ICCSR: Knowledge, Science, and Society

3
Knowledge, Science, and Society

V. SUJATHA AND ANUBHAV SENGUPTA*
Knowledge, science, and society constitute the subject matter of

sociology of knowledge; however, sociology of knowledge is not the
most fashionable subject specialty today. Interestingly though, sev-
eral new developments such as culture studies, science studies, and
studies of identity constantly invoke the fundamental premises of the
old sociology of knowledge (henceforth referred to as SOK), namely
the link between existential basis and knowledge, albeit in a difer-
ent language and form. However, the terms in SOK have been subject
to interrogation ater the post-modern turn, such as, the drit to the
term ‘knowledges’ in the plural and to the more inclusive term ‘cul-
ture’ instead of knowledge (Zammito 2007). he increasing focus on
‘local’ or everyday knowledge gives the impression that the plural is
intended to convey a sense of congeries of discrete knowledge claims
or ways of knowing, with an emphasis on the subject of knowledge.
he shit towards micro concerns such as the technologies of knowl-
edge production, modes of communication, and study of observable
properties of knowledge like texts instead of general categories like
ideology and ideas that early SOK started with, is certainly discernible
in this ield (Puddephat and McLaughlin 2007). Enquiry into the pro-
cess of knowing without foundational assumptions of an existential
infrastructure seems to be the trend these days, leading to a cultur-
ological tilt. he most signiicant development has, however, been in
*
We are thankful to Tanvi Sirari and Renny homas, research scholars at the
Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,
for the help in gathering material for this chapter.
136 EMERGING CONCEPTS, STRUCTURE, AND CHANGE
the study of scientiic knowledge and technology. he position taken

by Mannheim and Merton that the content and methods of science
are beyond the purview of sociological analysis is no longer sustain-
able. Developments within the sciences such as quantum physics have
brought down the cosmology of an inert mechanical universe and
there is some openness to alternative perspectives (Apfel-Marglin
2005). Kuhn’s path breaking work (1962, 2000), which continues to be
the most cited on the subject till today, has also altered several assump-
tions about the ixity of scientiic knowledge. he Wittgensteinian
approach of David Bloor (1976) augured the strong programme in
science studies that went into the very content of scientiic concep-
tualization and practice. In the post-Kuhnian era, feminist scholars
have taken the lead in probing into virtually all aspects of scientiic
knowledge, apart from a spate of ethnographic studies of laboratories
and science institutions such that sociology of science, which appears
to have been the most successful among the sociologies of knowledge
(Bourdieu 1994).
In India, the knowledge-society connection has been the subject
of vibrant debates with contributions from sociology and philosophy
(Mukherjee 1960, Mukherji 1958, Roy and Gupta 1989, Krishna 1996,
Saran 1998). he debates among the pioneers on whether sociology in
India was dialectical, interactive, or imitative led to important insights
into the nature and purpose of knowledge and its social conditioning.
he concern during this period was not so much about establishing
sociology as a science and delineating its own methods, rather the
more fundamental question of its social relevance (Mukherjee 1965;
Singh 1986). his was central for the pioneers to ground the disci-
pline in terms of their own sense of intellectual purpose. Sociology of
knowledge was intended to investigate the social factors that condi-
tion knowledge and the process of knowing, as well as the connec-
tions and conlict between concepts of a particular epoch. Pioneers
like Radhakamal Mukherjee sought to bring ecological factors into
the study of culture at a time when sociologism was reigning supreme
in Parsonian, Durkheimian, and Weberian sociology. Due to the
ight for professional autonomy from biology, sociology had become
oblivious to ecological factors. Mukherjee suggested a perspective in
which ecology was integral to the understanding of society and cul-
ture, much as Patrick Geddes’s sociology intrinsically entailed a sense
of space (Visvanathan 2011). hese important formulations were,
KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE, AND SOCIETY 137
however, not taken up seriously by the later generations of sociolo-

gists in India who continued more or less with sociologism.
Between the 1950s and late 1970s, social scientists fully accepted
state sponsored development and hoped to see the beneits of planned
change. But the protest movements of tribals and farmers against
development projects backed by science and technology brought out
the problems in the alliance of state and science against the margin-
alized. Scientiic forestry and green revolution produced many fall
outs. Marxist groups and let oriented scientists formed associations
to examine and propagate ‘appropriate science and technology’ shorn
of capitalist evils, retaining the cognitive element of modern science.
Other groups of scientists and activists sought to explore the pos-
sibility of ‘people centered science’ and ‘alternative science’. While
these debates were raised in the public sphere of scientists and civil
society, academic sociology, with few exceptions, does not seem to
have examined them seriously, at least as relected in the articles in
the sociological bulletin and contributions to Indian sociology during
this period (Visvanathan 2011). Nandy (2004) shows that societies
that engendered more humane forms of development earlier, like
India and Sri Lanka, were neglecting the voice of the dissenters and
the marginalized in favour of pure development. In his view, the third
world movements for sustainable and indigenous/endogenous devel-
opment represented a non-economistic, non-positivist approach with
an open philosophical grid. While the tribal cosmology and economy
did exemplify a distinct approach to the natural and human sur-
roundings, the question is whether their protests could be seen as an
assertion of their cosmology (Baviskar 1995). In any case, the point is
that these movements did show the excesses of state power centered
on expertise and technocracy.
he 1980s to 1990s was a productive phase as studies in history
of science, comparative philosophy, and sociology traced the civili-
zational encounter in knowledge, examined the epistemological basis
for comparison of European and non-European philosophy, and
analysed the signiicance of social forms like civilization and nation-
state in relation to science respectively. Some of the debates continue
to date. Sociological understanding of knowledge has always had
substantive and epistemological moorings in philosophical tradi-
tions like positivism, Marxism, phenomenology, post-modernism,
feminism, and so on. he intimate connection between social science
and philosophy, and the essential nature of this link for theoretical
insights into the subject of knowledge and society cannot be underes-
timated. he weakening of this link in the Indian context is sought to
be addressed in this report by taking on board some key philosophical
contributions on the questions concerned.
his trend report pertains roughly to the period 2003–10, and its
scope is limited to studies in scientiic knowledge and selected trans-
disciplinary concepts and approaches in the social sciences. he dis-
cussion is organized in two parts; the irst part focuses on substantive
contributions to the study of science and society and the second part
examines the epistemological debates in social science on the manner
in which knowledge and the social may be examined. he rationale
for this selection is as follows:
scientiic knowledge is dealt with solely by this report and hence one
half of the report focuses on social history and sociology of science.
heory, methods, and disciplinary issues in sociology are discussed
in another report in this collection. he second section on social sci-
ences in this report therefore centres on transdisciplinary debates in
the social sciences and philosophy. It seeks to present an account of
studies during the said period with the aim of culling out paradigms/
themes and approaches in social science in the Indian context.
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY

Despite the signiicance of science and technology in contemporary
India, sociology of science is not institutionalized in sociology educa-
tion; it is taught in very few places in the post-graduate curriculum
and there are repeated calls for the missing discipline every decade.
Wherever it is pursued, social studies of science in India have fol-
lowed either of the three routes: (a) the most common trend to docu-
ment the advantages and disadvantages of science and technology in
the context of development; (b) the study of performance of science
and technology institutions with regard to science policy; and (c) the
attempt to generate critical social theory of science and technology
as objects of analysis. A brief introduction to these trends will set the
ground for the rest of the discussion.
he irst and more popular trend has been to see science and tech-
nology in relation to national development—self reliance, fulilling
social needs, and in managing natural resources. he trend report

(Aurora and Bhat 2000) on science technology and development for
the period 1977–87 summarizes a few seminar proceedings on the
subject and mentions that science and technology are relevant in so
far as they fulill human needs without saying much on whose needs
are at stake and who has the authority to decide. he second trend
has been to examine the institutional framework of scientiic research,
resources and sectoral research and development (R&D) as part of
science policy studies. A large part of this has been scientistic and car-
ried forward by administrator-scientists. Jains report of 1988, cited by
Aurora and Bhat, mentions that in the two decades between 1967–87,
63 per cent of all studies in the area were on science policy. During
1975–1987, only 91 projects in science and technology (S&T) stud-
ies were funded by ICSSR, of which 51 per cent were only indirectly
related to S&T (Aurora and Bhat 2000). Visvanathan (2011) observes
that for sociology in India, science was rarely the subject of study in
itself; rather was more an incidental factor in other discussions. But
wherever it was taken up in its own right, social studies in science has
been fruitful in generating a conceptual framework.
he sociology of scientiic knowledge is the study of science as a
social activity, probing into the social conditions and efects of sci-
ence and the social structures and processes of scientiic activity. Ater
few decades of focusing on factors external to scientiic research such
as organizational features and role structure in science institutions,
sociology of science has moved into the heart of scientiic discovery.
his involved a study of how science is done without saying much
about the truth value or validity of its facts. In view of the anomalies
arising from such a social constructionism, the term science studies
is now used to refer to ‘something other than a social explanation of
the phenomena in question’ (Hegde 2004: 4114). hat is, while sci-
ence studies continues to focus on ‘scientiic practice as it is going on
in the laboratories and the many institutions’, its ‘claim is that social
and natural scientists ought to—and can—forget what separates them
and start looking jointly at those ‘things’ whose hybrid nature has (at
least for many decades now) uniied them in practice. Science studies
needs to take seriously the material world in which we live, and upon
which human societies are superimposed; and accordingly translates
into something other than a social explanation of the phenomena
in question’ (Hegde 2004: 4115). Lately the term technoscience is

used in social science literature to refer to the contemporary modes
of scientiic knowledge production which are not only mediated by
socio-historic factors, but also by non-human, material actants like
lab technologies and samples.
In India, social theory of science never took the constructionist
path. In the late 1970s, it culled out its unique social theory of science
as a powerful critique that did not violate the integrity of scientiic
facts and their validity as constructionism did. Besides construction-
ism in the West emerged with the application of ethnographic meth-
ods, that is, it was an outcome of anthropology of science, something
that had little appeal here. Studies on knowledge, science, and society
in this part of the world bore a civilizational character that demanded
enquiry into their historical and philosophical aspects at a macro
level. In short, they entailed a ‘pluralization of science in time and
space’ (Visvanathan 2011: 305).
While the history of science in the West is a foregone conclu-
sion, the social life of science in India bears a special relation to
history exempliied in the debates about the manner of its arrival
with colonialism and the process of its indigenization in the sub-
continent. Further the living presence of scientiic and technological
disciplines of India has made linear and monolithic history of sci-
ence as impossible. In India the tribal is not an ancestor but a con-
temporary; the need for a sociology of knowledge that goes beyond
the language of assimilation or museumization cannot therefore be
understated (Visvanathan 2011). Whether or not all these aspects
have been addressed adequately, this historical experience has
provided a diferent set of reference points for critical theories of
knowledge and science in this part of the world. Social history of
science, including that of non-western sciences (Dharampal 1971;
Chattopadhaya 1977) and other modern knowledges (Chatterjee
1995), have been well researched in India. Philosophy of science in
India is not divorced from history and has consistently engaged with
non-western philosophical traditions.
Our overview of studies on scientiic knowledge in this context
therefore will have to draw from social history, sociology, and phi-
losophy of science in India. Besides, juxtaposing disciplinary pri-
orities on the same subject is expected to ofset the fragmentation of
understanding.
Social History of Science in Colonial India

he focal point of scholarship on the social history of science in
colonial India has been the mode of transmission of western science
in India and its assimilation in recipient culture, on which diferent
positions have been taken by social historians.
From Transmission to Translation

Raina and Habib (2004) argue that this is not a simple transmission,
but mediated and selectively assimilated by the recipient culture.
hey outline three stages by which western science gained ground
in India in institutional and cultural terms, and highlight the role
of key individuals in the process. he irst stage is one in which the
scholars from the indigenous culture come in contact with modern
scientiic knowledge through the education system and learn about it
on their own. hese autodidacts outside science institutions then have
to present their work to scientists at the centre and translate it to the
language of the central community; this is the shit from autodidact
to professional scientist. Lastly, a scientiic community emerges in
the periphery building of its own institutions to translate scientiic
knowledge in terms of its language and context. In Raina’s view the
language of evidence and reason and the internationalism about sci-
ence facilitate this exchange, even when the politics is tilted in favour
of the centre.
Apart from biographic and career sketches of autodidacts, pio-
neers, and professional scientists in Bengal, Raina and Habib present
details of discussions among the bhadralok of Bengal. he discussions
pertained to the manner of adopting science and technology, such as
the bhadralok concerns about harnessing the skill of scores of artisans
and weavers in India without subjecting them to the evils of industri-
alization and the factory system.
Alavi’s work (2007) on the Indo-Muslim medicine, namely unani,
that developed along with the Mughal political culture presents the
extent of interaction between the Islamic healing tradition with
Indian society and politics during four centuries between 1600–1900.
Rather than focus on western ideas as the propeller of changes, the
author, drawing on pre-colonial Persian texts and family documents
and later newspaper reports, shows how Arabic scientistic ideas have
inluenced the idea of pre-modern medical sciences in India and their

role in public health.
Historiography of Science in India

Raina’s book, Images and Contexts (2003), examines the trajectory of
the history of science in India. How did the early scientists and histo-
rians in India engage with the introduction of western science in India
and how did they see their own science work? What mode of history
writing did they inherit from orientalist discourse? Where did they
depart? Raina’s attempt in his book (2003) is to present a metatheory
of the reverse commentaries, presented by Indian scholars in response
to colonial historiography. Between1896–1912, two important histo-
ries were written by Indians, namely P.C. Ray in 1902 and B. Seal in
1915. Raina presents an interesting account of the debate between
Ray and Marcelin Berthelot, both of whom were chemist-historians.
Berthelot, a Frenchman, tried to understand Egyptian metal work
through chemistry while Ray was trying to examine Indian traditions
of alchemy in the light of chemistry.
Marxist history of science made a mark since the 1930s; it went
beyond internalist accounts and was sensitive to social context of
science. During the peak of the freedom struggle, intensive debates
on science and planning were published. Raina discusses the ‘concise
history of science in India’, edited by S.N. Sen in 1966, who tried to
grapple with the question as to why despite long and close contacts
with European science, there was a gap of 100 years between trickling
in of scientiic knowledge and the irst Indian publications.
Raina notes that the history of science in India has been largely a
domain of scientists and had yet to emerge as an independent disci-
pline. he author analyses the issues of the Indian journal for the his-
tory of science brought out by the Indian National Science Academy
from 1966–94 to prove his point. More than half the papers were on
ancient sciences with very little on contemporary science, and even
less on technology. Raina highlights how the institutional dependence
of the history of science on the ield of science, namely a situation
where the historians of science are the community of scientists,
obliterates the social context of science and a critical theory of sci-
ence and society. Interestingly in India, the National Commission for
the history of science is under the Indian National Science academy
and not under the ministries of culture or education or HRD. Raina

talks about the social context of science without getting into cultural
relativism, because he assumes some measure of objectivity of science
as well as its unity, referring to his position as ‘situated universality’.
Back to Metropolis and Periphery Theory of Science

Chakrabarti (2004) argues against the translation theory of the spread
of science, arguing that western science was truly western and did not
detract from its essential elements. herefore claims of transformation
and redeinition by recipient cultures and their agency put forth by
Raina and Habib come under doubt. Orientalist excursions on India’s
past may have been more receptive, but European science was not.
Even the Asiatic Society of Bengal separated the two projects clearly—
culture and science—and believed that the British were stronger in
the latter. Orientalist William, like Jones, drew upon the Linnaean
model when it came to scientiic work on Indian botany. he scientists
who went back from the colonies were not part of mainstream science
in Britain. Science was adopted and practiced in colonial India for
its superior ontology and gained ground through the mechanisms of
colonial rule. Even as the recipients creatively deined some aspects
through their swadeshi experiments, there was unanimity on science
as mans mastery over nature, the need for a new social order, and the
necessity of materialism. hus alternative universalisms of P.C. Ray,
J.C. Bose, and M. Sircar were subsumed under science’s dominant
universalism, and ‘the story of hybrid redeinition unfolds itself also
as a story of science’s universality’ (Chakrabarti 2004: 300).
Polycentric View of the Emergence of Science

