Towards Indigenization of an Uncertain Transplant: Hundred Years of Sociology in India
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Jun 17, 2020
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Abstract
This paper examines the problems and prospects of indigenizing sociology in India. It is divided into five parts: Part one introduces the predicament of sociology in the context of countervailing forces of universalization and indigenization; Part two discusses the crisis confronting sociology in India by delineating its transplantation during the colonial rule and its expansion as a mimic social science in the post-independence era; Part three analyses the issues of ontological and epistemological fit in the teaching and research in the subject; Part four examines the alternatives proposed to address these issues; and Part five concludes by reflecting on the prospects of indigenizing sociology in India.
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Keywords
IndigenizationSociologyIndiaUncertain TransplantUniversal
References
References
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, 4th ed. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Alatas, Syed Hussein. “The Captive Mind and Creative Development”, International Social Science Journal, 26, no. 4 (1974), p 691-700 (available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/ 48223/pf0000011363 [accessed on 24 October 2019]).
Aron, Raymond. German Sociology. Translated by Mary and Thomas Bottomore. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.
Atal, Yogesh. Indian Sociology from Where to Where: Footnotes to the History of the Discipline. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2003.
Barnes, Harry E., ed. An Introduction to History of Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Becker, Howard and Harry Elmer Barnes. Social Thought from Lore to Science: Vol. III – Sociological Trends throughout the World to the Start of the Twentieth Century’s Seventh Decade. New York: Dover Publications, 1961.
Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. London: Methuen and Co., 1966.
Benoit-Smullyan, Emile. “The Sociologism of Émile Durkheim and His School”. In An Introduction to History of Sociology, edited by Harry E. Barnes (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), 499-537.
Bottomore, Thomas Burton. Sociology as Social Criticism. London: George Allen and Unwin 1975.
Cohn, Bernard S. “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture”. In Structure and Change in Indian Society, edited by Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968), 3-28.
Corning, Peter A. “Durkheim and Spencer”, The British Journal of Sociology, 33, no. 3, (1982), 359-82.
Coulson, Margaret A. and Carol Riddell. Approaching Sociology: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
Desai, Akshay Ramanlal. Social Background of Indian Nationalism. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1949.
––––. Recent Trends in Indian Nationalism. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1960.
––––. “Relevance of the Marxist Approach to the Study of Indian Society”, Sociological Bulletin, 30, no. 1, (1981), 1–20.
Dua, Hans Raj. “The Spread of English in India: Politics of Language Conflict and Language Power”, in Post-Imperial English: Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940–1990, edited by Joshua A. Fishman, Andrew W. Conrad, and Alma Rubal-Lopez (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996), 557-88.
Dube, S. C. “Indian Sociology at the Turning Point”, Sociological Bulletin, 26, no. 1, (1977), 1-13.
Dumont, Louis. “For a Sociology of India”, Contributions to Indian Sociology (ed. by Louis Dumont and David Pocock), 1, (1957), 7-22.
Durkheim, Émile. The Rules of Sociological Method, 8th ed. Translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller and edited by George E. G. Catlin. New York: The Free Press, 1966.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Social Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951.
Fairchild, Henry Pratt, ed. Dictionary of Sociology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1970.
Freund, Julien. The Sociology of Max Weber. Translated from the French by Mary Ilford. Middlesex, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968.
Gould, Julius. “Unfinished Business: Traditions in Social Analysis”, Encounter (March 1980), 44-51.
Gupta, Bela Dutt. Sociology in India: An Enquiry into Sociological Thinking and Empirical Social Research in the Nineteenth Century – with Special Reference to Bengal. Calcutta: Centre for Sociological Research, 1972.
Hankins, Frank H. “A Comtean Centenary: Invention of the Term ‘Sociology’”, American Sociological Review, 4 (1939), 16.
Jayaram, N. “Challenges to Indian Sociology”, Sociological Bulletin, 47, no. 2 (1998), 237-41.
Jayaram, N., Ravinder Kaur, and Partha N. Mukherji, eds. The State of Sociology: Issues of Relevance and Rigour (Special Issue on South Asia), Sociological Bulletin, 54, no. 3 (2005).
Jodhka, Surinder S. “From ‘Book-view’ to ‘Field-view’: Social Anthropological Constructions of the Indian Village”, Oxford Development Studies, 26 (1998), 311-31.
Joshi, P. C. “Reflections on Social Science Research in India”. In Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 138-61.
Kuper, Adam. Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 1922–1972. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Sociology of Marx. Translated from the French by Norbert Guterman. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1968.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “French Sociology”. In Twentieth Century Sociology, edited by Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1959), 503-37.
MacRae, Donald G. “Karl Marx (1818–83)”, in The Founding Fathers of Social Science, edited by Timothy Raison (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1969), 59-67.
Masani, Zareer, “English or Hinglish: Which will India Choose?” BBC News Magazine, Last updated November 27, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20500312.
Maus, Heinz. A Short History of Sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.
Mills, Charles Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Mukerji, D. P. “Indian Tradition and Social Change”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji. (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 1-15.
Mukherjee, Ramkrishna. The Rise and Fall of East India Company: A Sociological Appraisal. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1955.
