This book is a collection of autobiographical narratives by leading social scientists working across South Asia. It explores the linkages between their personal experiences and academic pursuits and analyzes how personal, political, and professional choices shape knowledge production and affect social transformation. The narratives revisit long-standing debates on objectivity, subjectivity, self, and other and attempt to collapse the binaries that have informed the social sciences until now. Highlighting the state of research and pedagogy in the social sciences in the region, the book questions the conventional understanding of the task of the social scientist and, in doing so, blurs the distinction between theory, research, pedagogy, and activism. A unique and compelling contribution, this volume will be indispensable to students and researchers of sociology, anthropology, history, creative writing, education, politics, biography studies, and South Asian studies. It will also be of interest to general readers.
Economic behavior is governed by two major sets of boundary conditions: environmental and technological factors on the one hand, and conditions of social organization on the other hand. Indeed, social scientists are often particularly interested in the framework of exchange relationships: exchange of goods, services, personnel, and information. Economic exchanges lend concrete manifestations to social relations that themselves may transcend the economic realm and that otherwise are often difficult to trace. Yet in social science research in Southeast Asia, the area of economic studies has lagged behind, despite the great study potential represented by the tremendous diversity of its physical and human environment. Economic Exchange and Social Interaction in Southeast Asia attempts to take advantage of that opportunity. As a number of the contributions to this volume show, many if not most of the systems organized on very different levels of integration interact with each other. Taken as a whole, they provide evidence of the incredible diversity of economic and social systems that may be investigated in Southeast Asia.
This book challenges the way development has been conceptualized and practiced in South Asian context, and argues for its deconstruction in a way that would allow freedom, choice and greater well-being for the local people. Far from taking development for granted as growth and advancement, this book unveils how development could also be a destructive force to local socio-cultural and environmental contexts. With a critical examination of such conventional development practices as hegemonic, patriarchal, devastating and failure, it highlights how the rethinking of development could be seen as a matter of practice by incorporating peopleâ (TM)s interest, priorities and participation. The book theoretically challenges the conventional notion of hegemonic development and proposes alternative means, and, practically, provides nuances of ethnographic knowledge which will be of great interest to policy planners, development practitioners, educationists and anyone interested in knowing more about how people think about their own development.
COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.
Are social sciences that are indigenous to the West necessarily universal for other cultures? This collection of South Asian scholarship draws on the experiences of the region to discuss this question in depth.
The problems of the South Asian region are different from those in the developed world. The region is characterised by rapidly changing socioeconomic scenario, fast-increasing urbanization and longevity, changes in dietary patterns and decrease in mortality from infectious diseases. Drought, cyclones, floods, rural poverty and deprivation push rural population to flock to cities. Therefore, urbanization can be viewed as a consequence of these factors rather than the result of economic growth. This leads to environmental degradation, poverty and growth of urban slums. Rapidly growing population along with the rapid pace of urbanization and industrialisation puts pressure on the scarce resources including arable land. The food needs of the growing population has entailed considerable damage, including depletion and degradation of natural resources and unsustainable use of land and water resources. The lack of investment in human development indicators, namely education and health, has contributed to underdevelopment of these regions. This makes them vulnerable to the negative consequences of globalization.The book "Contemporary Issues in South Asia" provides insight into human problems, the capitalistic system that has caused irreversible damage to human existence, ideology given by Guru Nanak, the relationship between the human development index and its indicators, the current state of e-government development within South Asian countries, the link between governance structure and web-based reporting of financial and non-financial information, the illegal migration from Bangladesh to India, the geostrategy of Sri Lanka, the workplace diversity and the role of management to eliminate factors leading to occupational stress, the rising environmental concerns that have influenced business firms and the concept of green GDP.The book seeks to address the emerging issues of the South Asian countries, namely Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives, by presenting research and analysis, which are both cross-sectional and multi-disciplinary. The book aims to create a research space to explore the emerging multi-dimensional issues and shall benefit the researchers working on South Asia and South Asian Diasporas in the post-colonial era. The book encourages the development of future research agendas across arts and social sciences disciplines based on the South Asian region.
This book represents a unique collection of food studies from the perspective of both social and food science. This book describes the current situation of food cultures in Southeast Asia and consists of six chapters which explain the cases of Thailand and Indonesia. The selected case studies are illustrative of ten scholars from various disciplines and nationalities. The multidisciplinary approaches help readers understand how the food culture in Southeast Asia changes and show the domi- nant factors driving those changes. This book is suitable for students who are interested in food culture, general readers, and foodies. By reading this book, readers will realize the connection between social science and food science and find interesting insights from both perspectives. In many cases, this book describes ways of eating and traditional food cultures that have already begun to disappear or have been transformed into “modernity”. To understand how and why this occurs enables researches to react and do something for the future of food tradition and nutrition.
