About this ebook
- Dennis Smith, Professor of Sociology, Loughborough University
Twenty-nine chapters from prominent international contributors discuss, challenge and re-conceptualise the global discipline of sociology, evaluating the diversities within and between sociological traditions of many regions and nation-states. They assess all aspects of the discipline: ideas and theories; scholars and scholarship; practices and traditions; and ruptures and continuities through an international perspective.
The Handbook argues that diversities in sociological traditions can be studied at three levels. First, they need to be studied from multiple spatial locations: within localities, within nation-states, within regions and the globe. Second, they need to be discussed in terms of their sociological moorings in distinct philosophies, epistemologies and theoretical frames, cultures of science and languages of reflection. Third, the intellectual moorings of sociological practices are extensive. The papers discuss the diverse and comparative sites of knowledge production and its transmission.
About the author
Sujata Patel is a sociologist at the University of Hyderabad. An historical sensibility and a combination of four perspectives – Marxism, feminism, spatial studies and post structuralism – post colonialism influences her work which covers diverse areas such as modernity and social theory, history of sociology/social sciences, city formation, social movements, gender construction, reservation, quota politics and caste and class formations in India. She is also an active interlocutor of teaching and learning practices, and has written on the challenges that organise its reconstitution within classrooms, university structures. She is the author of more than 60 papers and is the series editor of Sage Studies in International Sociology (including Current Sociology Monographs (2010–2014), Oxford India Studies in Contemporary Society (Oxford, India) and Cities and the Urban Imperative (Routledge, India). She is also the author of The Making of Industrial Relations (Oxford University Press, 1997), editor of The ISA Handbook of Diverse Sociological Traditions, Sage London (2010) and Doing Sociology in India, Genealogies, Locations and Practices (Oxford, 2011) as also a co-editor of five books, Bombay: Metaphor of Modern India (Oxford University Press, 1995); Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture (Oxford University Press, 1995); Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition (Oxford University Press, 2003); Thinking Social Science in India (Sage, 2002); and Urban Studies (Oxford University Press, 2006). She has been associated in various capacities with the International Sociological Association and has been its first Vice President for National Associations (2002–2006).
