'The Global Transition and the Challenge to Social Sciences' a talk by Prof. Sujata Patel at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 10th March 2014

Time : 3:00 pm onwards

Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)

Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info :  Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'

Event Description :  The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Public Lecture (in the ‘India in Transition’ series) on ‘The Global Transition and the Challenge to Social Sciences’ by Prof. Sujata Patel, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad.

Abstract : Globalisation implies a new form of inclusivity or as the editorial of the 2000 issue of Public Culture says, ‘in its wide and wavering nets’ it, ‘catches something of our need to ground our sense of mutuality in conditions of mutuality…’ No wonder, many social scientists argue that comprehending contemporary processes of globalization-- the latest transition, is possible only through a new conceptual language. The focus of this presentation is on the methodological challenges that such novel conceptual perspectives face to comprehend this recent transition.  The paper starts with a discussion of the binaries, that of the universals and particulars which organized social sciences in its first phase of the global transition, from pre-modern to modern society in the 19th century. The former framed the disciplines of sociology, economics and political science (which came to be known as the study of modern societies) and the second that of anthropology (the study of pre modern societies). This epistemic division legitimized inequalities in knowledge production between imperial and colonized countries and later between the countries of Global North and Global South.  The second part of this paper, which focuses on the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, discusses how methodological nationalism, which assumes a coevalness between ‘society’ and the ‘nation-state’ extended and expanded this hierarchy in knowledge production and reframed the methodological assumptions of universals and particulars thereby furthering the unequal divisions in knowledge systems.  Given that the new transition demands a reflexive social science that can ‘ground our sense of mutuality in mutuality’, how do we transcend the language of power inherent in the legacy of 19th century binaries defining social sciences? In the last section, the speaker discusses the relative merit of the three methodological interventions being currently discussed by philosophers and social scientists of the Global South, that of provincialism (Dipesh Chakrabarty), endogeneity (Paulin Houtondji) and the decolonial perspective (the Latin American theorists). Can we use any, some or all of these to reframe the 19th century of episteme of social sciences?      

Speaker : Prof. Sujata Patel is Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad. Her area of specialisation include Social Theory; Urban Studies; State and Society Studies; History of Social Sciences; Pedagogy and teaching of social sciences.  She has been employed as Professor of Sociology from January 1992 onwards, first at SNDT Women’s University, Bombay; then at University of Pune and now at the University of Hyderabad. She also worked as University Grants Commission Research Scientist B and as Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. She has been Visiting Professor at University of Johannesburg and has held fellowships in Japan, Europe, North America and Latin America.

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