This book is a comprehensive study of historical sociology and its development, especially in the Indian context. It looks at the works of Indian sociologists and analyses their approaches in terms of book-view (normative) and field-view (descriptive) history. The volume: critically appraises reports of empirical surveys conducted during early colonial rule including those by H. T. Colebrooke, Francis Buchanan, William Adam; engages with the works of sociologists such as M. N. Srinivas, Ramkrishna Mukherjee, Louis Dumont, Nicholas Dirks, Bernard Cohn, Yogendra Singh, D. N. Dhanagare, A. M Shah, T. K. Oommen, among others; and shows how historical perspective has been adopted in understanding aspects of Indian society villages, castes, traditions, socio-cultural change, education, peasants and their movements, etc.Presenting an alternative idea of social reality, this book will deeply interest students and scholars of sociology, social theory, and social history.
This book is a comprehensive study of historical sociology and its development, especially in the Indian context. It looks at the works of Indian sociologists and analyses their approaches in terms of book-view (normative) and field-view (descriptive) history. The volume: critically appraises reports of empirical surveys conducted during early colonial rule including those by H. T. Colebrooke, Francis Buchanan, William Adam; engages with the works of sociologists such as M. N. Srinivas, Ramkrishna Mukherjee, Louis Dumont, Nicholas Dirks, Bernard Cohn, Yogendra Singh, D. N. Dhanagare, A. M Shah, T. K. Oommen, among others; and shows how historical perspective has been adopted in understanding aspects of Indian society villages, castes, traditions, socio-cultural change, education, peasants and their movements, etc.Presenting an alternative idea of social reality, this book will deeply interest students and scholars of sociology, social theory, and social history.
`The overall conception of the volume is absolutely splendid, and the editors skilfully place the material in the context of disciplinary and post-disciplinary developments in sociology. This is a major contribution to the field, as well as a comprehensive and reliable guide to its main components′ - William Outhwaite, Professor of Sociology, School of European Studies, University of Sussex `It is hard to think of anything that has been left out in this masterly survey of contemporary historical sociology. The editors have done a superb job in the selection of both themes and contributors. We now at last have an up-to-date book to assign in our graduate courses on comparative historical sociology. There′s really nothing else like it out there.... The editors′ introduction is one of the best things I have read on how the field developed, and the problems it has encountered′ - Krishan Kumar, William R Kenan, Jr Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia ′The range of topics covered and the number of distinguished scholars who have contributed to the handbook is impressive, with leading figures such as Bryan S Turner, John R Hall, Gianfranco Poggi and Craig Calhoun among the contributors to a book that covers areas as diverse as post-colonial historiography and the historical sociology of the city... the handbook fills a void within the sizable literature on historical sociology and undoubtedly will be a useful addition to graduate reading lists′ - The British Journal of Sociology What is important in historical sociology? What are the main routes of development in the subject? This Handbook consists of 26 chapters on historical sociology. It is divided into three parts. Part One is devoted to Foundations and covers Marx, Weber, evolutionary and functionalist approaches, the Annales School, Elias, Nelson and Eisenstadt. Part Two moves on to consider major approaches, such as modernization approaches, late Marxist approaches, historical geography, institutional approaches, cultural history, intellectual history, postcolonial and genealogical approaches. The third part is devoted to the major substantive themes in historical sociology ranging from state formation, nationalism, social movements, classes, patriarchy, architecture, religion and moral regulation to problems of periodization and East-West divisions. Each part includes an introduction that summarizes and contextualizes chapters. A general introduction to the volume outlines the current situation of historical sociology after the cultural turn in the social sciences. It argues that historical sociology is deeply divided between explanatory `sociological′ approaches and more empirical and interpretative `historical′ approaches. Systematic and informative the book offers readers the most complete and authoritative guide to historical sociology.