Recent developments in the sociology and anthropology of science
have brought the speciic context of conducting science and technol-
ogy into sharp focus, thereby disaggregating the notion of a unitary
science emerging from a speciic location, say Europe. Kapil Raj
(2006) takes a polycentric view, arguing that intercultural encounters
between Europe and South Asia were instrumental in the emergence
of science and that modern science was in fact a co-production and
not a uniquely European creation. He explains that it was not learned
bodies like universities that spread science in the colonies but trading
companies that engaged hydrographers, medics, astronomers, and

mathematicians for their commercial activities. hey were the key
actors in the early modern knowledge enterprises, a fact ignored by
most histories of science. Raj presents interesting information on how
the worlds of trade and science were closely related. Men of science
like Newton and Boyle were shareholder directors of the English
East India Company and had lasting relations with corporate trad-
ing groups. Some scholarly societies were even founded by trading
companies like the royal astronomical society in 1820. He shows how
ield scientists and technicians who went in trading ships carried back
knowledge from South Asia and were key players in intercultural
transmission.
Drawing on the concept of ‘circulation’ of knowledge from
Latour’s sociology of science, Raj explains how Europe becomes
the centre for science through the collection of pieces of informa-
tion from outside, that were then centralized and combined in the
European metropole. He argues that the association of science with
hard sciences of physics and chemistry which emerged in the nine-
teenth century obfuscates the central importance of natural history,
terrestrial survey, botany, ethnology, and linguistics as major knowl-
edge forms of the early modern period (2006: 227). he concept of
co-construction of science that argues that properties like replica-
bility, translation, and calibration necessary for science could not
be understood outside the relationship between instruments and
embodied skills in speciic locations. Such a view not only displaces
difusionist theories, but also highlights the fact that ‘important
parts of what passes of as ‘Western’ science were actually made out-
side the west’ (2006: 223).
Narasimha (2003) argues that the mathematical approach to the
exact sciences has historically appeared to contain two largely dis-
tinct, at times overlapping, cultures. One of these takes the deduc-
tion of ‘certain’ conclusions from clearly stated axioms/models as the
primary objective; the other considers number the primary concept
and emphasizes computation and algebra, conforming to unambigu-
ous rules. A philosophy that may be called computational positivism,
whose goal is to make computation agree with observation, appears
to have been characteristic of Indian (and Babylonian) astronomy.
According to the author, these cultures with their overlapping
interaction and complementation have played a key role in the his-
tory of science and the author believes it continues to do so. Joseph

(2009) suggests that mathematics from medieval south India around
thirteenth-fourteenth century may have had an impact on sixteenth-
seventeenth century European mathematics, speciically Newtonian
calculus, which is considered the fountainhead of modern sciences.
He argues that the origin of the analysis and derivations of certain
ininite series was not in Europe but in the south Indian state of Kerala
200 years before the European mathematicians Wallis, Newton,
Leibniz. Joseph goes on to discuss how the landowning Nambudiri
Brahmins of Kerala had the resources and leisure to pursue higher
learning in mathematics. he link between the arithmetic of the vil-
lage oicial and pure mathematicians is explained by the centrality
of complex calendrical knowledge for agrarian management in the
region. Diferent systems of numeration and commentaries of earlier
Sanskrit mathematical texts were written in old Malayalam during the
eleventh-iteenth century, representing about seven generations of
unbroken paradigmatic growth in mathematics. He has also discussed
(2000) the bias of historians of science against non-European origin
of scientiic knowledge that has prevented any consideration of such
indings.
It is interesting to note various positions on the nature of the
interaction between indigenous knowledge and European sciences.
Raina and Habib focus on the process of domestication by the recipi-
ent culture while Chakrabarti looks at the unchanging methods of
the metropolis. Raj, on the other hand, examines the interactive
situations and the actors and artifacts present in each situation, as
constitutive of emergent knowledge. Underlying these accounts are
assumptions about how to deine the boundary between univer-
sal and local and at which domain to delineate the boundary—in
thought or in action.
he shit in the scientist role as explorers during the early colo-
nial period to scientist as administrator in post-independent India is
traced by Kumar (2004) as the emergence of ‘scientocracy’. Dhumatkar
(2002) brings out the work of Balaji Prabhakar Modak (1847–1906)
in translating scientiic treatises to Marathi and promoting science
education in western India. here is also a huge body of scholarship,
speciically on the social history of medicine in India, covering vari-
ous time periods from the sixteenth to the twentieth century (Alavi
2007; Attewell 2007; Sivaramakrishnan 2006).
Sociological Approaches to the Trajectory of Modern Science in

Contemporary India
An essay by the sociologist Shiv Visvanathan (originally published
in 1985) on the work of pioneers in science such as Ray and Bose
allows us to make an interesting comparison between history and
sociology of the same period (Habib and Raina 2007). Both Raina
and Habib on the one hand, and Visvanathan on the other, talk about
cultural nationalism of the pioneering Indian scientists in colonial
India. he former pose cultural nationalism of the Indians against the
internationalism of western science, whereas Visvanathan’s account
of the same personalities gives details of the inequities of the colonial
system to which they were responding as nationalists. For instance,
in Visvanathan’s paper we come to know that the pioneers like Ray
faced discrimination in selection for teaching posts and was asked to
take a lower pay despite full qualiication (Visvanathan 2007); that
Bose neither patented his invention nor did he accept the lucrative
contract from an American irm for the invention. His recognition in
the international ield came ater much discrimination, the malaise
of the colonial structure under which the pioneers of science had to
establish themselves.
Visvanathan (2003) discusses the politics of knowledge within a
model of cultural encounter between east and west characterized by
genocide, museumization, ghettoization, and their correlates. Rather
than a linear narrative of the hegemony of orientalism, he shows how
India was a theatre for a whole generation of European and American
minds. hese eccentric imaginations saw in India a site of possibilities
the West had lost or suppressed within itself. he author inds the most
profound of these experiments in the work of three scientists—Patrick
Geddes, Albert Howard, and J.S. Haldane. hey were the dissenting
academies of the West who found their ground in India. ‘Just as the
universities of the West could not have grown without absorbing the
knowledge of the Dissenting academies, the culture of the West could
not have grown without these repeated encounters with India. he
West as a paradigm has distinctive Indian threads in the warp and
woof of its imagination’ (2003: 78).
he social history of new knowledges like psychiatry in India (Basu
2004), gleaned from popular magazines in the nineteenth century,
reveal an active engagement in the vernacular periodicals that gave
space to psychiatry as a part of popular science. Ashis Nandy’s early

essay (republished 2004) also sets out the terms of an alternative
politics of psychology, presenting rare and interesting details on the
life and work of irst non-western psychoanalyst who started writ-
ing in the 1930s. In the same collection (2004) Nandy also ofers an
insight into the career of India’s irst environmentalist who opposed
the Damodar Valley project early in the 1950s. he essays present
detailed information on the biography, work, contemporaries, and
engagements of these pioneering personalities creative involvement
with new inputs. Nandy’s approach of foregrounding crucial but less
known subjects shows that with a fairly simple conceptual appara-
tus—self, culture, and politics—it is possible to examine macro issues
of science, colonialism, and civilization.
Historical accounts of science in modern India are overwhelmingly
focused on Bengali material and personalities and there is a need to
generate trajectories of science in other regions as well. It is also to
be noted that in comparison to history, sociology of science has had
a diferent take on historical and civilizational encounters, and has
drawn on a wider set of material than administrative documents of
the state.
Social Theory of Science

Non-dualist Approach to Science
he classic statement of sociology of science in India may be found in
the work of Uberoi (2002) which augured a distinct theoretical and
methodological framework that the author calls non-dualist/semio-
logical approach. It may be useful to briely distinguish this approach
from constructionist approach to science. he constructionists
(Latour 1979; Knorr-cetina 1981) aim was to demolish the claim that
science is the study of nature/reality as it is (realism). For this they
dwelt on the daily practices of scientists in the laboratory and showed
how the object of their experimentation was in fact an artifact deined
and culled out by the team of scientists based on certain conjectures.
But the constructionists focused only on the process of production
of scientiic facts and had nothing to say on what bearing the process
of construction of a fact have on its eicacy. hey only said that con-
struction process does not afect the validity of the fact and stopped
short of exploring the problematic relation between truth and reality.

It is here that the work of sociologists of science from India, especially
of Uberoi, bears cardinal signiicance.
Uberoi’s monograph ofers a comprehensive and critical insight into
science, technology, and their relationship by examining the process
of scientiic research and the process of technology development and
their connection at times of war and peace. In his view, the protestant
reformation marks the originary moment of the separation of matter
and mind, especially the debates on the presence of Christ’s body and
blood in the Eucharist. Uberoi tracks the career of the dualist episte-
mology (truth) through its most creative and most destructive mani-
festations in reality during a span of four centuries starting in 1500.
he Industrial and French revolutions mark the most creative phase
while colonization of three-fourths of the world and the world wars
mark the most terrible phase culminating in the ‘endocannibalism’ of
the holocaust and ‘exocannibalism’ of the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945. he bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki towards
the end of the war, when Japan was ready to surrender, clariies that
this was not a political imperative. he scientists who worked on the
atom bomb were Jewish and refugee scientists from Germany, and
pursued their work as scientiic research given the excitements ofered
by nuclear physics under full knowledge of the consequences of the
atom bomb. Out of three bombs made in the special exclusive lab set
up under Oppenheimer in 1943 at New Mexico, only one was tested;
the other two were of very diferent kinds and were tested on a live
human population in Japan at the calculated moment when most of
the civilians will be out.
he attempt by the American scientists to keep the victims of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki carefully separated, to carry out studies on
the efect of radiation, is in Uberoi’s view, the pinnacle of vivisec-
tionist science. he distribution of responsibility for the atom bomb
between science, military, and political bureaucracy was such that no
one owned it and the ethical questions disappeared in the interstices
of the three realms. he explanation that science is good but abused
by power is, for Uberoi, the characteristic statement of the positivist
dualism between science and values.
Studies in the career of atomic scientists (Visvanathan 1997), how-
ever, do not sustain this statement about good science and bad users.
It is to be noted that ater a brief sojourn in theoretical physics in
the atermath of the destruction and sufering caused by the bomb in

Japan, key scientists in the US nuclear project returned to rework the
hydrogen bomb, for they found the physics of nuclear explosions to be
‘the genuine theoreticians paradise’, work on which was ‘technically
sweet’. he engagement of some of the best minds in the proliferation
of ever more sophisticated arms since World War II and the fact that
military research is the source of most civilian versions of science and
technology further challenges simple notions of scientiic curiosity.
Uberoi (2002) notes that the pattern of military-industrial spend-
ing lately shows that innovation is no longer tied to demand or need,
but has come to have its own logic. he impulse to beat one’s own
product design with a more superior one has reached such irratio-
nal levels that a new product becomes obsolete within the life-span
of one generation of its production. he passion and secret desires
that undergird what is called instrumentally rational action is never
accounted for, either in science or in politics. hus for Uberoi, the
institutional diferentiation in modern societies of science, politics,
and faith and pursuit of pure instrumental rational action in each
sphere, with mutually reciprocal consent referred to as organic soli-
darity by Durkheim, could have the most disastrous consequences.
his division of labour lacks any overarching rationality or values;
either the end (war or scientiic knowledge) justiies the means
(bomb/arms), or the means (industry/technology) legitimizes the
end (arms/bombs). In Uberoi’s view (2002: 100), ‘the development
of armaments is the most potent and single evil and peril that faces
the world; it is more criminal and dangerous than poverty, disease or
population explosion.’ What makes Uberoi’s theory of science most
original is that it is not the customary critique of western science from
eastern philosophy; rather the critique of the unholy combination of
modern science and politics in nineteenth century Europe from the
perspective of the subjugated philosophies of early modern Europe. It
difers from constructionism and post-modern theories of science in
that it does not challenge the facticity of scientiic discoveries or their
correspondence to reality, but examines the truth of its separation
from politics and faith, taking the production as well as application
of science on board. Another point is that while post-structuralist and
feminist theories of science (Haraway 1991) have also spoken about
networks between human and non-human actants—animals and
machines (Latour 2005), Uberoi looks at the homology in the relation
between human and non-humans exempliied in the violence intrin-

sic to vivisectionism as the cardinal method of science.
Science and the Politics of the Self

In the collection of essential works of Nandy brought together by
Gustavo Esteva, two essays in the section titled politics of knowledge
is of particular interest to us (Nandy 2004). Nandy problematizes
notions of objectivity and afective neutrality attributed to science and
regards them as institutionalized or structured isolationism. Isolation
is a technique of splitting cognition and afect, and is an ego-defense
mechanism according to psycho-analysis, which is deployed to cope
with the unacceptable inner impulses and ego-threats (2004: 278).
he ability to freeze the experimental subject for study or the passion
to kill so as to place at a distance and study, characterized by the term
necrophilia, is not diferent from the attitude that governed industrial
extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany and would not be possible
without objectivity (2004: 287). he logic of vivisectionist science is
no diferent and logic is no guarantee for rationality. he insane, for
instance, also have their own logic. Drawing on Eric Fromm, Nandy
points out that reason stems from the blending of logic, rationality,
and emotion. he split between thought and afect could therefore
lead to intellectual activity coexisting with hidden life-damaging pas-
sions, something that Nandy inds to be more dangerous than sheer
irrationality.
Prasad (2006) highlights the diferences between the theoretical
position of Nandy, Uberoi, and Viswanathan, to show how they difer
from each other even while sharing a common goal for the search
of non-Eurocentric and non-vivisectionist ontological possibilities.
Prasad thinks that Nandy does not throw away modern science;
instead through the case of Ramanujan and Bose he shows the pos-
sibility of a modern scientist operating in psychological ‘habitats’ that
are outside the standard, institutionalized habitat. Viswanathan shows
how particular social organizations of science (institutional and epis-
temic) entail particular modes of politics. Uberoi, drawing on Goethe,
proposes a non-dualist structure and cyclical structure of knowledge
with culture and nature overlap. Prasad notes that these proponents of
alternative sciences, like the advocates of a universal modern science
and scientiic culture, rarely conducted empirical investigations of
epistemic/laboratory practices of science. On the other hand, Prasad

points out those scholars who carry out empirical research in the
science laboratory, like Latour, pay little attention to politics beyond
scientiic inventions and forget the transnational political economy of
laboratories.
Science as Progressive Episteme

