Knowledge and Society

Description

 The cognate disciplines of sociology and social anthropology emerged to meet the needs and aspirations of Europe—the former investigated European societies, and the latter studied ‘other cultures’. Emphasizing the importance of ‘contextualization’ in the production and dissemination of knowledge, this collection of essays charts the trajectory of sociological knowledge as a western transplant. Divided into three parts, the fi rst looks into problems faced in adapting western concepts, theories, methods, and techniques of research to the Indian situation. Abandoning both universalization and indigenization, the argument is in favour of contextualization to meet the specific challenges in apprehending social reality in India. The second part deals with the different avatars of sociology and social anthropology during colonialism, cold war, and the current global age through the lens of ‘internationalization of sociology’ and ‘sociology for one world’. The shifting frontiers of the two disciplines between the Old Worlds of Europe, Asia, and Africa and the New World—the Americas and Australia—are identifi ed and their implications analysed. The concluding part written for this Revised Edition discusses the manifestations of tensions in practising these disciplines by three sociologists-social anthropologists—Y.B. Damle, M.N. Srinivas, and G.S. Ghurye—although they belong to the same academic lineage.