While intellectual practices always take place within a definite socio-cultural context, disciplinary histories and practices have overlapped with the territorial boundaries of nation-states in South Asia. As a result, the disciplinary history of India, for example, appears to have no relation with that of any other country in the region.

Believing that disciplinary histories, even while engaging with the local and the national, are influenced by larger regional forces, Sociology and Social Anthropology in South Asia calls for a more complete understanding of history and culture in the region, over time and at specific moments.

In the various chapters, sociologists and social anthropologists from Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan show how social anthropology and sociology have worked as well as collapsed in South Asia, and how a more inclusive research agenda for this intellectually connected region can be imagined.

The authors explore the nature and scope of the disciplines emerging in each context; evaluate the relationship between sociology and social anthropology within a historical framework; and focus on the contemporary status of the disciplines, given the increasing thrust towards development objectives and agendas set by NGOs in each country.

Ravi Kumar is Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi.

Dev Nath Pathak is Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, New Delhi.

Sasanka Perera is Professor in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Vice-President, South Asian University, New Delhi.

List of Abbreviations

Foreword: Towards a Sociology from ‘Unexpected Places’ and a Sociology of Possibilities in South Asia
Roma Chatterji

Preface and Acknowledgements

1. Introduction: Towards a Regional Framework in Disciplinary History and Practices
Ravi Kumar, Dev Nath Pathak and Sasanka Perera

Part I: Contents and Contours
2. Western Dominance, Academic Dependency and Crisis in South Asian Sociology: Alternative Sociology Imaginations for the Post-national Context
Siri Gamage
3. Legacies and Challenges of Sociological Traditions in South Asia
Sujata Patel

Part II: (Dis)contents in Legacies and Practices
4. Deciphering Anthropology, Reckoning with Sociology: A Critical Self-assessment of the Practice of ‘Sociology’ in/on Sri Lanka
Sasanka Perera
5. Neoliberal Framework of Higher Education and the Possibilities of Doing Critical Sociology in India
Ravi Kumar
6. Hybridising Sociology: A Challenge for Contemporary Sociological Research in Bangladesh
Shaikh Mohammad Kais
7. Inequalities, Subjectivities and Resistance: In Search of a Comparative Sociology of Caste in India and Sri Lanka
Kalinga Tudor Silva

Part III: Possibilities amidst Paradoxes of the Contemporary
8. Teaching Sociology in Nepal: Revisiting the Contemporary Concerns
Uddhab Prasad Pyakurel
9. Possibility of Institutional and Individuated Sociology in Bhutan: An Enthusiastic Note Saroj Kumar Nepal
10. Possibilities in Doing Anthropology: Perspectives from Bangladesh
Ratan Kumar Roy
11. Afghanistan as a Critical Lens on Current Challenges for Anthropology and Sociology
Nick Miszak and Alessandro Monsutti

Notes on the Contributors
Index