Nanda’s (2004) book challenges post-modernist deconstruction
of science and Hindu nationalist claims of vedic science as sharing
similar assumptions despite diverse trajectories. In the process she
also ofers a detailed critique of the anti-science stance of critical
traditionalism and eco-feminism that link science to colonialism
and imperialism. While her critique of Hindu nationalism and vedic
science as invoking the Nazi approach converges with that of Nandy,
she inds Nandy’s position that modern science may be assimilated
according to our cultural gestalt to be problematic. In her view, Hindu
holism has only served to absorb dissent and universalize itself. She
argues that the adoption of modern science and technology should
go with diminishing role of religion in civic life. Hybrids of modern
technology and indigenous culture will not facilitate the elimination
of retrogressive social practices. Nanda contests constructionist and
post-modern views of science showing that they could lead to a ridic-
ulous argument that all kinds of knowledge are equal. She wonders
whether the universities could ofer courses on voodoo, black magic,
and rain dance. hough social constructionism does not debunk sci-
ence, it facilitates the emergence of reactionary modernisms in the
name of openness. he actor network theory of Haraway and Latour
presumes ontological parity between things and people, but distances
itself from the tribal view of absolute interconnectedness of nature.
Post-colonial/subaltern approaches like that of Spivak, Nanda points
out, legitimize practices like sati. he question is whether local knowl-
edge is good for the marginalized? Nanda makes a powerful argument
that whatever appears to be marginal or local from the western point
of view is not indeed marginal in non-western societies that have
not experienced secularization. he so-called oppressed worldviews
are in fact deeply embedded in dominant cultural/religious idioms
of non-western societies and are, by no means, marginalized views.
For instance, she shows that female feticide and the skewed sex ratios
in green revolution areas of India are attributable to widespread and

dominant beliefs about the girl child, leading to misuse of reproduc-
tive technology.
Nanda further argues that naturalization of women’s ecological
work celebrated by Shiva actually amounted to a devaluation of their
labour, noting the beneits of technology and green revolution in
reducing the burden and drudgery of women’s daily work. Drawing
on Dewey, she reiterates the strength of modern science, its organized
skepticism, intelligent procedures, and evidence based conclusions
which is relected in its impact on prediction and control of nature.
She points out how Dewey was a key inluence on Ambedkar’s views
on science and religion, and the fact that he thought that an episte-
mological revolution was a prior requirement for democracy and
secularization. Nanda points out that the Dalits and depressed groups
are rightly suspicious of claims of indigenity of the upper section who
adopt modern science in public life and traditional virtues in domestic
sphere. She reviews the trajectory of alternative science movements
and notes that they stiled people’s science movements that tried to
demystify and popularize scientiic temper. Meera Nanda’s book pres-
ents a lucid and critical account of key paradigms in sociology and
philosophy of science in India. Her deinition of science as a rational
form of inquiry regards the association of science and technology
with war and violence as external to the process of scientiic inquiry.
The Social Over the Cultural: Modernity Irrespective of Science

In contrast to Nandy and Nanda, Gupta (2005) ofers a deinition of
modernity irrespective of science and thereby shits the focus from
epistemology (culture) to the realm of ontology (social relation).
Gupta’s argument is that modernity is neither engendered in indus-
trialization, nor in the difusion of scientiic temper and possession
of technology. He further states, contrary to Weber, Foucault, and a
host of other theorists, that the crux of modernity does not consist
in the erosion of religion. ‘Modernity in the ultimate analysis is not
about things, but how people relate to one another’ (2005: 234).
Foregrounding the singular norm of intersubjectivity, unfettered
by primordial identities of the past, Gupta identiies sharedness of
being as the deining feature of intersubjectivity, which he refers to
as iso-ontology. Gupta makes a strong case for expansion of public
institutions based on the achieved characteristics and an accountable

welfare state, adding that the West has made headway in this direction
within the respective nation-states, but is still far from the ideal of
iso-ontology in international relations.
It seems that not only critics but also protagonists of modernity do
not endorse unbridled science, rather call for science under the com-
mand of an equitable and democratic order. It also seems that science
studies in India have been addressing a diferent set of questions than
social constructionism or actor network theory of science.
Science and Democracy

In this article of 2001, Visvanathan foregrounds the protest movement
against the Sardar Sarovar Dam and the violence unleashed by the
partnership of state and science, showing how democracy and sci-
ence have diverged in two directions. Visvanathan takes science and
technology studies (STS) in India to task for playing a complicit role
in science policy. It is time for STS to speak on behalf of democracy
and pay back what it owes to social movements for providing its initial
intellectual impetus. He proposes a constellation involving academi-
cians, activists, and citizens which will intervene into the very disaster
that modern state premised on modern science has been leading us
to. he author proposes that science studies could further the cause
of cognitive justice by facilitating the citizen to be more than either a
spectator or a consumer of science; the citizen is a knowledgeable par-
ticipant with technical skills for survival. While the coming of global-
ization has caught our movements unawares and academy is caught in
the paucity of metaphors to contend with globalization, Visvanathan’s
question is how democracy is going to be pluralistic when globaliza-
tion is ofered as a world metaphor. He thinks that here science and
technology studies could play a role in capturing and critiquing the
grammar of cyberspace and Net.
Writing about the People’s Science Movement (PSM) in India,
Varma (2001) criticizes Nandy and Visvanathan for glorifying tra-
ditional epistemology without clarifying whether or not they reject
modern science in its entirety. He also challenges Nanda’s views on
combating fundamentalism through modern science, showing that
religiosity and fundamentalism does not necessary signify an anti-
science stand in Indian context. However, Roli points out that both
the strands of thought have a common intersecting point in that,

unlike in the West, they believe in a dialogical relationship between
society and science. he author notes that PSM as a new social move-
ment in its speciic historical context in India cannot treat science and
alternative science as two mutually exclusive camps, rather ought to
focus on goals and issues therein.
he report on, ‘he Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’
Rights Act: From legislation to implementation’ (2002) discusses
how legislative provisions in the ield of scientiic knowledge may
be implemented with speciic reference to agriculture to ensure the
rights of farmers and breeders and the protection of public interest in
maintaining biodiversity.
he dialogic process about science policy is carried forward by
Visvanathan and Parmar. In their article (2002), they discuss the
trajectory of biotechnology in relation to discourses about atomic
energy and information technology. Atomic energy was welcomed by
the nation and its diaspora as the great point of departure for national
security while information technology became the harbinger of the
middle class dream of netizen. Bio-technology, on the other hand,
occupies an in-between position in this regard. All social forces start-
ing from state, NGOs, grass root organizations, civil society, scientists
from India and abroad, Indian investors, and foreign investors have
been part of this debate about bio-technology, but without any clear
position. he father of the Green Revolution in India, Swaminathan
sees bio-technology as the extension of the green revolution. On the
other hand, NRI-scientists want to give back something to their coun-
try and dream of making India a superpower in bio-technology. Indian
scientists are debating with Nanjundaswamy and the carnivalesque
protest of his movement, Karnataka Rajya Ryota Sangha (KRRS)
against bio-technology, renewing the old debate between nature and
culture. he authors note that the debate in India is, however, in scien-
tiic-technological terms while in the West the question is economic.
While this has been the debate in the scientiic community, social sci-
ence frames the nature versus culture debate along the axis of ethics.
Suman Sahai argues that the ethical concerns related to bio-technol-
ogy are a luxury that India cannot aford and that there has to be a
mediating line between ethics of bio-technology and ethics of hunger.
Comparing bio-technology with age-old tradition of fermentation in
India, she tries to strengthen the case for bio-technology. However,
on a practical level her intervention seeks active participation of the

state with a bio-technology related national policy. he authors show
how Shiva contests this position from an eco-feminism perspective.
he gendered nature of technology turns the seed into an inert object
of technological innovation. She argues that agriculture in the regime
of biotechnology has been shited to the laboratory and thousands
years of art of farming and innovations by the farmers stand to be
passed on to scientists in the name of intellectual innovation. Pointing
to the movements led by KRRS against biotechnology, Omvedt argues
that it is a view voiced only by few hundred peasants and intellectuals;
voices of thousands of poor Indian farmers are not at all registered in
this protest. She is of the opinion that Indian farmers have been buy-
ing, using, and rejecting non-proitable hybrid-seeds for quite some
time now. he sudden alarm regarding bio-technology might lead to
a situation where choices might be restricted for the farmers, depriv-
ing them of modern technology. Shiva, in reply to Omvedt, argues
that a terminator technology like bio-technology would essentially
lead to a situation where both producers and consumers will not have
a choice against the monopoly of companies like Monsanto. In view
of the issues raised above, Visvanathan and Parmar conclude with a
demand for a concrete set of institutions around bio-technology to
handle innovation, rights, the commons, and the systemic ‘risk’ that
these new technologies entail.
Avinash (2004) asks what kind of mediation between science as a
cognitive enterprise and the democratic aspirations of society could
be envisaged. He then makes a distinction between ‘science’ on the
one hand, and ‘the sciences’—namely, physics, chemistry, biology—
on the other. ‘Science’ is the institution which sustains organized
research and a social principle which determines what is reliable and
authoritative knowledge. If we look at the contexts where the term’
science’ is used, we notice that these are mostly social contexts rather
than cognitive situations. he sciences, on the other hand, are systems
of knowledge or research traditions quite diverse in their content
and practice. ‘Science’ is not a body of knowledge, sciences—physics,
chemistry and biology—are. He argues that unity of science or the
scientiic method is, at best, a working hypothesis, certainly not an
accomplished fact. ‘Science’ is the ideology which posits a unity of
sciences, determining what reliable and authoritative knowledge is. In
this respect, it functions like the church in the pre-modern era. It is the
institution of ‘science’ which has done the job of mediating between

democratic aspirations and knowledge systems. Avinash observes that
if we accept that there is no ‘invisible hand’ guiding science closer to
truth, that the historical process of development of sciences is open
to determination in a variety of ways, and that science is capable of
developing in a completely wrong direction, then we can also imagine
a transformation of science in harmony with the democratic aspira-
tions of people. he aim is to preserve the vision of cooperative and
rigorous enquiry enshrined in the tradition of science while disman-
tling the cultural authority and world view that frame the practice and
results of sciences.
A similar idea is voiced by Mallick (2009), that expert-led techno-
cratic decision making under the assumption of benevolent state is
certainly not working. Bio-technology with unforeseen risks cannot
be let with the proit-oriented market either. herefore, the author
urges the reader to imagine a new relationship of the roles of state,
market, and society. Haribabu (2004) talks about two kinds of inter-
faces in the case of bio-technology; (a) the birth of bio-technology in
which several disciplines including physics, chemistry, bio-chemistry,
crystallography, and biology came together; and (b) in a subsequent
process of transferring genes, another interface happened as scientiic,
technological, economic, social, cultural, aesthetic, environmental
interests of diferent groups have come to the same plane. Taking into
account the involvement of the various interests and meaning systems,
the author proposes that such a socio-technical process warrants care-
ful planning that takes into account the voices of the marginalized if
technological development is to lead to a just, equal society.
In relation to technology dissemination in rural industrial sector,
Prasad (2005) takes the case of Spirulina that started as an idea in the
laboratory to become a practical reality as a food supplement. he
author observes that while the role of civil society is recognized in
diverse ields like health and education in India, S&T continues to be
seen as the prerogative of the state. He calls for an innovation system
where knowledge travels and gets modiied through various systemic
and institutional interconnections that facilitate a better understand-
ing of slippages and failures in the system of scientiic practice. he
author stresses the importance of civil society initiatives even in S&T,
to promote a relexive scientiic practice and a useful continuum
between basic and applied research in Indian context.
Visvanathan (2006a) interrogates the singular linear narrative of

science even in the Kuhnian approach that denies the contemporane-
ity of non-western sciences of medicine and agriculture connected
to alternative livelihoods and lifestyles. he idea of cognitive justice
is suggested to unfreeze history of science and the politics of other.
Bhaduri (2003) calls for a fresh look from the perspective of sociol-
ogy of science in noting the diference between science and technol-
ogy. Science’s claim to superiority as a knowledge system based on
accurate prediction gets more and more compromised as we move
on to technology, and then from technology to society. Further, the
relationship between scientiic discovery and development of technol-
ogy is nonlinear because economic growth is always an intervening
variable, which in return has signiicant efect on science. Moreover
not all technology is viable; viability is conditioned by complicated
interactions between economic, socio-political forces, and scientiic
resources. herefore this non-linear extension of science, according
to the author, must be backed by reasonable doubt and wisdom that
comes only from interaction of science with other knowledge bases.
Social Proile of Scientists

Govind’s study (2006) seeks to explore through interviews with scien-
tists from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and National
Physical Laboratory (NPL), Delhi, the signiicance of the norms of
science, namely universalism, communism, organized skepticism,
and disinterestedness, in their career as scientists. he book gives
details of the scientist’s perception of their work, career goals, inter-
personal relations, interdisciplinary orientation, choice of research
problems and methods, mode of communicating their research ind-
ings as well as their community life, social views, and religious beliefs.
Govind found that overseas doctorates conferred caste like status,
that economic utility of their research and fashions in the ield guided
their choice of research problems that interpersonal problems were
higher among colleagues in NPL than IISc, and that scientists did not
pay attention to the work of colleagues within the country. Several
studies, as will be seen throughout this review, report that scientiic
communities and networks within the country are weak. A similar
empirical study of the religious beliefs of scientists and science gradu-
ates in India may be found in Gosling’s book (2007) where data from
ive institutions in Kottayam, Bangalore, Madurai, Delhi, purposely

selected to give a mixed sample of scientists from various religions
and caste background, is provided.
Women and Science

Bal (2002) draws attention to discrimination against women in sci-
ence, both as subjects and objects of study, especially in the life scienc-
es. Gupta and Sharma (2003) argue that patrifocal norms in India are
relected both in the formal (rules and regulations for appointments,
promotions, getting project funds, obtaining research scholars etc)
and informal (networking, tokenism, and human groupings) work
climate of academic institutes which they explores in four institutes
of repute: Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi; Indian Institute of
Technology, Kharagpur; Jadavpur University, Kolkata; and University
of Roorkee, Roorkee.
Vyas’ (2003) conference report discusses the gendered nature of
knowledge production, stressing the use of autobiographies and biog-
raphies to explore knowledge production. Poonacha (2005) examines
science policy and points out that constitutional equality has always
been secondary to science policy. While science and technology have
always been considered the means to eradicate underdevelopment and
poverty, the question of constitutional equality of women and other
marginal sections in science has not been raised. Another study of 44
women scientists across diferent departments and institutions also
problematizes the notion that scientiic talent is inherent in a person,
irrespective of external conditions (Subramanian 2007). he study
inds that the career graphs of women scientists with consistently
good academic record, without a break for childbirth or childrear-
ing in their career, however, did not compare well with their male
counterparts, who did not have good academic track records. In fact
it shows women having to publish more and more in order to prove
their commitment and allay perceptions about women’s competence
to come up with original ideas.
Palackal (2007) examines if internet could have a signiicant
impact on the career and lives of women by increasing connectiv-
ity, given the educational and organizational limitations on women’s
education. he initial study in 2000 showed no improvement in the
efect of internet on productivity or professional networking for both
men and women. However, the study was repeated recently in Kerala
and this time the trends were promising. Internet created conditions
of change for women in the domestic context through an interest in
children’s education and the presence of home computers, leading to
a circumvention of gender roles and demand for further education.
Neelam Kumar’s reader (2009) on women and science presents a
collection of eleven articles on colonial and contemporary India. A
large number of articles selected are on medicine, especially history
of medicine. he essay by Abha Sur on women in physics presents
narratives of three women in C.V. Raman’s physics laboratory. Carol
Mukhopadhyaya’s essay looks at the gender gap in science education
in India. She argues that though statistical similarities in the gender
gap in women in science and engineering subjects may be noted in
India and America, theories of gender from USA are not valid for
the Indian situation because causes and cultural contexts are diferent.
Diferent causes and contexts could produce similar patterns and the
author urges that it is imperative to examine this diference carefully.
She explains that educational research in USA and folk explanations
for the gender gap are centered on biological and psychological traits
of men and women linking them to cognitive abilities of women in
mathematical sciences. Academic preferences are attributed to atti-
tudes and socialization. While her statistical study among Indian
women reveals that their explanations focused on social contexts, it
bore no traces of essentialism based on cognitive abilities.
Some essays in the collection (Kumar 2009) deal with diferent
aspects of inequities in the career of women scientists in India, both at
the macro-level and in day to day interactions, decisions, and typiica-
tions. Kumar’s essay notes that equally productive men and women
in the same ield do not achieve higher academic rank in institutions
and are not found in editorial boards and professional networks. If we
went by the number and kind of publications, the study found that
women published more in international journals than men; there was
no diference between women with family and children and those
without in terms of academic performance; at the middle level of
their careers, women were, in fact, more productive than men in the
same ield and the impact of their publications in the ield was greater
according to scientometric data; yet they were not found in higher
positions in the institutions. hey were not recipients of awards and
were not visible in professional bodies as editorial boards. he author
notes that the probability of attaining higher ranks was determined

more by gender than productivity (Kumar 2009).
Sood and Chadda (2010) try to unearth an implicit gender bias and
inequality in All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi.
It has been observed that women are largely found in disciplines of
obstetrics and gynecology (66 per cent); however only 5 per cent of
faculty positions in surgery are occupied by women. here are also
hardly any women in the disciplines of forensic medicine, hospital
administration, orthopedics, neurosurgery, nephrology, gastrointes-
tinal surgery, gastroenterology, oncology, oncosurgery, and nuclear
medicine.
Sur (2008) points out that the history of science is replete with
instances of deep rooted sexist and racist bias. But persistent eforts
of women scientists within science to expose, debunk faulty experi-
ments, intentional maneuvering of data and gaps in methodology,
have changed the situation to a great extent. Such a development
within science provokes the author to re-investigate the outside/
inside boundaries in scientiic discourse. She thinks that it is futile
to see these interventions by women scientists any more as external
critiques of science; rather we have to situate these critiques from
gender, race, and class perspective as pertaining to the very method-
ology of science. he author’s observations are further strengthened
by philosophical inputs from critical realism. Critical realism argues
that science is an amalgamation of both a transitive and intransitive
process. While innate objects that the sciences study have intransitive,
that is given character, science in its argumentation and subsequent
production of knowledge about the intransitive object is inluenced by
transitive social factors like class, gender, or race. Hence the external
social factor and internal logic of science are no longer conceivable as
two separate domains in this philosophical approach. he author tries
to show that such a philosophical approach to science is not a result
of social constructivism, but of democratization from within by social
inclusion.
Scientiic Communities and Science Policies in India

here are notable publications on comparative performance of scien-
tiic communities of the developing world within the framework of a
national government. Early work in this area explored the growth and
constitution of scientiic communities in the countries of the south

