Author Description

Sociology in India has remained dominated by its unique epistemological location - which has acted as both a boon and a bane. Entanglement with the exotic has prevented Indian sociologists and the so-called 'India' experts, from contributing constructively to theory building at a universal level. Buttressing the importance of theory-building as a critical requirement for social sciences to grow - in terms of the capacity to explain the particular via the general and vice versa - this book emphasizes the criticality of engaging with Indian data and generalizations at a theoretical level, and makes a plea for intersubjectivity and comparative sociology. Taking up unresolved theoretical issues in the field of health, agricultural unrest, caste, and the understanding of modernity, the author's introduction and essays compiled in this volume show how the failure of Indianists to forego the isolating position of uniqueness of Indian reality, has led to, on one hand, further strengthening of the dominance of western models, and rise of untenable and incomplete conceptualization of modernity and modern knowledge, on the other.