––––. Sociology of Indian Sociology. Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1979.
––––. Why Unitary Social Science? Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
Mukherji, Partha N. “Disciplined Eclecticism”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 179-92.
––––. “Sociology in South Asia: Indigenisation as Universalising Social Science”, Sociological Bulletin, 54, no. 3 (2005), 311-24.
Nisbet, Robert K. The Sociology of Émile Durkheim. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Oommen, T. K. “Sociology in India: A Plea for Contextualization”, Sociological Bulletin, 32, no. 2 (1983), 111-36.
Oommen, T. K. and Partha N. Mukherji. “Editorial Introduction”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986a), vii–ix.
––––. eds. Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986b.
Quinton, Anthony. “Hermeneutics (2)”, in The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, edited by Alan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass (London: Fontana Books, 1977), 281.
Saberwal, Satish. “Uncertain Transplants: Anthropology and Sociology in India”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 214-32.
Saksena, R. N. Sociology in India. Agra: Institute of Social Sciences, 1965.
Saran, Awadh Kishore. “Sociology in India”, in Contemporary Sociology, edited by Joseph S. Roucek (London: Peter Owen Limited, 1959), 1013-34.
Savur, Monorama. “Sociology: The Genealogy of the Discipline in Bombay”, in Doing Sociology in India: genealogies, Locations, and Practices, edited by Sujata Patel (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3-28.
Singh, Yogendra. Modernization of Indian Tradition: A Systemic Study of Social Change. Delhi: Thomson Press (India), 1973a.
––––. “The Role of Social Sciences in India: A Sociology of Knowledge”, Sociological Bulletin, 22, no. 1(1973b.), 14-28.
––––. Image of Man: Ideology and Theory in Indian Sociology. Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1984.
––––. Indian Sociology: Social Conditioning and Emerging Concerns. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1986.
Srinivas, M. N. “Practicing Social Anthropology in India”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, (1997), 1-24.
Srinivas, M. N. and M. N. Panini. “The Development of Sociology and Social Anthropology in India”, Sociological Bulletin, 22, no. 2 (1973), 179-215.
Stauder, Jack. “The Functions of Functionalism”. Paper presented at a meeting of the American Anthropological Association held in New York, in November, 1971.
Stauder, Jack. “The ‘Relevance’ of Anthropology to Colonialism and Imperialism”, Race 16, no. 1 (1974), 29-51 (available at https://doi.org/10.1177/030639687401600102).
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Euro-centrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science”, Sociological Bulletin, 46, no. 1 (1997), 21-39.
Weber, Max. The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch. New York: The Free Press, 1949.
––––. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press, 1964.
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Hill, and Bryan S. Turner. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, 4th ed. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Alatas, Syed Hussein. “The Captive Mind and Creative Development”, International Social Science Journal, 26, no. 4 (1974), p 691-700 (available at https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/ 48223/pf0000011363 [accessed on 24 October 2019]).
Aron, Raymond. German Sociology. Translated by Mary and Thomas Bottomore. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.
Atal, Yogesh. Indian Sociology from Where to Where: Footnotes to the History of the Discipline. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2003.
Barnes, Harry E., ed. An Introduction to History of Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Becker, Howard and Harry Elmer Barnes. Social Thought from Lore to Science: Vol. III – Sociological Trends throughout the World to the Start of the Twentieth Century’s Seventh Decade. New York: Dover Publications, 1961.
Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. London: Methuen and Co., 1966.
Benoit-Smullyan, Emile. “The Sociologism of Émile Durkheim and His School”. In An Introduction to History of Sociology, edited by Harry E. Barnes (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), 499-537.
Bottomore, Thomas Burton. Sociology as Social Criticism. London: George Allen and Unwin 1975.
Cohn, Bernard S. “Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture”. In Structure and Change in Indian Society, edited by Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1968), 3-28.
Corning, Peter A. “Durkheim and Spencer”, The British Journal of Sociology, 33, no. 3, (1982), 359-82.
Coulson, Margaret A. and Carol Riddell. Approaching Sociology: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970.
Desai, Akshay Ramanlal. Social Background of Indian Nationalism. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1949.
––––. Recent Trends in Indian Nationalism. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1960.
––––. “Relevance of the Marxist Approach to the Study of Indian Society”, Sociological Bulletin, 30, no. 1, (1981), 1–20.
Dua, Hans Raj. “The Spread of English in India: Politics of Language Conflict and Language Power”, in Post-Imperial English: Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940–1990, edited by Joshua A. Fishman, Andrew W. Conrad, and Alma Rubal-Lopez (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996), 557-88.
Dube, S. C. “Indian Sociology at the Turning Point”, Sociological Bulletin, 26, no. 1, (1977), 1-13.
Dumont, Louis. “For a Sociology of India”, Contributions to Indian Sociology (ed. by Louis Dumont and David Pocock), 1, (1957), 7-22.
Durkheim, Émile. The Rules of Sociological Method, 8th ed. Translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H. Mueller and edited by George E. G. Catlin. New York: The Free Press, 1966.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. Social Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951.
Fairchild, Henry Pratt, ed. Dictionary of Sociology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1970.
