The nationalist-indigenous and colonial modernity

An assessment of two sociologists in India

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9286243
AutoresSujata Patel (0000-0002-6785-5981, Savitribai Phule Pune University, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume8
Fascículo1
Data de publicação2021-01-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of Chinese Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2198-2635 • E-ISSN: 2198-2635
EditoraSpringer Nature (PUBLISHER • SG)
DOI10.1186/s40711-020-00140-9
OpenAlexW3165030243
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas29

This paper analyzes the work of two Indian sociologists who defined the contours of sociology in India in the immediate post-independence decades, M. N. Srinivas and A. R. Desai. It argues that their scholarship can be linked to sociology’s legacy as anthropology in India and its embeddedness in the episteme of colonial modernity. It contends that Srinivas’s methodology, the field view, attempted to make a break with earlier methods, such as book view. However, his three concepts, that of dominant caste, Sanskritization and Westernization were perceived as civilizational attributes and which had organized social change in India. A. R. Desai, a Marxist historical sociologist, made an incisive critique of capitalist exploitation and elaborated the material conditions that led to peasant and working-class revolts. However, his sociology could not unravel the caste-class linkages that organized the Indian ‘social’ which was embedded in Indian nationalism. This paper suggests that a definitive understanding of modernity emerges in Indian sociology in the late 70s when the feminist, dalit and tribal movements interrogated the material basis of contemporary India’s developmentalism and its capitalist and exploitative character

Caste · Colonialism · Developmentalism · Embeddedness · Episteme · Epistemology · Historical sociology · Indigenization · Indigenous · Marxist philosophy · Modernity · Nationalism · Peasant · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Gender Studies · History · Social and Cultural Dynamics