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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.
List of contents
Part I Historical Sociology 1. Background and Emergence Part II History and The Tradition of Indian Sociology 2. Early Colonial Period 3. Post-1858 Era 4. The Phase of 'Pioneers' 5. Sociology after Independence Conclusion. References. Bibliography. Index.
About the author
Hetukar Jha, former Professor of Sociology, Patna University, Bihar, India. He has been working on villages, culture, traditions, education and other sociological concepts from a historical perspective since 1968. He has published more than 120 research papers and 20 books including Colonial Context of Higher Education in India (1985), Social Structures of Indian Villages (1991) and Perspectives on Indian Society and History (ed., 2002). He is currently working on the village world in the colonial period.
Summary
This book is a comprehensive study of historical sociology and its development, especially in the Indian context. The volume studies around two centuries of sociological thought in India and demonstrates how historical sources add a different dimension to the understanding of social reality.