(Gaillard, Krishna, and Waast 1997). he authors focus on the phases
by which communities of modern scientists emerge in the countries of
the south and how they get embedded in the regional/national agen-
das. he editors argue that modern S&T in the countries of the global
south have heavily depended on political legitimacy and state sup-
port, especially in the early stages. Against the background of people’s
science movements, challenge of indigenous knowledge, and anti-sci-
ence/development campaigns in the global south, modern science and
technology missions were almost entirely state-driven. In hailand,
princely ruling elites promoted science institutions; in India, Nehru’s
government took the lead, whereas a dictatorial ruler supported
neurosurgical and nuclear physics in one institute in Venezuela. he
editors point out that nature of the regime, visions of the world and
the dominant social groups in a region, all of which they refer to as
‘socio-cognitive blocks’, shape the nature and functioning of the S&T
institutions and disciplinary priorities of a nation. he emergence of
a scientiic community in a nation is marked by indicators such as
common institutional base, steady production in sub ields, systems
of national recognition, full time research structures, and networks
and professional societies of scientists. In the early stage, disciplinary
communities function as kinship groups and networks are based on
the charisma of pioneers. Inter- or multi-disciplinarity and the emer-
gence of exemplary laboratories rather than persons mark the shit
from charismatic science to bureaucratic scientiic research. At this
phase of professionalization, the authors think that brain drain will
also come under control.
Abrol (2004) draws attention to the absence of debate on S&T on
the policy level in India. Surprisingly, all the major political parties
always seem to come to a consensus on questions of science and
technology. In the Science and Technology policy of 2003, a 2 per
cent investment was agreed upon for S&T; but the actuals are far less.
Failure to explore indigenous technological innovation also stems
from the fact that industries were exempted from necessary invest-
ment in their own technology development in the milieu of liberaliza-
tion. he author suggests the following policy level interventions for
S&T development in India: selective import of technology under the
monitoring of apex bodies; the investment in indigenous technologi-
cal innovation; investment in technical and vocational institutions;
reorientation of the publicly funded R&D institutions with better

planning vis-à-vis their interactions with MNCs and people’s needs;
and reaching out to weaker sections of society and encouraging them
to engage with S&T in small-scale enterprises.
Sardana and Krishna’s study (2006) of public sector research insti-
tutions/universities in the ield of biotechnology in Delhi concludes
that instead of triple helix model of industry, university, and state in
India, we have bilateral linkages between university/research institutes
and government because industry has slipped back in this network.
he study also found Indian scientists to be more inclined towards
publication rather than patenting.
Continuing the comparative work on national science policies in
developing countries, Turpin and Krishna (2007) locate the idea of
national innovations systems within the context of internationaliza-
tion of science. he edited volume on science policy and the difusion
of knowledge provides case studies of policies and national innova-
tion systems in Australia, Japan, China, India, hailand, Pakistan,
Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and New Zealand, and lists the
problems and prospects of linking local, national, and international
S&T institutions. Public research systems and universities have to
be well-connected under a strong national science policy in order
to move from imitation to innovation, as in the case of the pharma-
ceutical sector in India. Krishna’s essay in the volume on the Indian
situation sketches the transition from the elite scientists led phase
to one spearheaded by R&D of private companies. He notes that
India’s leading position in publications among developing countries
is taken over by China which has reached 22,061 publications against
India’s 12,127 in 2000. But he sounds optimistic about the fact that
in 2002, 70 per cent of the 300 patents in the pharmaceutical sector
in India were held by Indian irms. Focusing on individual sectors,
he identiies three successful sectors in India—pharmaceuticals, bio-
technology, and sotware industry—to show how S&T policy played a
critical role in building national networks and clusters, reinforced by
growing professional workforce and favourable patenting laws till the
1990s. While brain drain and erosion of high quality workforce from
the country continues to be a problem for S&T in India, suitable visa
policies to attract global talent and state attention are likely to make
a diference. he volume provides elaborate information on the cur-
rent S&T situation in developing countries, and contrary to gloomy
accounts of S&T in the countries of the global south, Krishna’s work

presents a positive appraisal of the situation. His approach favours the
forces of globalization, but under the framework of national systems.
A similar position is taken by Reece and Haribabu (2007) with
regard to the new science of genomics. hey opine that it could
improve agriculture in ‘third world’ countries and thereby solve live-
lihood problems of millions, provided it is introduced in the public
sector. In their paper of 2009, Patra, Haribabu, and Basu investigate
the discussions surrounding nanoscience and nanotechnology and
its ethical, legal, social, and environmental (ELSE) implications. hey
think that it could be beneicial if there is informed decision making
and proper regulatory mechanisms. he changing relations of society
and culture with science brought about by the intellectual property
right regime ater the structural adjustment programme is discussed
by Mallick, Sambit, and Haribabu (2010). Basically these articles call
for the adoption of cutting edge technologies ater working out careful
policies and regulatory mechanisms governing them.
A study of the work culture, lifestyle, gender relations, and family
life of the IT workforce in MNCs in the metropolis may be found
in the edited volume by Upadhya and Vasavi (2008) presenting a
glimpse of the mighty interface of global economy, mediated by a
global technology relected in the magnitude of human interaction
with machines, warranting the label post human society.
Global Capital, Global Science and Local Society:

Cross-Cultural Ethnographies
Pointing to the fact that empirical research of the 1970s on the sci-
ence laboratory paid less attention to politics beyond scientiic fact
production, which could emerge only in the study of national and
transnational networks of laboratories, Prasad (2006) presents his
empirical research on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in India
and the US. He follows particular trajectories and laboratories, show-
ing how they are critically afected by networks of inancial power and
state policies. He argues that scientiic culture in India sufers from
non-collaborative practices while MRI speciically requires such col-
laboration among diferent institutions. herefore he insists on shit-
ing focus from any universal norm and concentrating on global and
national networks of power and administration.
Sunder Rajan’s book (2006) is a contribution to our understanding

of the interconnections between scientiic knowledge and global capi-
tal, better explained by the term ‘technoscience’, used to characterize
the inseparable connection between science and technology, especial-
ly in the case of biotechnology. he author tries to show how genomic
research is over determined by capitalist structures, especially in drug
development which is more capital intensive than for instance, the
ICT sector. he author employs the term ‘biocapital’ to extend Marx’s
theory of commercial capital and showing how political economic
formations set the stage for epistemic emergences: the co-constitution
of life sciences and circulating venture capital, a process by which the
object of life sciences increasingly consists in genomic information
rather than biological substances. Sundar Rajan shows the lip side of
the upbeat biotechnology industry in which global capital circulations
make experimental subjects out of mill workers in India on the one
hand, and consumers of safe and tested drugs of North America on
the other. he ethnographic approach to biocapital that includes tra-
jectories of biotech companies, CEOs, public science institutions, as
well as stories of decision-making, interests, and values of key players
in S&T and science policy in India and the US, presents a layered view
of global capital lows as carried forward by beliefs, discourse, fetishes,
and desires of players. he book shows how huge budgets for S&T
parks, considered as harbingers of development, could be allocated in
states like Andhra Pradesh when farmers’ suicides were shooting up
and how the concept of innovation gets redeined to erase the generic
pharmaceutical patents in India (Sundar Rajan 2006).
In his article of 2007, Sundar Rajan identiies the ethical issue at
stake in the shiting of the phase I clinical trial to India in speciic. In
India the number of healthy subjects agreeing to a clinical trial is large
and volunteer retention is good because of the Indian patient’s faith
in doctors, unlike in USA where this is becoming a problem. While
the rationale behind phase I trials is that a few healthy people agree
to subject themselves to certain hazards for the sake of the common
good and participants recruited into the trial even in the US are less
well-of, the author points out that the American subjects still have
access to the drugs manufactured. But the drugs whose trials are car-
ried out in India are not necessarily distributed or accessible for the
people here, and this is the real ethical issue. he author thus shows
how subjecting people to experimental regimes without concomitant
access to drugs then makes a trial subject not just a high-risk experi-
mental subject, but ‘high risk-labour’ (2007: 80).
In a similar vein, Bharadwaj and Glasner’s study (2009), titled Local
Cells and Global Science, examines the extent of the transnational
movements of tissues, stem cells, and expertise, and it’s the impact on
local and global governance and on the everyday conduct of research.
he book traces the journey of ‘spare’ human embryos in IVF clinics
to public and private laboratories engaged in isolating stem cells for
potential therapeutic application. he discussion also examines the
gender dimension as a potential site for exploitation in the sourcing
of embryonic and other biogenic materials. An empirical, multi-sited
ethnographic study, the book provides a comparative analysis of the
ethical, religious, and social issues in Europe, USA, and organ dona-
tions already prevalent in India. A theoretical engagement with the
similar concerns may be found in Prasad (2009) who examines the
questions of objectivity, science, and ethical responsibility theoretically
through Foucault’s notion of governmentality and politics of biopower.
Mallick (2008) observes that if the previous century was for phys-
ics, this century is going to be the century of biotechnology. And in
so far as this is true, science is going to afect sensitive areas of public
concerns of a society like agriculture and health. Technology transfer
will mean no longer simple sharing of consumer goods but chang-
ing the very structure of survival. In this context, therefore, Mallick
emphasizes on the importance of regulating technology negotiations
and trade through national policies to foster the development of safe
technology.
Indigenous Knowledge and Globalization:

Eco-Feminism Versus Cultural Politics
Studies (Mathur 2003) show how the question of biopiracy becomes
important in light of the fact that 40 per cent patent rights over medi-
cine are getting exhausted by pharmaceutical companies. So biotech-
nology and pharmacogenomics are heavily dependent on developing
their resources on the basis of traditional knowledge base of the plants.
Traditional knowledge by its very deinition is easily accessible in the
public domain but not systematized. To restrict biopiracy and give the
resource generating countries due advantage, an international legal-
moral code has to be prescribed.
In continuation of her crusade against the monoculture entailed in

capital intensive agriculture, Vandana Shiva highlights the violence
unleashed by global capital and technology, aimed at capturing seed,
water, and life forms throughout the world (Shiva and Jafri 2002;
Shiva 2005). Nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and toxic chemi-
cals under the corporatized global economy create a permanent war
mode. Intellectual property laws treat farmers who save their own
seeds as criminals. New property rights over biodiversity and seeds
imposed by TRIPS take the seed beyond the reach of farmers, pushing
them toward debt and suicide. In Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, where
pesticide use is highest in hybrid cotton varieties, debt and farmers’
suicide is also high. Shiva points out the close association between
free trade and famine like conditions in Africa and India. he privati-
zation of the river Ganges by Suez, a ‘global water giant’ (2005: 5) has
led the Indian government to cancel all public water supply schemes.
Price ixing by global agri-businesses rather than government policy
determine market prices of agricultural products in India, which has
been consistently falling. False claims of productivity of GM foods
and biopiracy are discussed with supporting data.
In contrast to Shiva, Baviskar adopting a cultural-politics approach
(2008) takes note of the imperialism and regimes of extraction around
natural resources, but thinks that these regimes cannot function
through brute force alone, rather require mobilization of consensus.
In her view, binaries such as ‘virtuous’ peasants against ‘vicious’ state
and notions of indigenous culture as a pre-formed and readily avail-
able resource may not be sustainable. ‘A cultural-politics of natural
resources treats identities, interests and resources, not as pre-deter-
mined givens but as emergent products of the practices of cultural
production and reproduction’ (Baviskar 2008: 7).
Institutions and Disciplinary Knowledge

Evaluating the structure and functioning of the NIRD from the van-
tage point of its mandate as a mediating agency between state and the
people who are target of plethora rural development policies, hakur
(2004) notes that social scientists in these institutes lack the critical
attitude towards the policy initiatives. Moreover, the mutual relation-
ship between the ministry and the institute, and lack of enterprise in
terms of interlinking the institute with other institutes working in the
same ield, compels the author to conclude that the institute has failed
to create an ‘epistemic community’ working towards bridging the gap
between people and the state.
Critically evaluating the state’s efort to modernize the Madrasas‘
educational system by introducing modern subjects, Alam (2005)
explains that the Madrasa system retains in its core a classical dichot-
omy of ‘ilm’ and ‘fann’. While the truth lies in the Quran and other
religious texts, ‘ilm’ refers to the true knowledge of these texts; on the
other hand, ‘fann’ is the study of all those aspects of knowledge neces-
sary for living in this world. he author argues that modern subjects in
Madrasas become a mere tool to prove religious knowledge as truth,
rather than playing any desired role of critical thinking. herefore,
the author concludes that modernization of the Madrasa system by
mere introduction of scientiic modern subjects will not be fruitful;
rather the core of epistemological ground of Madrasa education must
be displaced.
here is much ground to be covered by science studies in India,
especially on the recurring concern of making science accountable,
for instance, issues at stake in the unilateral decisions of committees
of scientists and administrators on the viability of nuclear power
plants. here is a need to examine emerging scientiic paradigms in
India and the dynamics/politics of innovation. Information technol-
ogy, its implications for sociality, notion of knowledge and dissemi-
nation, the prevalence of social disprivileged sections in the ields
of science and technology, scientists and religion, and structures of
mediation between technology and culture, are some possible areas
for enquiry. Medical pluralism and the growing role of indigenous
medicines in health care have almost always been discussed as culture
studies; it is high time that sociology of science faced the fact of more
than one episteme of the body and examined them as contemporary
phenomenon (Sujatha 2011). New deinitions of the city, disaster and
the relation between waste, obsolescence, scarcity, and subsistence are
essential to widen the horizons of a responsible sociology of knowl-
edge (Visvanathan 2011).
KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY: EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES

While the foregoing section presented substantive themes in the
study of scientiic knowledge, the present section aims at highlighting
methodological concerns in the study of knowledge in relation to the

social as relected in the debates about how to address the relation and
how not to address it. he conventional dualism between the subject
and object of study has given way to more nuanced understanding of
their relationship, both in lay understanding of events and in social
science theorizing. A whole new body of perspectives has come from
various quarters to which this report would be unable to do justice. We
present here selected instances of debates on epistemological issues in
the social sciences to show emergent approaches and categories in the
study of contemporary social concerns.
Something Other Than Social Explanation of Science