This important volume on the history of sociology in India locates scholars, scholarship, theories, perspectives, and practices of the discipline in different cities and regions of the country over a century. It argues that this history is enmeshed in political projects of constructing a ‘society’, which took place as a result of colonialism and dominant nationalism. The book affirms the existence of both strong and weak traditions of scholarship in India and underscores three processes that have aided this development at various points of time: reflexive interrogation of received scholarship; probing ideal types of theories within classrooms; and questioning existing debates on society and its language by the public.
The Credential Society is a classic on the role of higher education in American society and an essential text for understanding the reproduction of inequality. Controversial at the time, Randall Collins’s claim that the expansion of American education has not increased social mobility, but rather created a cycle of credential inflation, has proven remarkably prescient. Collins shows how credential inflation stymies mass education’s promises of upward mobility. An unacknowledged spiral of the rising production of credentials and job requirements was brought about by the expansion of high school and then undergraduate education, with consequences including grade inflation, rising educational costs, and misleading job promises dangled by for-profit schools. Collins examines medicine, law, and engineering to show the ways in which credentialing closed these high-status professions to new arrivals. In an era marked by the devaluation of high school diplomas, outcry about the value of expensive undergraduate degrees, and the proliferation of new professional degrees like the MBA, The Credential Society has more than stood the test of time. In a new preface, Collins discusses recent developments, debunks claims that credentialization is driven by technological change, and points to alternative pathways for the future of education.
Unlike the West, India presents a fascinating example of a society where the pre-modern continues to co-exist with the modern. Modernity in Indian Social Theory explores the social variance between India and the West to show how it impacted their respective trajectories of modernity. A. Raghuramaraju argues that modernity in the West involved disinheriting the pre-modern, and temporal ordering of the traditional and modern. It was ruthlessly implemented through programmes of industrialization, nationalism, and secularism. This book underscores that India did not merely the Western model of modernity or experience a temporal ordering of society. It situates this sociological complexity in the context of the debates on social theory. The author critically examines various discourses on modernity in India, including Partha Chatterjee’s account of Indian nationalism; Javeed Alam’s reading of Indian secularism; the use of the term pluralism by some Indian social scientists; and Gopal Guru’s emphasis on the lived Dalit experience. He also engages with the readings on key thinkers including Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Gandhi, and Ambedkar.
This Handbook consists of 26 chapters on historical sociology. Part One is devoted to Foundations, Part Two moves on to consider major approaches and Part Three is devoted to the major themes in historical sociology. Systematic and informative it offers readers the most complete and authoritative guide to historical sociology.
The revival of historical sociology in recent decades has largely neglected the contributions of Max Weber. Yet Weber's writings offer a fundamental resource for analyzing problems of comparative historical development. Stephen Kalberg rejects the view that Weber's historical writings consist of an ambiguous mixture of fragmented ideal types on the one hand and the charting of vast processes of rationalization and bureaucracy on the other. On the contrary, Weber's substantive work offers a coherent and distinctive model for comparative analysis. A reconstruction of Weber's comparative historical method, Kalberg argues, uncovers a sophisticated outlook that addresses problems of agency and structure, multiple causation, and institutional interpretation. Kalberg shows how such a representation of Weber's work casts a direct light upon issues of pressing importance in comparative historical studies today. Weber addresses in a forceful way the whole range of issues confronted by the comparative historical enterprise. Once the full analytical and empirical power of Weber's historical writings becomes clear, Weber's work can be seen to generate procedures and strategies appropriate to the study of present day as well as past social processes. Written in an accessible and engaging fashion, this book will appeal to students and professionals in the areas of sociology, anthropology, and comparative history.
This book maps the intersections between sociology and feminism in the Indian context. It retrieves the lives and work of women pioneers of and in sociology, asking crucial questions of their feminisms and their sociologies. The chapters address the experiential realities of women in the field, pedagogical issues, methodological frameworks, mentoring processes and artistic engagements with academic work. The volume’s strength lies in bringing together Indian scholars from diverse social backgrounds and regions, reflecting on the specificity of the Indian social sciences. The chapters cover a range of key areas, including sexuality, law, environment, science and medicine. This volume will greatly interest students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of sociology, women’s studies, gender studies and feminism, politics and postcolonial studies.
