukherjee’s research interests include historical sociology, studies in the classification of families and rural society, acculturation, and social indicators.
• He authored more than a dozen books and over hundred research papers for internationally reputed journals.
• Major publications by Mukherjee include:
  • The Problem of Uganda (1956)
  • The Dynamics of a Rural Society (1957)
  • The Sociologist and Social Change in India Today (1965)
  • Six Villages of Bengal (1971)
  • The Rise and Fall of the East India Company (1958)
  • Social Indicators (1975)
  • Family and Planning in India (1976)
  • West Bengal Family Structure: 1946-66 (1977)
  • What Will It Be? Explorations in Inductive Sociology (1978)
  • Sociology of Indian Sociology (1979)
• Major aspects highlighted in Mukherjee’s writings include:
  • Agrarian social structure
  • The sociologist and social change in India today
  • Trends in Indian sociology
  • Studies in Indian sociology