A collection of essays on mathematics (2003) make an interesting
attempt to ground the discussion in the discipline of science studies
(not necessarily sociology of science) and to ofer something other
than a social explanation of mathematics, by employing phenomenol-
ogy, philosophy of language, and other such mediations. Sarukkai
(2003) the editor, tries to show how mathematics is one of the most
creative languages made by humans, and that it could be studied as a
language like any other, a culture, and a lived presence. It is a language
which interprets a world of its own, not this natural world which natu-
ral science is destined to do. Noting the efort among social scientists
to mathematicize the social science, the author observes that it should
have been the other way around, namely, socialize mathematics by
elucidating language-character of mathematics.
Sanil’s essay in the collection (2003) is an attempt to join the para-
digms of art and mathematics, despite the hurdles from technology
and from the social science discourse, that consider technology to
be essential to modes of mathematical and aesthetic consciousness.
Citing the work of physicist Chandrasekhar, Sanil argues that art and
science meet not in what they know, but in their modes of knowing.
heir unity lies in the motivations and experiences of the artist and
the scientist, not at the level of the objects they talk about. Given two
versions of a correct formula or solution, the mathematician will
choose the ‘elegant’ one. Chandrasekhar explained that sometimes
the mathematician or the scientist might hit upon a new formula and
holds on to it despite the absence of proof or evidence, simply because
the formula is beautiful. Modern philosophy, however, distinguishes
between aesthetic and scientiic judgments. hus, the scientiic-cog-

nitive judgment is directed at the object of experience and subsumes
the object under a concept. he aesthetic-noncognitive is not directed
at the object, but at our subjective feeling, and does not involve sub-
suming the object under a concept. But ‘phenomenology’ provides
another way to set up a meeting point for art and mathematics. Here,
the work of art is structured by the encounter between the beholder
and the work. he meaning of the work happens through a structure
which emerges from the events of encounters between the reader
and the work. ‘Mathematics through formalization and art through
ictionalization explore the horizontal limits of this existentially tex-
tured world’ (Sanil 2003: 3659). For phenomenology, the common
adversary of art and mathematics is technology, which it sees as mere
application. Various strands of modern critical philosophy, however,
see mathematics as always and in an essential manner determined
by technology. Against this ‘application view’, the phenomenologists
try to retrieve an originary, pre-technological and non-manipulative
relation between theory and practice which existed—or still exists
in subjugated forms—in everyday life or in other authentic modes
of human existence or in art. hey try to free modern sciences from
their deformed relation to practice, established through technol-
ogy, and put them back in touch with areas of life where theory and
practice weave together in uncomplicated and innocent ways. How
do we think the necessary relationship with mathematics without sur-
rendering that relationship itself to the technological? Here the author
takes digital cinema as a point of departure in representational art and
calls for a philosophical exploration into a theory of constitution of
digital cinema and mathematics.
Nanjundiah’s essay in the collection (2003) problematizes the role
of mathematics in biology, which lies between physics and the social
sciences. Unlike physical objects, which could be explained as the
necessary consequences of the operation of natural laws, living matter
is the product of an essentially ad hoc process known as evolution.
What makes living matter special is a history of change. Variation—
rather than ixity—is of the essence. he author shows how eventu-
ally biology is not likely to have a mathematical structure of its own,
like theoretical physics. Pani (2003) examines the role of subjective
judgment even in a highly mathematized economics. If we accept that
subjective judgments in the choice of mathematical models are indeed
made, then it is necessary to address the issues of quality of subjec-

tive judgment. Here the author inds Gandhi’s idea of non-attachment
to goals and the Keynesian concept of partial belief as providing the
measures to improve subjective judgment.
Hegde examines the claims of the foregoing collection (2004) to
ground science studies into something other than social factors, and to
look at mathematics beyond the limitations of logic; that is as a multi-
semiotic system. While he opines that the collection does extend the
frontiers of science studies and interdisciplinary research in science,
a coherent theory of how this is to be carried out is absent. herefore
we do not know how science studies as proposed by Sarukkai could
engender science as an endogenous variable as well as a parameter
and what the distinction between the scope and criterion of science
studies would be. In Hegde’s words, to treat scientiic languages ‘both
as phenomena to be explained within science studies and as param-
eters that deined a ield of action within which ‘scientists’ arrived at
outcomes through transactions’ would be to postulate a contradictory
agenda whose terms of references are not clear’ (2004: 4115).
Perspectives on Body
Sarukkai’s (2002) exploration of the binary of inside and outside
from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological perspective on body could
be a basis for a sociology of the body. Merleau-Ponty see no divi-
sion between the body and the world. Despite this non-dualistic
phenomenological view of the body, Ponty is incessantly referring to
inside/outside, depth, dimensionality in an interchangeable manner.
Sarukkai draws on yoga to show that this reference to inside and out-
side is not essentially a dualistic concept. he author argues that the
inner world is constituted by the awareness of bodily rhythms. Once
one is aware of his/her own dimension, one is aware of the dimension-
ality of the outer world. And this inner world is what is captured in
diferent postures practiced in Yoga.
Bhaduri (2003) shows how philosophy in India has a tendency for
tripartite view of the world, unlike modern-thought, characterized
by ontologically and epistemological binaries. At an intra-individual
level, Indian philosophy argues in favour of three gunas: sattva—the
propensity to knowledge; rajas—the propensity to materiality; tamas—
the propensity towards physical luxury. his corresponds to that in
the extra-individual level in terms of dharma, artha, kama (also with

a fourth phase of moksa). Ater an elaboration of Indian categories in
which the mediation was brought about by introducing the body, the
author traces interesting parallels in western thought which is lately
moving from binary to tripartition. For instance, Foucault discussed
evolution of human sciences in terms of three disciplines—language,
economics, and life sciences. Similar attempts may be found in the
works of Rousseau, Nietzsche, and in Marx’s concept of labour.
Eastern Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science

Sarukkai (2005) notes that perspectives from non-western philoso-
phies are conspicuous by their absence in the philosophy of science in
India and he attempts to bridge the gap by providing insights into sci-
entiic knowledge, method, and veriication from Nyaya and Buddhist
schools of thought. Aimed at showing how these philosophical tradi-
tions would accommodate science, the book sets out their key themes
on scientiic doubt and the process of knowledge, the scientiic
method and its components, namely experiment, the role of signs/
criteria in experiment and the connection between signs, theory, and
experiment. he collection of essays of Chattopadhyaya (2004), under
the title Science, Society, Values and Civilizational Dialogue, analyse
the rich body of literature in Hindu, Islamic, and western religious
traditions, and quantum physics, to discuss perspectives on the larger
unity beyond matter, life, and mind in the idea of consciousness. his,
he hopes, will integrate the fragmentation of cognition, emotion, and
volition, which stands compartmentalized in the dualist views of fact
and value.
Cutting across history and philosophy of science, Habib (2008)
tries to historically locate interaction between Islam and modern sci-
entiic knowledge. he author shows that Islam in the past has been
open to all possible sources of knowledge, and its core philosophical
tradition urges its believers to remain open to all possible source of
knowledge. However, in the present political set up there has been an
efort by the fundamentalists to ‘islamicize science’, showing repeated
antithetical character of the modern science vis-à-vis Islam. he
author denounces such an efort to read Quran in an inward look-
ing and literalist fashion, and highlights the eclecticism ingrained in
Islamic tradition with respect to knowledge.
Philosophy and the Social Sciences

here have been attempts by philosophers (Matilal 1986, 1990;
Krishna 2002; Raghuramaraju 2009) to engage with continuities and
discontinuities in philosophical debates in India by way of coming
to terms with the break and working the way forward, rather than
focusing on the lacuna or gaps. Literary and philosophic explorations
into the concepts of knowledge and society abound research in India.
he edited volumes (I&II) on Indian knowledge systems (Kapoor
and Singh 2003) cover a wide canvas of Sanskritic knowledge sys-
tems, ranging from philosophy, grammar, law physics, mathematics,
disaster management, medicine, to philosophy, sociology, politics,
governance, language, including oral and textual forms of knowledge.
he introduction by Kapoor and Singh ofers an insightful discus-
sion into the distinction between darsana, jnana, vidya, and kala as
roughly representing philosophical system, knowledge, discipline,
and crat, and thereon elaborates the nature, purpose, and outcome
of these pursuits. It also discusses the categorization and structure of
texts such as commentaries, revision, adaptation, and so on, show-
ing the diference between sastra and kavya (technical composition
and imaginative composition). hese discussions have a bearing on
current debates in the philosophy of social sciences about scientiic
versus poetic study of the social. he introduction also highlights
the unique characteristics of oral forms of knowledge and orality as
a mode of cognition in the sense of knowledge stored inside the mind
as opposed to knowledge stored outside the mind (in texts), that have
to acquire societal authority. he authors indicate that a diferent
philosophy of knowledge from the western approach is required to
understand the cognitive processes that underlie oral forms of knowl-
edge (Kapoor and Singh 2003)
Civilization, Society, and Polity

Drawing upon Indian and Western traditions of philosophy, Krishna
(2005) attempts to formulate a model of social change taking civiliza-
tion to be the unit of analysis rather than nation or society. Krishna
derives the correlates of the concept of civilization in the following:
purusharthas (newly created hierarchy of values for contemporary
society); silpa (technology); shastra (organized body of knowledge)
and samskara (procedures by which the natural is transformed into

the cultural). Examining linear and spherical notions of time, the
author points out how linearity itself is a function of shorter and
longer cyclical processes such as the rising and setting of the sun. He
suggests the possibility of considering sphericality and linearity as
complements instead of contraries, because linear processes consists
of smaller cycles of change while a huge sphere entails lengthy, lin-
ear sides. Krishna discusses the possible methods by which history
and anthropology may use this framework for analysis, by focusing
on three levels, namely the life cycles of individuals, cultures, and
civilizations.
Concepts like knowledge, justice, ethics, democracy, and human
rights have attracted considerable attention from the social sciences
and humanities. For instance, the last section of Chattopadhyaya’s
book (2004) examines notions of democracy, rights, and justice in
various traditions, including tribal societies. It is interesting to note
that writings on science in this part of the world tend not to dichoto-
mize aboriginal/savage thought on the one hand and modern science
on the other, as mutually exclusive entities. his is also true of Uberoi’s
article (2003) on civil society which starts with the modern idea of
civil society as the mediator between state and household, and/or
between religion and state, goes on to examine the distinct notion
of civil society in Gandhian thought, and concludes with the mecha-
nisms by which stateless tribal societies achieved self-help, solidarity
and reciprocity through their segmentary systems. he point is that
unlike a whole range of modernist theories that seek to set apart mod-
ern thought represented by science from pre-modern metaphorical
thought, contemporary sociological and philosophical thought in
India looks at societal forms and temporality in a more nuanced man-
ner. Neither is the tribal consigned to the realm of the primitive and
superseded, nor the claim that science is a break from context and
metaphor is accepted.
he edited volume on the classical Indian traditions on contempo-
rary challenges in ethics (Bilimoria, Prabhu, and Sharma 2008) with
a set of 20 essays divided into three parts covering early perspectives
in the Vedas and the Gita, to debates in the Jain and Buddhist texts,
culminating with modern Indian philosophy. he essays explore a
range of concepts—dharma and rationality, life-goals and values,
evil and sufering, and liberation and enlightenment—lowing into
contemporary debates on human rights, animal ethics, ecological

perspectives, tolerance, and social justice.
Transdisciplinary Debate as Methodology

Raghuramaraju (2007) points to the erasure of the dialogical tradi-
tion in philosophy, a crucial aspect of philosophical engagement in
the Indian subcontinent. He culls out three possible areas of debate
from the current writings in social science: the debate between Swami
Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, V.D Savarkar and Mahatma
Gandhi, and between Sri Aurobindo and K.C. Bhattacharyya on state
and society, religion and politics, science and spiritualism respectively.
His reader on Gandhi tries to present various perspectives on Gandhi
in the form of a debate.
Raghuramaraju’s (2006) reader tries to open up a democratic space
through argument and counter argument to explore Gandhi by juxta-
posing diferent readings on Gandhi. Ater debates on the connection
of biography and politics of Gandhi, readings address the question of
cooption of Gandhi by the modernist thematic of nation state. A.K.
Saran, for instance, thought that the inclusion of Gandhi as an object
of study in university system, which simpliied questions and answers
compromising on the radical alternative that Gandhian philosophy
and politics have to ofer. But quite contrary to this, on a plane of
textual analysis, Bhikhu Parekh shows that potential of Gandhism is
much broader and it can successfully thwart an attempt of cooption.
Comparing the egoistic underpinnings and autobiographical writ-
ing as a genre with Gandhi’s own autobiography, Parekh argues that
Gandhi co-opted a western genre and transformed it to meet a diferent
end. Visvanathan contests the lattening of Gandhi and notes Gandhi’s
comfort with the modern microphone and the sewing machine. He
goes on to argue that if he were to be present now, Gandhi would have
never been a member of anti-science lobby. Rather he would have
been a radical scientist who opposed nuclear experiment and stood
in solidarity with ecological movement. Ramchandra Guha’s essay
explicates how contrary to environmentalists’ belief, Gandhi in Hind
Swaraj has no alternative view on the matter. hough he accepts that
movements like Chipko indeed embraced the Gandhian strategy of
non-violence, he does not see Gandhi’s view as providing any alterna-
tive model to these movements. Along with Visvanathan, Guha sees
Gandhi and Nehru as complementing rather than opposing igures

in the political realm. he next section deals with the intersection
of western philosophy with Gandhi’s thought, especially the liberal
tradition. Sumit Sarkar almost sees a parallel between Gandhi’s non-
violence and Mill’s notion of tolerance. But Akeel Bilgrami contests
this parallel and argues that in this conception, there is an embedded
apprehension that truth can never be attained and hence we need to
be tolerant to other views. Bilgrami shows that Gandhi departs from
this liberal tradition; he denies any link between moral judgment and
moral criticism. Moral judgment for Gandhi does not necessarily
mean criticizing other judgments. Gandhi does not believe that moral
judgments should generate principles; rather, he thinks it should act
like an exemplar. his relects in his insistence that a Satyagrahi must
not be critical towards anybody; they by their moral judgment must
act like an exemplar. herefore Bilgrami argues that Gandhian phi-
losophy must be read within his integrity, where politics necessarily
lows from a deeper philosophical commitment.
Raghuramaraju (2010a) critically analyses Bilgrami’s presentation
of Gandhi’s philosophy of moral exemplar as an alternative to western
moral philosophy, without exhausting the possibility of an alternative
in western thinking itself. Raghuramaraju argues that Socrates and
Jesus Christ would qualify as exemplars; their inluence on western
philosophy was enormous and they acted in their lives as exemplars.
As colonialism sought solutions for every problem of the colonized
world in their own world, post-colonialism tries to ind solu-
tions to western problems in the post-colonial world. According to
Raghuramraju, this is where Gandhi would have disagreed the most,
for he never sought the solution for the Britishers’ problem in Indian
civilization like Vivekananda or Aurobindo did. For the author, then,
the ingenuity of Gandhi lies here, not in alternative philosophy of
exemplar.
Madan (2010) views the idea of modernity as having a close but
tense relationship with that of humanism because of its very insistence
on instrumental rationality. He compares Gandhi and Weber on this
count. Firstly, both of them observed that the industrial civilization
guided by instrumental rationality and the belief that human needs
must be multiplied and catered to through technological innovation
is destined to destroy humanity. But Weber thought that instrumen-
tal rationality is an iron cage leading humanity to a dismal future.
Gandhi did not see such progression as historical inevitability. Even

with its marked tone of pessimism reserved for modern industrial
civilization, Hind Swaraj never concludes that this is irreversible or
inal. Gandhi strongly believed in the possibility of resurrecting the
humanist spirit. his perhaps gets best relected in their views on
wealth or capital. Weber traced the inception of capitalism in prot-
estant psycho-social ethos, in which capital/wealth was a means, by
correct use, to salvation. With time, however, capital has become the
end of the modern social order replacing any other-worldly salvation
as the end. Gandhi saw wealth as a source of evil depending on use
or misuse. But he also introduced the notion of trusteeship based on
the ideals of non-possession (aparigraha) and social responsibility
(seva) to suggest that owners may acquire wealth by honest means;
but having acquired with the help of others, they should hold it not
absolutely, but on behalf of society as a whole. In Gandhi’s opinion, if
enterprising people were able to build wealth which is a positive social
resource, then annihilating the capitalist would amount to ‘killing the
goose that laid golden eggs’. Lastly, Madan compares Gandhi and
Weber on their concept of social action. Unlike Gandhi, Weber made
a distinction between seeking salvation of the soul and pursuing poli-
tics as action, but his idea of ‘living for politics’ or politics as a cause,
converges with Gandhi’s understanding of politics as yugadharma.
here is a huge body of scholarship on Gandhian ideas in the past
decade, but we have only highlighted a few here in view of the debat-
ing mode they adopt.
Sociology and Modernity