Freund, Julien. The Sociology of Max Weber. Translated from the French by Mary Ilford. Middlesex, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968.
Gould, Julius. “Unfinished Business: Traditions in Social Analysis”, Encounter (March 1980), 44-51.
Gupta, Bela Dutt. Sociology in India: An Enquiry into Sociological Thinking and Empirical Social Research in the Nineteenth Century – with Special Reference to Bengal. Calcutta: Centre for Sociological Research, 1972.
Hankins, Frank H. “A Comtean Centenary: Invention of the Term ‘Sociology’”, American Sociological Review, 4 (1939), 16.
Jayaram, N. “Challenges to Indian Sociology”, Sociological Bulletin, 47, no. 2 (1998), 237-41.
Jayaram, N., Ravinder Kaur, and Partha N. Mukherji, eds. The State of Sociology: Issues of Relevance and Rigour (Special Issue on South Asia), Sociological Bulletin, 54, no. 3 (2005).
Jodhka, Surinder S. “From ‘Book-view’ to ‘Field-view’: Social Anthropological Constructions of the Indian Village”, Oxford Development Studies, 26 (1998), 311-31.
Joshi, P. C. “Reflections on Social Science Research in India”. In Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 138-61.
Kuper, Adam. Anthropologists and Anthropology: The British School 1922–1972. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1973.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Sociology of Marx. Translated from the French by Norbert Guterman. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1968.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “French Sociology”. In Twentieth Century Sociology, edited by Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1959), 503-37.
MacRae, Donald G. “Karl Marx (1818–83)”, in The Founding Fathers of Social Science, edited by Timothy Raison (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1969), 59-67.
Masani, Zareer, “English or Hinglish: Which will India Choose?” BBC News Magazine, Last updated November 27, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20500312.
Maus, Heinz. A Short History of Sociology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962.
Mills, Charles Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
Mukerji, D. P. “Indian Tradition and Social Change”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji. (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 1-15.
Mukherjee, Ramkrishna. The Rise and Fall of East India Company: A Sociological Appraisal. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1955.
––––. Sociology of Indian Sociology. Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1979.
––––. Why Unitary Social Science? Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
Mukherji, Partha N. “Disciplined Eclecticism”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 179-92.
––––. “Sociology in South Asia: Indigenisation as Universalising Social Science”, Sociological Bulletin, 54, no. 3 (2005), 311-24.
Nisbet, Robert K. The Sociology of Émile Durkheim. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
Oommen, T. K. “Sociology in India: A Plea for Contextualization”, Sociological Bulletin, 32, no. 2 (1983), 111-36.
Oommen, T. K. and Partha N. Mukherji. “Editorial Introduction”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986a), vii–ix.
––––. eds. Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986b.
Quinton, Anthony. “Hermeneutics (2)”, in The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, edited by Alan Bullock and Oliver Stallybrass (London: Fontana Books, 1977), 281.
Saberwal, Satish. “Uncertain Transplants: Anthropology and Sociology in India”, in Indian Sociology: Reflections and Introspections, edited by T. K. Oommen and Partha N. Mukherji (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1986), 214-32.
Saksena, R. N. Sociology in India. Agra: Institute of Social Sciences, 1965.
Saran, Awadh Kishore. “Sociology in India”, in Contemporary Sociology, edited by Joseph S. Roucek (London: Peter Owen Limited, 1959), 1013-34.
Savur, Monorama. “Sociology: The Genealogy of the Discipline in Bombay”, in Doing Sociology in India: genealogies, Locations, and Practices, edited by Sujata Patel (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3-28.
Singh, Yogendra. Modernization of Indian Tradition: A Systemic Study of Social Change. Delhi: Thomson Press (India), 1973a.
––––. “The Role of Social Sciences in India: A Sociology of Knowledge”, Sociological Bulletin, 22, no. 1(1973b.), 14-28.
––––. Image of Man: Ideology and Theory in Indian Sociology. Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1984.
––––. Indian Sociology: Social Conditioning and Emerging Concerns. New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1986.
Srinivas, M. N. “Practicing Social Anthropology in India”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, (1997), 1-24.
Srinivas, M. N. and M. N. Panini. “The Development of Sociology and Social Anthropology in India”, Sociological Bulletin, 22, no. 2 (1973), 179-215.
Stauder, Jack. “The Functions of Functionalism”. Paper presented at a meeting of the American Anthropological Association held in New York, in November, 1971.
Stauder, Jack. “The ‘Relevance’ of Anthropology to Colonialism and Imperialism”, Race 16, no. 1 (1974), 29-51 (available at https://doi.org/10.1177/030639687401600102).
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Euro-centrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science”, Sociological Bulletin, 46, no. 1 (1997), 21-39.
Weber, Max. The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Translated and edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch. New York: The Free Press, 1949.
––––. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons. New York: The Free Press, 1964.
How to Cite
Jayaram, Narayana. 2020. “Towards Indigenization of an Uncertain Transplant: Hundred Years of Sociology in India”. Tajseer Journal 2 (1):99-122. https://doi.org/10.29117/tis.2020.0026.
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Articles in English