This article traces traditions of sociological thinking in India and suggests that in order to write the disciplines’ history, it is important to identify the episteme that governs these traditions. It suggests that there are two broad epistemes that have defined sociology as a discipline in India—colonial modernity and methodological nationalism—and it argues that they organise theories, perspectives, methodologies and methods, teaching and research practices of the discipline. The history of the imprint of these epistemes is investigated at four levels: first, in the way one or both defined the discipline’s identity and, thus, organised its characteristic mode of thinking methodologically; second, in the way this identity defined its theoretical direction and the theories that it borrowed, adapted to and reframed; third, in the way the first two organised its professional orientation and made it choose its identity as an academic discipline whose main role is restricted to teaching and research within academic institutions at an expense of a public orientation; and fourth, the way the aforementioned three defined its geographical compass, limiting its queries to national concerns wherein the macro became reduced to the micro abjuring discussions on global debates. This article suggests that today there is a crisis in the received epistemes, and in this context, it becomes imperative to take command to define a new episteme which intersects the local, regional, national and global concerns, is theoretical and methodologically eclectic and is comparative in nature.
This Afterword maps out the methodological constituents that organize global sociology. It suggests that the starting point for doing global sociology is to deconstruct the inherent Eurocentrism which is there in the discipline’s cognitive frames. Also, it suggests that Eurocentrism is not merely represented in sociological theories and methods but is also enmeshed in practices and sites that administer and govern sociological knowledge, such as journals and curricula. Additionally, Eurocentric frames are organically connected with the discipline of anthropology with which sociology was interfaced through coloniality. It then discusses the other three methodological constituents that help to frame global sociology: provincialization, methodological nationalism and endogeneity. It concludes by suggesting that global sociology is possible if we work with these methodological constituents at many levels.
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