he question of sociological theorizing in India, as in several post-
colonial societies, tends to hinge on problems associated with
transplanting or drawing upon substantive concepts from the west.
Bhattacharya (2007) argues that it is high time we view the pre-history
of the social sciences in terms of the internal social structural changes
that this region has witnessed due to the civilizational encounter and
historicize concepts and disciplines in that perspective, irrespective of
whether they are transplanted. he volume, Development of Modern
Indian hought and the Social Sciences (Bhattacharya 2007), which is
part of the Project on the History of Science, Philosophy, and Culture
(PHSPC), is an attempt in this direction. In his essay in this collection,
Banerjee (2009) discusses the work of Bengali pundits of the late nine-
teenth century on objects of inquiry that come under modern disci-
plines such as law, economics, and sociology. he pundits came from
a pundit lineage that was well-organized circuits of learning, whose
genealogies could be found in rural Bengal. Banerjee shows that the
pundits engaged with issues like the supply of coolie labour to Assam,
the conditions of living of the peasantry, and the question of rights
to property were favourably disposed to arithmetized facts. hey
expressed themselves in the vernacular press and debated in vicar sab-
has dispersed in interior Bengal. he urban intelligentsia, inluenced
by European ideas on the other hand, wrote in the English media,
unaware of the pundit’s debates on how to conceptualize society and
what constitutes common good. he pundits, on their part, did not
see any crisis from new western ideas which they thought could be
accommodated in their own schemata, for the pundit’s scheme of
knowledge did not acknowledge disciplinary divisions without foun-
dational diferences. Banerjee points out that the relationship between
data and theory and the ability of incremental data to alter theoretical
positions, was alien to the pundit’s methodology. But the idea of social
science as a guide to practice, however, appeared in popular journals
in Bengal as early as 1867 (Ghosh 2011), indicating the close relation
between social thought and social science in the region, whereas in
the Madras Presidency, this relation did not seem to have materialized
(Sujatha 2010). hese observations point to the necessity of mapping
regional trajectories of social sciences.
Singh (2009) distinguishes pre-sociology from sociology in terms
of institutional and epistemological criterion. He identiies the insti-
tutional beginning of sociology in the modern university system that
guaranteed universal, secular education for all. Epistemologically,
Singh marks the onset of sociology from pre-sociology in India at the
point in which it ceased to be reactive, dialectical, and discursive. He
discusses the erudite work of B.K. Sarkar, R. Mookerji, and B.N. Seal as
marking the transition, but stopping short of sociology proper; in that
their writings were reactions to colonial constructions, their usage of
terms like caste, tribe, and nation were based on colonial formulations
or on indological and quasi-historical texts. Further there was little or
no empirical observation in their work, much as the pre-sociological
work of Auguste Comte. Singh traces the coming of sociology on its
own, namely the tendency to relect on societal concerns on one’s own
terms, in the work of pioneers like R. Mukherjee and D.P. Mukherjee,

who drawing upon their knowledge of Indian philosophy, brought
to bear a universalistic approach to social phenomena along with a
scientiic method (Singh 2009). Hegde (2011) also shows how the
proponents of the Lucknow school of sociology strived to conceptual-
ize ‘the Indian social order whose self-explicative activity is a logic at
once of continuity and discontinuity to be conceived of as a ield of
historicity’. his concept of historicity ‘had little to do with our nor-
mal disciplinary conception of history as a haven of ‘facts’ (2011: 53);
it meant a progressivist social reconstruction, an alternative model,
suitable to our essential impulses.
As part of an attempt to conigure modernity and the modes of
experience internal to it, Hedge (2009) examines discourses of moder-
nity in terms of the dilemma’s inherent to reconciling at once, the
cognitive and the historical aspects of modernity. How does one talk
about multiple and alternative modernities in a manner appropriate
to the modern present? Citing Taylor, Hegde diferentiates between
cultural theories that foreground traits associated with speciic cul-
tural forms, such as inwardness, freedom, and the airmation of
ordinary life as the deining aspect of the modern. On the other hand,
‘acultural’ theories highlight universal dormant capacity for thought
and action, irrespective of culture. Taylor advocates that alternative
modernities should, however, be subjected to the normative condi-
tions of modernity itself. Hedge suggests the ‘idea of modernity as
a capacity to create a normativity out of itself ’ (2009: 80), and this
entails irst semantic inquiry into the term modernity, like the work of
Gupta (2005), and an engagement with the implication of this capac-
ity of creating a norm out of itself, for creating a space of agency and
subjectivity, namely the process of ‘individuation’ as a crucial aspect
of modernity.
Emerging Concepts and Approaches in Social Science

he notion of ‘subject’ has lately come to the focus of analysis from
various quarters, brought about by the uneven terrain of citizenship,
poverty, and identity. In fact, one could say that the idea has stirred
the most insightful conceptualizations in this part of the world, whose
depth and scope are enhanced by the complicated socio-political situ-
ation of post-colonial societies.
Subjectivity and Violence

Veena Das’s introduction to the collection of her papers published
ater the 1990s (2007) sets out her theoretical framework on the ques-
tion of an (violent) event as an extraordinary happening inscribed in
the history of a collectivity on the one hand and the subjective experi-
ences of daily life in the sites of violence on the other. It is a contribu-
tion to our understanding of violence and forms of sociality.
Her objective is to explore how sociality is constituted in the midst
of ruptures and violence. She focuses on liminal subjects and experi-
ences at the limit to show how the repair and reconstruction happens
not through transcendental explanations, but by works of repair by a
descent into the ordinary life and its quotidian demands. Contrary to
the understanding of agency as escaping the ordinary, Das’s subject
gains agency in a descent into the ordinary. In some sense, her work
neither its into anthropology of folk metaphysics, nor to the sociol-
ogy of Bordieu’s logic of practice. How are the boundaries between
the event and ordinary life drawn? he event is marked by the failure
of the grammar of the ordinary to address the world-annihilating
violence: the brother trying to igure out whether afection consisted
in killing his sister to save her from another violence, or wait for pro-
tection, or the mother at a loss to explain to herself whether it would
have been safe to keep the baby with her outside the house instead of
having given it to the father inside, to be burnt to death.
he imagination of violence and the circulating stories of violence
pose dangers to cohabitation, but Das notes how these dangers are
domesticated and lived through. he theme of social sufering shows
that the dangers are addressed by acts of repair and hope, like rebuild-
ing the torn web of a spider; the process of healing, however, happens
not through an ascent into the transcendent but in the very realm
of ordinary daily life and oten in the same place. he essays in the
book address issues like time and subjectivity while talking about the
process of healing of the wound inlicted on the self in the trauma of
unanticipated violence, and the experience of compulsive images and
nightmares. he notion of the subject emerges again and again while
talking about the role of memory, the diference between phenomenal
time (subject’s view) and physical time (the diferent pace of objects
in the same place like the lowing river and the lying bird by the riv-
erside) integrated by a subjects presence. he idea of witness to the
violence used by Das is intended to convey the engaging in everyday

life while ‘holding the poisonous knowledge of violation, betrayal,
and the wounded self from seeping into the sociality of everyday life’
(2007: 102).
Subject, Event, and Everyday Life

Chatterji and Mehta’s work (2007) focuses on the riots in Dharavi—an
urban shanty town in Mumbai—during 1992–93, following the demo-
lition of the Babri Masjid. As opposed to both the administrative and
historical view of the event that frame issues against the background
images of nation-state, and the relation between Hindu-Muslim com-
munity in general, Danga, as the riot was referred to by their infor-
mants had its moorings in the local situation with its own dynamic
and could not be reduced to a local/temporal relection of an original
historical event. he authors distinguish between documents and tes-
timony, juxtaposing administrative accounts such as the Sri Krishna
Committee report with narratives. he authors do not agree with
Partha Chatterjee’s concept of political society as something emerg-
ing from the slum dwellers interface with governmental practices as
an illegal sphere where non-legitimate modes of doing is the norm,
which he distinguishes from the legal sphere of civil society that is
associated with discourses of citizenship, popular sovereignty, and
participatory democracy. he authors argue that slum dwellers have
far more stake in issues pertaining to citizenship on a daily basis than
middle-class Indians and the diference between civil and political
society is not non-porous; they may be considered as a ‘juxtaposition
of diferent spheres of experience’ (2007: 166). he authors here are
trying to address the sociological question of how sociality is made
possible at the level of everyday life amidst disturbance and violence,
and regard the community as a more open ended association, forged
in relation to governmental practices rather than a ixed social group.
Political Subject
his brings us to the question of the subject in relation to the state.
Samaddar (2010) tries to map the process through which the political
subject comes into being. For instance, colonialism as a condition has
short-circuited the question of political subject in the Indian context,
whereas the West took centuries to reach the problematic. he emer-

gence of political subject is a process carried forward by several con-
catenations of material circumstances where life is even stripped of
any identities and reduced to bare bodied subject in relation to state
sovereignty.
Experience and Knowledge: Subject, Identity, and Ideas

An important and much debated question that has repeatedly
appeared in feminist and subaltern studies is who is theorizing, best
expressed as question of the relation between lived experience and
knowledge. Rege (1998) had argued for a Dalit feminist standpoint,
drawing upon Dalit women’s experiences, treating it as a cognitive
position rather than tied to Dalit identity. Rege does not argue that
non-Dalit feminists can ‘speak as’ or ‘for the’ Dalit women, but they
can ‘reinvent themselves as Dalit feminists’. he matter, however, does
not settle there as evident from Guru’s article of 2002, and the discus-
sion it has generated on the question of Dalit experience of untouch-
ability and theorizing about it. Arguing for the emancipatory role of
theory for the Dalit, Guru shows that while the caste groups, includ-
ing artisans who had the advantage of leisure, developed intellectual
capacity to relect, the Dalits have been content with poetry which
is emotive. But poetry cannot be a substitute for theory. It is based
on interesting aesthetics and metaphors drawing on rich experience.
Guru shows that metaphor by deinition belongs to the particular. But
poetry has no conceptual capacity and dialectical power to universal-
ize the particular and particularize the universal. ‘By contrast, theory
demands clarity of concept and principles and the open examination
of one’s own action to see whether it is justiied’ (Guru 2002: 5007). He
criticizes Dalit scholarship and Dalit writers who celebrate poetry and
look down upon theory. He asks those who defend their empiricism
whether ‘the Dalits, tribals and the OBCs be forever lost in their unique
experience? Should they not look at theory as a moral responsibility
to accord respectability to their experience … Should they not move
from the immediate to the abstract and restore subjectivity? Should
they not stop making guest appearances in somebody else’s formula-
tions and restore to themselves the agency to relect organically on
their own experience?’ (2002: 5007). Guru further argues that only
Dalits had the moral right to theorize their situation because of their
lived experience of oppression. he non-Dalit attempt to theorize for

the Dalits is either epistemological charity, or the need for new radi-
cal anchor points for Brahminical theory. Non-Dalit theory of Dalits
is outside Dalit experience and remains ‘epistemologically posterior’
(2002: 5009). While this sounds like the Marxist view of theory as a
tool for emancipation, it difers from Marxist views in its categori-
cal assertion that Dalit experience should be the basis of Dalit theory
because theorizing is an ‘inner necessity’ for Dalits (2002: 5009).
While theorizing is also necessary for the proletariat, Marxist thought
has oten been carried forward and disseminated by intellectuals who
were not from the working classes.
Sarukkai (2007) examines the grounds of Guru’s argument, that
on the basis of lived experience, only Dalits have the moral right to
theorize about Dalits. If lived experience has to play an ethical and
epistemological role as the adjudicator of some authenticity, then the
unbreakable relation between the subject who experiences and the
structure and content of the experience as the crux of lived experience
has to be established as against mere experience. hus lived experience
for Sarukkai is not about ‘freedom of experience, but about the lack
of freedom in an experience’ (2007: 4045). Sarukkai then contrasts
Guru’s approach to universalism with Habermas’s position, emerging
from a culture that gave rise to Nazi politics. For Habermas, theory
as a set of categories deining experiences could be universalized in
order to have a collectively shared public communication. his would
necessitate theory to be alienated from experience as in the deperson-
alization of traumatic events and the creation of explanatory struc-
tures. Sarukkai points out that Habermas’s use of theory as a response
to the Nazi experience implies that for him, theory is a means of
distributing guilt (2007: 4047). heory is to relate the epistemologi-
cal with the emotional according to Guru, and this is the challenge
that Guru poses to social science practice in India. While the debate
sets out the most foundational issues in social sciences pertaining to
experience and social theory, it does not refer to the feminist debates
on the very same issues.
Carrying the ideas further, Sarukkai (2009) talks about the phe-
nomenology of touch and untouch, showing how untouchability is the
primary quality of the purest Brahmin in that he cannot be touched
even by his own kin. herefore the Brahmins’ refusal to be touched
by others also entails abstention to touch others. hrough the process
of supplementation, Sarukkai argues that untouchability becomes

a negative fact for the Dalits even as it is a positive value for the
Brahmin. Guru (2009) states that there are only two ways of opening
up the discussion on untouchability: philosophical or archaeological.
He argues that the metaphysics of body and the Indian tradition of
looking at the body constituting of ive elements have the radical pos-
sibility of an egalitarian principle, unlike the classiication of bodies
into pure and impure. However, each element—earth, ire, water, air,
and space—has been incorporated into a hierachized and a ritualized
order that denies their natural connotation for the untouchables. he
author argues in favour of an archaeological approach where the dis-
course is treated not as allegory to be interpreted, but as monuments
to be unearthed.
Raghuramaraju (2010b) highlights the fact that Guru’s manner of
posing a special relation between social science theory and the Dalit
assumes that theory could take natural experience into account. But
it cannot; it is ontologically blind. Poetry and cinema could do what
theory cannot. ‘If Guru’s new proposal is implemented Dalits will join
Brahmins in doing what the latter are already doing. he underlying
limitation of Guru’s proposal is in making a critique of the exclusions
in the present-day social science practice in India while failing to pres-
ent a critique of the nature of social science theory that the Brahmins
are producing’ (2010a: 164). Noting that Sarukkai and Guru seem to
converge on the desirability of a universalist theory, Raghuramaraju is
critical of Sarukkai’s example of Habermas as representing a univer-
salist position. Drawing attention to Habermas’s response that he does
not attach any signiicance to third world socialist struggles, like that
of other self professed euro-centrists like Sartre and a host of white
feminists, Raghuramaraju shows that they do not represent universal-
ism by any means other a closed provincialism. herefore, it may not
be bad ater all for Dalits to take poetry seriously.
Lifeworld, Subject, and Identity: Philosophical Inquiries

he issue of subjecthood and identity has also been raised in other
contexts. Starting with the question of how one delineates identity
from the life-world, Biswas and Suklabaidya (2008) engage with the
notion of lived experience of ethnic communities in the north-east in
relation to state and nationhood. he author’s account of the life-world
of the communities in the north-east is based on a literature review

of few studies on the myths, rituals, and sayings of the communities.
he book speaks about the divergence between the community’s self
perception of their collective experience in relation to the others and
in relation to the discourse of the nation state.
Bilgrami (2010) ponders how a philosophical discussion of the
concept of identity could be ofered. He distinguishes subjective
aspect of identity as the subject’s identiication with the characteris-
tics attributed to selhood from objective aspects of identity in which
the subject does not necessarily identify with the characteristics she
possesses. Bilgrami goes on to discuss the conditions by which some-
thing becomes an identity—imparting characteristic in the subjec-
tive sense. he valuation of a particular characteristic over the other
is to be coherent with other valuations of selhood. How does such
a coherent rationality and identiication coexist? Either the charac-
teristic is intense or unrevisable; the questions then are what sort of
endorsement of a value makes the value relatively unrevisable? How
are the grounds of unrevisability understood by the rationality of the
agent herself? In the objective aspects, Bilgrami chooses to examine
non-biological identity like proletariat that may be possessed but not
identiied/endorsed by the subject, deemed as ‘false consciousness.’
his makes it possible to force subjects to be free. his brings us to
internal and external reasons for identiication and Bilgrami hopes
for the deepest analysis of the relation of politics to moral psychology
must accommodate positive liberty with faith in internal reason and
rationality of the subject (2010: 58).
Patnaik (2009) is critical of the overemphasis on the notion of
the ‘subject’. He observes that bourgeois economics irst inserted the
presumption of ‘rational’ individual, the predecessor of the subject,
into the heart of economics. Marx denounced the whole question
of individual, making collective subjectivity—class—as his point of
departure. Comparing these trends of thought, the author shows that
the bourgeois economics’ reduction of the individual on to the plane
of subject is an ideological construct. hough bourgeois democracy
may be credited for its progressive trait of treating all individuals at
par in polity through the one individual one vote principle, it reduces
the individual to a mere vote. As it is perennially threatened by collec-
tive action, bourgeoisie democracy tries to channelize it through party
system which on the other hand secures perpetuation of the form of
governance along with other state instruments. he author argues that

true politics lies in the realm of the collective; and by identifying with
the collective, an individual realizes freedom and subjectivity.
Revisiting Sanskritization
In a recent article (2005), Shah recovers the core idea of ‘sanskritization’
in order to apply it as a heuristic device to explain recent developments.
Ater initial clariications that the concept draws attention to the divi-
sion of Sanskritic and non-Sanskrit aspect of Indian society, the author
notes that contemporary social processes cut across the caste-hierarchy
as sanskritization unfolds in other areas of life. he new sectarian move-
ments, their temples, god-men/women, and the popularity of religious
books and periodicals invoking sanskritized culture, are testimony to
this process. He reminds the readers of the very dialectics between
sanskritization/westernization, whereby a selected appropriation and
rejection happens in both the ields. In the end, the author tries to
explore relevance of sanskritization in the context of Dalits and tribals.
Observing the continued relationship between these two categories with
Hinduism, he stresses on various developments like anti-untouchability
law in case of the Dalits, or modernizing projects among tribal areas
to show how they are getting incorporated in the Hindu fold, making
sanskritization a relevant concept to map these changes.
Commenting on Shah’s recovery of sanskritization, Singh (2006)
argues that it is a culturological concept with vague connotation,
objecting to the unnecessary importance and relevance given to it
even at the present juncture. His point is there are other approaches,
methods, and concepts which have been developed, independent of
sanskritization. To take a few examples, he shows how class param-
eters are used to study caste, or perspective from modernization,
or other institutions like panchayati raj and land reforms to explain
social change. He notes that sanskritization amounts to equating
Indian society to Hindu society. hough he welcomes Shah’s call to
study recent developments in sectarian movements and changes in
Dalit and tribal society, the author dismisses any efort to foreclose
such study with a pre-conceived notion of Hindu India having san-
skritization as the model.
In replying to Singh’s comment, Shah (2006) clariies that san-
skritization is indeed a heuristic rather than analytic concept like
most concepts of Weber and Durkheim. However, it is many sided

and is not restricted only to questions related to caste. He urges that
one needs to pay close attention to the dichotomy of Sanskritic/non-
Sanskritic religion and study non-Sanskritic practices to understand
the very relevance of sanskritization. Shah then picks up the question
of ‘hinduization’ and argues that he had always maintained the plural-
ity of Indian Hindu tradition; the question is about the direction of
change. Shah asks whether it is not the case that Sikhism has incorpo-
rated some non-Sanskritic sources and ater partition has shed certain
Islamic aspects, and adopted some Sanskritic practices.
Private and the Public

he question of concepts and their sensitivity to contexts also emerges
in Madan’s treatment of the public and private categories (2006).
Ater an exposition of the varying connotations of the distinction
in western sociological thought, the author enters into a discussion
of the Hindi terms and meanings for the same: private—ashaskiya
(non-governmental), asarvajanika (non collective), niji (personal),
vyaktigata (individual), gopniya (secret), and so on—in contrast to
public—shaskiya (governmental), samuhika (collective), and prakata
(explicit). Showing how contemporary Hindi literature retains the
English terms public and private instead of translating them, Madan
draws attention to this kind of inter-linguistic communication emerg-
ing from the inability to capture the distinct sense in which the terms
private and public are used in European novels. In order to overcome
the ethnographic dazzle over the contextual diversity of the terms
public and private, the author engages with the connotations of the
same in Japanese, German, and Classical Greece cultures, concluding
that the search is intended to enable a better view of the particular in
the light of the many ‘rather than under the shadow of its own torch’
(2006: 374).
Folk and Popular Knowledge: Politics of Delineation

Chatterji’s article (2003) delineates the category of the folk and its
usage in diferent discourses. Folk is generally used to describe com-
munities where face to face relations predominate. But this meaning
of the term is relevant when it is posed against the term civilization
that signiies expanse and universalism. In relation to tribe, however,

folk loses it connotation of boundedness and signiies peasant cul-
ture. hus Chatterji explains that the term acquires meaning within a
theoretical perspective and is a way of ‘establishing a relationship of
alterity’ (2003: 567). he author then examines the trajectory of the
term folk in relation to the emergence of nation-states and race, as in
Nazi Germany. She then traces the association of folklore with prole-
tarian culture in Soviet Russia, where folk poetics was used to create
a mass culture. But mass culture progresses with pre-given themes
tied to quite diferent modes of social life—folklore that is embed-
ded in a social context and continuous practice—while mass culture
is alienated from the audience it caters to. he essay then deals with
the discourses in colonial India, which difered signiicantly from
the European discourses on folk. In colonial Bengal the folk came to
denote a particular stance to the world associated with certain forms
of social life rather with nationalism. In the Indian context, the term
folk was also released from the label traditional by pointing out that
folk categories were open, responding to new inputs and therefore
non-traditional. he author points out that modern folkloristics
institutes false distinctions by constituting certain aspects of culture
as folklore. A better way would be for folkloristics to be the study of
non-dominant cultures implicated in the process of modernity itself.
Rege (2002) observes that most of the available frames for doing
cultural studies focus invariably on popular culture, understood
largely as mass mediated culture and, on the negotiations involved in
the new forms of cultural consumption. In her detailed treatment of
the term ‘popular’, she shows that popular has so completely become
synonymous with the ‘mass mediated’ forms that even the cultures
of resistance of the marginalized are most oten conceived only in
their mass mediated forms. he popular, caste-based forms have no
place in this kind of cultural studies. Labour concerns in the cultural
are also completely absent as the political outside of cultural practice
and political society beyond the particularities of cultural diferences.
Looking at caste-based forms of performance such as the lavani and
the powada in the Maratha region, Rege argues that struggles over
cultural meanings are inseparable from struggles of survival. Powada,
the ballad of bravery, was the man’s genre and lavani, with spiritual
or erotic themes, was the woman’s. Tracing the trajectory of these
genres embedded in the recruitment of female slave labour during
the Peshwa’s rule in the sixteenth century till the days of the modern
Marathi theatre, the author explains the changes in the genres in terms
of lyrics, situation, and audience. he paper handles genre, gender,
and caste simultaneously, showing how caste-based cultural practices
with their roots in the social and material conditions of the Dalits
continues to relate to everyday lives, struggles, and labour of diferent
classes. Some of these forms have been marginalized or selectively
absorbed by bourgeois forms of art and entertainment, even as the
category of the popular lives on. Rege concludes that the conceptu-
alization of popular culture cannot be limited to social histories of
texts and audiences. ‘It requires that histories of the caste- and region-
based popular forms, capital and politics, the struggles over meanings
and resources be traced and analysed’ (2002: 1046).
***
Instead of assessing the scholarship in India against putative ‘univer-

sal’ trends in the discipline, the aim of the review has been to high-
light the rich body of scholarship coming from humanities and social
sciences in India on a common set of conceptual issues. It would be
important to collate the insights from diverse endeavours, character-
ized by a search for concepts to address issues that we are confronted
with today. Creative pluralization or relational conceptualization (Giri
2005: 6) could be the most fruitful way to evolve a universal body of
social science knowledge from this part of the world.
When we started this work, we intended to do justice to regional
trends and contributions apart from covering key and frequent con-
tributors in the ield. But we realized that availability, accessibility and
visibility of published work are conditioned by many intervening fac-
tors over which we have little control. Several important studies may
have escaped our attention in this report; their absence here has little
to do with their merit as with our oversight.
REFERENCES
Abrol, D. 2004. ‘Science and Technology: Current Imperatives’, Social Scientist,
32(7/8): 76–84.
Alam, A. 2005. ‘Science in Madrasas’, Economic and Political Weekly, 30(18):
1812–15.
Alavi, S. 2007. Islam and Healing: Loss and Recovery of and Indo-Muslim Medical
Tradition 1600–1900. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Apfel-Marglin, F. 2005. ‘Knowledge Systems’ in V. Lal and A. Nandy (ed.), he
Future of Knowledge & Culture: A Dictionary for the 21st Century, pp. 138–44.
New Delhi: Penguin Books India.
Attewell, G.N.A. 2007. Reiguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial
India. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan.
Aurora, G.S. and C. Bhat. 2000. ‘Science, Technology and Development’, in M.S.
Gore (ed.), hird Survey of Research in Sociology and Social Anthropology,
Volume I, pp. 1–28. New Delhi: ICSSR and Manak Publications.
Avinash. 2004. ‘Sciences and Society: What Kind of Mediation?’, Economic and
Political Weekly, 39(6): 538–40.
Bal, V. 2002. ‘Gendered Science: Women as Practitioners and as Targets of
Research’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37(52): 5163–7.
Banerjee, P. 2009. ‘Interlocution with Social Studies and Society as the Object of
Enquiry: Language of Traditional Pundits in Nineteenth Century Bengal’, in
S. Bhattacharya (ed.), Development of Modern Indian hought and the Social
Sciences, pp. 69–105. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Basu, A. 2004. ‘Emergence of a Marginal Science in a Colonial City: Reading
Psychiatry in Bengali Periodicals’, he Indian Economic and Social History
Review, 41(2): 103–42.
Baviskar, A. 1995. In the Belly of the River. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. (ed.). 2008. Contested Grounds: Essays on Nature, Culture, and Power.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bhaduri, S. 2003. ‘Beyond Binaries: he Category of Body and Ontological
Tripartition’, Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences (Journal of IIAS,
Shimla), X(1): 65–86.
Bhaduri, S. 2003. ‘Science, Society, and Technology—hree Cultures and Multiple
Visions’, Journal of Science Education and Technology, 12(3): 303–8.
Bharadwaj, A. and P. Glasner. 2009. Local Cells, Global Science. New Delhi:
Routledge.
Bhattacharya, S. (ed.). 2007. Development of Modern Indian hought and the
Social Sciences. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Bilgrami, A. 2006. ‘Gandhi’s Integrity: he Philosophy Behind Politics’, in A.
Raghuramaraju (ed.), Debating Gandhi: A Reader, pp. 248–67. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
———. 2010. ‘Note Towards Deinition of Identity’ in J. Sharma and A.
Raghuramaraju (eds), Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge and the
Plurality of Cultures, pp. 43–59. New Delhi: Routledge.
Bilimoria, P., J. Prabhu and R. Sharma. 2008. Indian Ethics: Classical Traditions
and Contemporary Challenges. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Biswas, P. and C. Suklabaidya. 2008. Ethnic Life-Worlds in North-East India: An
Analysis. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Blackburn, S. 2006. Print, Folklore, and Nationalism in Colonial South India. New
Delhi: Permanent Black.
Bloor, D. 1976. Knowledge and Social Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1994. Sociology in Question. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Chakrabarti, P. 2004. Western Science in Modern India: Metropolitan Methods,
Colonial Practices. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Chattopadhyaya, D.P. 1977. Science and Society in Ancient India. Calcutta:
Research India Publication.
———. 2004. Interdisciplinary Studies in Science, Society, Value and Civilizational
Dialogue. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Chatterjee, P. 1995. Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal.
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Chatterjee, P. and A. Ghosh. (eds). 2002. History and the Present. New Delhi:
Permanent Black.
Chatterji, R. 2003. ‘he Category of the Folk’, in V. Das (ed.), he Oxford Indian
Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, pp. 567–97. New Delhi:
Chatterji, R. and D. Mehta. 2007. Living with Violence: An Anthropology of Events
and Everyday Life. New Delhi: Routledge.
Das, V. (ed.). 2003. he Oxford Indian Companion to Sociology and Social
Anthropology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Dharampal. 1971. Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some
Contemporary European Accounts. New Delhi: Impex India.
Dhumatkar, A.S. 2002. ‘Forgotten Propagator of Science: Kolhapur’s Balaji
Prabhakar Modak’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37(48): 4807–16.
Gaillard, J., V.V. Krishna, and R. Waast. 1997. Scientiic Communities in the
Developing World. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Ghosh, A. 2011. ‘he Public Culture of Sociology in Calcutta’, in S. Patel (ed.),
Doing Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations, and Practices, pp. 29–46. New
Giri, A.K. 2004. ‘Relections and Mobilizations: Development as Global
Responsibility’, Sociological Bulletin, 53(1):72–93.
———. 2005. Creative Social Research: Rethinking heories and Methods. New
Delhi: Vistaar Publications.
Gosling, D. 2007. Science and the Indian Tradition. London and New York:
Routledge.
Govind, M. 2006. Sociology of Science. New Delhi: Anmol Publications.
Gupta, D. 2005. Learning to Forget: he Anti-Memoirs of Modernity. New Delhi:
Gupta, N. and A.K. Sharma. 2002. ‘Women Academic Scientists in India’, Social
Studies of Science, 32(5/6): 901–15.
———. 2003. ‘Gender Inequality in the Work Environment at Institutes of Higher
Learning in Science and Technology in India’, Work Employment Society,
17(4): 597–616.
Guru, G. 2002. ‘How Egalitarian Are the Social Sciences in India?’, Economic and
———. 2009. ‘Archaeology of Untouchability’, Economic and Political Weekly,
44(37): 49–56.
Habib, S.I. 2004. ‘Viability of Islamic Science: Some Insights from 19th Century
India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 39(23): 2351–5.
———. 2008. ‘Modern Science and Islamic Essentialism’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 43(36): 55–61.
——— and D. Raina. 2007. Social History of Science in Colonial India. New Delhi:
Haraway, D.J. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: he Reinvention of Nature.
New York: Routledge and London: Free Association Books.
Haribabu, E. 2004. ‘Interests and Meanings: he Socio-Technical Process of
Application of Biotechnology to Crop Improvement in India’, International
Journal of Biotechnology, 6(1): 65–78.
Hegde, S. 2004. ‘Reframing Science Studies’, Economic and Political Weekly,
39(36): 4114–16.
———. 2009. ‘Reassembling Modernity: hinking at the Limit’, Social Scientist,
37(9–10): 66–88.
———. 2011. ‘Searching for Bedrock: Contending with the Lucknow School and
its Legacy’, in S. Patel (ed.), Doing Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations,
and Practices, pp. 47–71. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Joseph, G.G. 2000. he Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
———. 2009. A Passage to Ininity: Medieval Indian Mathematics from Kerala and
Its Impact. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Kapoor, K. and A.K. Singh. (eds). 2003. Indian Knowledge Systems, Volumes I–II.
Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Knorr-cetina, K. 1981. he Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the
Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Krishna, D. 1996. The Problematic and Conceptual Structure of Classical Indian
Thought about Man, Society, and Polity. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
———. 2002. ‘Development of Indian Philosophy from 18th Century Onwards:
Classical and Western’, in History of Science, Philosophy and Culture, Volume
X, Part 1. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilization.
———. 2005. Prolegomena to Any Future Historiography of Cultures and
Civilizations. New Delhi: Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and
Culture, Centre for Studies in Civilizations.
Krishna, V.V. 2007. Dynamics in Sectoral Systems of Innovation: Indian
Experience in Sotware, Biotechnology, and Pharmaceuticals’, in T. Turpin and
V.V. Krishna (eds), Science, Technology Policy and the Difusion Knowledge, pp.
193–234. London: Edward Elgar.
Kuhn, T. 1962. he Structure of Scientiic Revolutions. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Kuhn, T. 2000. ‘he Road since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970–93, with
an Autobiographical Interview’, J. Conant and J. Haugeland (eds). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Kumar, D. 2004. ‘Emergence of ‘Scientocracy’: Snippets from Colonial India’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 39(35): 3893–8.
Kumar, N. 2009. Women and Science in India: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
Latour, B. 1979. Laboratory Life: he Social Construction of Scientiic Facts. Los
Angeles: Sage Publications.
———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-heory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Madan, T.N. 2006. ‘he Private and the Public: Considerations of Cultural
Context’, in T.N. Madan (ed.), Images of the World: Essays on Religion,
Secularism, and Culture, pp. 354–78. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2010. ‘Moral Choices: Gandhi and Weber on Capitalism and Conscience’,
in J. Sharma and A. Raghuramaraju (eds), Grounding Morality: Freedom,
Knowledge, and the Plurality of Cultures, pp. 220–31. New Delhi: Routledge.
Mallick, S. 2008. ‘Changing Practices in/of Science: he Context of Intellectual
Property Rights in India’, Scientiic Commons, 3: 1–12.
———. 2009. ‘he Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in India’,
Social Scientist, 37(3): 52–63.
———, E. Haribabu, and S.G. Kulkarni. 2005. ‘Debates on Science and Technology
in India: Alliance Formation between the Scientiic and Political Elite during
the Inter-War Period’, Social Scientist, 33(11/12): 49–75.
——— and E. Haribabu. 2010. ‘he Intellectual Property Rights Regime and
Emerging Institutional Framework of Scientiic Research: Responses from
Plant Molecular Biologists in India’, Asian Journal of Social Science, 38:
79–106.
Mathur, A. 2003. ‘Who Owns Traditional Knowledge?’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 38(42): 4471–81.
Matilal, B.K. 1986. Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian heory of Knowledge.
———. 1990. he Word and the World: India’s Contribution to the Study of
Language. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Mukherjee, R. 1960. he Philosophy of Social Science, London: Macmillan and Co.
———. 1965. he Sociologist and Social Change in India Today. New Delhi:
Prentice Hall of India.
Mukherji, D.P. 1958. Diversities. New Delhi: Peoples Publishing House.
Nandy, A. 1980. Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian
Scientists. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.
———. 2004. Bonire of Creeds: he Essential Ashis Nandy. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2006. Talking India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nanda, M. 2004. Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and
Hindu Nationalism in India. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Nanjundiah, V. 2003. ‘Role of Mathematics in Biology’, Economic and Political

Weekly, 38(35): 3671–7.
Narasimha, R. 2003. ‘Axiomatism and Computational Positivism: Two
Mathematical Cultures in Pursuit of Exact Sciences’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 38(35): 3650–6.
Palackal, A., M. Anderson, B.P. Miller, and W. Shrum. 2007, ‘Internet Equaliser?
Gender Stratiication and Normative Circumvention in Science’, Indian
Journal of Gender Studies, 14(2): 231–57.
Pani, N. 2003. ‘On Subjectivity in Mathematical Economics’, Economic and
Patel, S. 2011. ‘Social Anthropology or Marxist Sociology? Assessing the
Contesting Sociological Visions of M.N. Srinivas and A.R. Desai’, in S. Patel
(ed.), Doing Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations, and Practices, pp.
72–102. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Patnaik, P. 2009. ‘he Individual as a Subject’, Social Scientist, 37(9-10): 5–15.
Patra, D., E. Haribabu, and P.K. Basu. 2009. ‘Nanoscience and Nanotechnology:
Ethical, Legal, Social and Environmental Issues’, Current Science, 96(5):
651–7.
Poonacha, V. 2005. ‘Uncovering the Gender Politics of Science Policies and
Education’, Economic and Political Weekly, 40(3): 241–7.
Prasad, A. 2006. ‘Beyond Modern vs. Alternative Science Debate: Analysis of
Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research’, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(3):
219–27.
———. 2009. ‘Capitalizing Disease: Biopolitics of Drug Trials in India’, heory
Culture Society, 26(5): 1–29.
Prasad, S. 2005. ‘Science and Technology in Civil Society: he Innovation
Trajectory of Spirulina Algal Technology’, Economic and Political Weekly,
40(40): 4363–72.
Puddephat J.A. and N. Maclaughlin. 2007. ‘he Sociology of Knowledge’, in C.D.
Bryant and D.L. Peck (eds), 21st Century Sociology: A Reference Handbook,
Volume 2, pp. 239–48. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Raghuramaraju, A. (ed.). 2006. Debating Gandhi: A Reader. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2007. Debates in Indian Philosophy: Classical, Colonial, and Contemporary.
———. 2009. Enduring Colonialism: Classical Presences and Modern Absences in
Indian Philosophy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2010a. ‘Forgotten Moral Exemplars of the West: A Critique of Akeel
Bilgrami’s Projection of Gandhi’, in J. Sharma and A. Raghuramraju. (eds),
Grounding Morality: Freedom, Knowledge, and the Plurality of Cultures, pp.
183–97. New Delhi: Routledge.
———. 2010b. ‘Problematizing Lived Dalit Experience’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 45(29): 162–7.
Raina, D. 2003. Images and Contexts: Historiography of Modernity in India. New
Raina, D. and S.I. Habib. 2004. Domesticating Modern Science: A Social History of
Science and Culture in Colonial India. New Delhi: Tulika Books.
Raj, K. 2006. Relocating Modern Science: Circulation and the Construction of
Scientiic Knowledge in South Asia and Europe. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Reece, D.J. and E. Haribabu. 2007. ‘Genes to Feed the World: he weakest link?’,
Food Policy, 32: 459–79.
Rege, S. 1998. ‘Dalit Women Talk Diferently: A Critique ‘Diference’ and Towards
a Dalit Feminist Stand Point Position’, Economic and Political Weekly, 33(44):
39–46.
———. 2002. ‘Conceptualizing Popular Culture: ‘Lavani’ and ‘Powada’ in
Maharashtra’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37(11): 1038–48.
Roy, K. and C. Gupta. (ed.). 1989. Essays in Social and Political Philosophy. New
Delhi: Indian Council of Philosophical Research.
Samadar, R. 2010. Emergence of the Political Subject. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Sanil, V. 2003. ‘Mathematical Idea and Cinematic Image’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 38(35): 3657–61.
Saran, A.K. 1998. Sociology of Knowledge and Traditional hought. Varanasi:
Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies.
Sardana, D. and V.V. Krishna. 2006. ‘Government, University and Industry
Relations: he Case of Biotechnology in the Delhi Region’, Science, Technology
& Society, 11(2): 351–79.
Sarukkai, S. 2002. ‘Inside/Outside: Merleau-Ponty/Yoga’, Philosophy East and
West, 52(4): 459–78.
———. 2003. ‘Perspectives on Mathematics’, Economic and Political Weekly,
38(35): 3648–9.
———. 2005. Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. New Delhi: Project
of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, Centre for Studies in
Civilizations.
———. 2007. ‘Dalit Experience and heory’, Economic and Political Weekly,
42(40): 4043–8.
———. 2009. ‘Phenomenology of Untouchability’, Economic and Political Weekly,
44(37): 39–48.
Shah, A.M. 2005. ‘Sanskritization Revisited’, Sociological Bulletin, 54(2): 238–49.
———. 2006. ‘Some Further houghts on Sanskritization: Response to Nirmal
Singh’s Rejoinder’, Sociological Bulletin, 55(1): 108–17.
Sharma, A.K. 2003. ‘Patrifocal Concerns in the Lives of Women in Academic
Science: Continuity of Tradition and Emerging Challenges’, Indian Journal of
Gender Studies, 10: 279–305.
Sharma, J. and A. Raghuramaraju. (ed.). 2010. Grounding Morality: Freedom,
Knowledge, and the Plurality of Cultures. New Delhi: Routledge.
Shiva V. 2005. Globalization’s New Wars: Seed, Water, and Life Forms. New Delhi:
Women Unlimited.
——— and A. Jafri. 2002. ‘Seeds of Suicide: he Ecological and Human Costs
of Globalization of Agriculture’, in V. Shiva and G. Bedi (eds), Sustainable
Agriculture and Food Security: he Impact of Globalization, pp. 169–86. New

Delhi: Sage Publications.
Singh, N. 2006. ‘Some Comments on ‘Revisited Sanskritization’, Sociological
Bulletin, 55(1): 108–17.
Singh, Y. 1986. Indian Sociology: Social Conditioning and Emerging Concerns. New
Delhi: Vistaar Publications.
———. 2004. Ideology and heory in Indian Sociology. New Delhi: Rawat
Publications.
———. 2009. ‘Pre-sociology of India: Ideology and Substance’, in S. Bhattacharya
(ed.), Development of Modern Indian hought and the Social Sciences, pp.
159–83. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sivaramakrishnan, K. 2006. Old Potions, New Bottles: Recasting Indigenous
Medicine in Colonial Punjab 1850–1945. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Sood, M. and R.K. Chadda. 2010. ‘Women in Medicine: A Perspective’, Indian
Journal of Gender Studies, 17: 277–86.
Srinivasan, S. 2009. ‘he Clinical Trials Scenario in India’, Economic and Political
Weekly, 44(35): 29–33.
Subramanian, J. 2007. ‘Perceiving and Producing Merit: Gender and Doing
Science in India’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14: 259–85.
Sujatha, V. 2010. ‘Disciplinary Trajectories and Social Trends: Sociology and Social
hought in Tamil Nadu’, in M. Chaudhuri (ed.), Sociology in India: Intellectual
and Institutional Practices, pp. 33–57. New Delhi: Rawat Publications.
———. 2011. ‘Innovation within and between Traditions: Dilemma of Traditional
Medicine in Contemporary India’, Science, Technology and Society, 16(2):
191–213.
Sunder Rajan, K. 2006. Biocapital: he Constitution of Postgenomic Life. London:
Duke University Press.
———. 2007. ‘Experimental Values: Indian Clinical Trials and Surplus Health’,
New Let Review, 45: 67–81.
Sur, A. 2008. ‘Persistent Patriarchy: heories of Race and Gender in Science’,
Economic and Political Weekly, 43(43): 73–8.
hakur, M.K. 2004. ‘National Institute of Rural Development: A Study of an
‘Epistemic Community’’, Sociological Bulletin, 53(3): 347–73.
he M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. 2002. ‘he Protection of Plant
Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act: From Legislation to Implementation, A
Report’, Current Science, 82(7): 778–80.
Turpin, T. and V.V. Krishna. (eds). 2007. Science Technology Policy and the
Difusion of Knowledge: Understanding the Dynamics of Innovation System in
Asia Paciic. London: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Uberoi, J.P.S. 2002. he European Modernity: Science, Truth and Method. New
———. 2003. ‘Civil Society’, in V. Das (ed.), he Oxford Indian Companion to
Sociology and Social Anthropology, pp. 114–33. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Upadhya, K. and Vasavi. (eds). 2008. In an Outpost of the Global Economy: Work
and Workers in India’s Information Technology Industry. New Delhi: Routledge.
Varma, R. 2001. ‘People’s Science Movements and Science Wars?’, Economic and
Visvanathan, S. 1997. Atomic Physics: he Career of an Imagination in Carnival of
Science. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2001. ‘Democracy, Governance, and Science: Strange Case of the Missing
Discipline’, Economic and Political Weekly, 36(39): 3684–8.
———. 2002. ‘he Future of Science Studies’, Futures, 34: 91–101.
———. 2003. ‘Cultural Encounters and the Orient: A Study in the Politics of
Knowledge’, Diogenes, 50: 69–82.
———. 2006a. ‘Alternative Sciences’, heory, Culture and Society, 23(2-3): 164–9.
———. 2006b. ‘Reinventing Gandhi’ in A. Raghuramaraju (ed.), Debating Gandhi:
A Reader, pp. 195–222. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
———. 2007. ‘he Rise of Industrial Research’ in S.I. Habib and D. Raina (eds),
Social History of Science in Colonial India, pp. 291–325. New Delhi: Oxford
University Press.
———. 2011. ‘Scripting Sociology of Science: Between Knowledge and Democracy
in India’, in S. Patel (ed.), Doing Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations, and
Practices, pp. 290–313. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
——— and C. Parmar. 2002. ‘A Biotechnology Story: Notes from India’, Economic
and Political Weekly, 37(27): 2714–24.
Vyas, A. 2003. ‘Empowering Women through Information and Knowledge’,
Gender Technology and Development, 7: 443–6.
Zammito, J. 2007. ‘What’s ‘New’ in the Sociology of Knowledge’, in S.P. Tuner and
M.W. Risjord (eds), Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, pp. 791–857.
Oxford: Elsevier.

ICCSR: Knowledge, Science, and Society

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ICCSR: Knowledge, Science, and Society

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

ICCSR: Knowledge, Science, and Society

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

3

Knowledge, Science, and Society

Knowledge, science, and society constitute the subject matter of

the study of scientiic knowledge and technology. he position taken

however, not taken up seriously by the later generations of sociolo-

SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY

social needs, and in managing natural resources. he trend report

in question’ (Hegde 2004: 4115). Lately the term technoscience is

Social History of Science in Colonial India

From Transmission to Translation

inluenced the idea of pre-modern medical sciences in India and their

Historiography of Science in India

and not under the ministries of culture or education or HRD. Raina

Back to Metropolis and Periphery Theory of Science

Polycentric View of the Emergence of Science

companies that engaged hydrographers, medics, astronomers, and

tory of science and the author believes it continues to do so. Joseph

Sociological Approaches to the Trajectory of Modern Science in

space to psychiatry as a part of popular science. Ashis Nandy’s early

Social Theory of Science

short of exploring the problematic relation between truth and reality.

the atermath of the destruction and sufering caused by the bomb in

between human and non-humans exempliied in the violence intrin-

Science and the Politics of the Self

epistemic/laboratory practices of science. On the other hand, Prasad

Science as Progressive Episteme

in green revolution areas of India are attributable to widespread and

The Social Over the Cultural: Modernity Irrespective of Science

institutions based on the achieved characteristics and an accountable

Science and Democracy

the strands of thought have a common intersecting point in that,

on a practical level her intervention seeks active participation of the

institution of ‘science’ which has done the job of mediating between

Visvanathan (2006a) interrogates the singular linear narrative of

Social Proile of Scientists

ive institutions in Kottayam, Bangalore, Madurai, Delhi, purposely

Women and Science

notes that the probability of attaining higher ranks was determined

Scientiic Communities and Science Policies in India

constitution of scientiic communities in the countries of the south

reorientation of the publicly funded R&D institutions with better

accounts of S&T in the countries of the global south, Krishna’s work

Global Capital, Global Science and Local Society:

Sunder Rajan’s book (2006) is a contribution to our understanding

Indigenous Knowledge and Globalization:

In continuation of her crusade against the monoculture entailed in

Institutions and Disciplinary Knowledge

KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY: EPISTEMOLOGICAL ISSUES

methodological concerns in the study of knowledge in relation to the

Something Other Than Social Explanation of Science

between aesthetic and scientiic judgments. hus, the scientiic-cog-

made, then it is necessary to address the issues of quality of subjec-

the extra-individual level in terms of dharma, artha, kama (also with

Eastern Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science

Philosophy and the Social Sciences

Civilization, Society, and Polity

and samskara (procedures by which the natural is transformed into

contemporary debates on human rights, animal ethics, ecological

Transdisciplinary Debate as Methodology