Abstract
Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) turned 50 this year. With this issue, a new team takes over the editorship, thankful to the founding and succeeding editors for their critical thinking. They steered the journal to forge a legacy that we now cherish. Its abundant offerings to a scholarly life are widely treasured.
Five of us in the new team—the editors, Rita Brara and Pratiksha Baxi, the book review editors, Farhana Ibrahim and Niharika Banerjea and the editorial associate, Bikram Sharma—cut our sociological teeth on Contributions, chewing articles that surprised us with their analytical rigour or savouring an anthropological story so well told. In its inimitable way, the journal continues to define sociological excellence from a vantage point in India. A rigorous editorial policy, seeking essays that combine fine-grained fieldwork and theory-oriented argument while keeping the door open for other modes of research, has been golden.
This CIS heritage, built piece by piece, is our anchor, but we also hope to initiate practices that appear robust and beckon us at this juncture. We share some of our plans below and invite readers to send us their suggestions.
Yes, journal articles should spark comment but if we want more of it to happen how do we catalyse the process? A position paper or provocative first article, once a year, could set the note for seeking responses from other subject experts. A forum where diverse views are presented could generate discussion of what it means to read with and against the canon. Sociology, as practiced by Contributions, has found a place for sociological sensibilities residing in disciplines, languages and regional expressions that go beyond the European. We will now strive to include translations of vernacular tracts which are valuable for their sociological spirit or import. Locating such literature will be part of our effort.
It is perhaps reasonable to argue that the ‘Indian’, in its many avatars, is immanent in the cultural environments of Asia—especially in South and Southeast Asia—along the areas ringing the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean and within more distant locations. Reaching out to scholarship from these regions becomes a window for an understanding of the Indic beyond India, as a dimension of the circulation of cultures.
The lacunae in what we see are, of course, more easily spotlighted by budding research scholars. We imagine that an occasional student piece, addressing our blind spots and reticence, could shake up the canonical. And while we look out for essays that visibilise and vivify the embedding of sociological studies in relations of power, we shall reflect, unstintingly, on how the journal can contribute to publishing knowledge that emanates from the social margins.
We will widen and deepen our search, we shall trouble our own assumptions but the results will remain contingent…and so we seek your continued readership and candid notices to us, of false steps and wrong turns along the way, for Contributions is that ongoing, precious and collective venture….
A word of thanks again to the outgoing team—Sanjay Srivastava and Deepak Mehta, Janaki Abraham and Yasmeen Arif, Parul Rajput…and Aradhya Bhardwaj for staying on with us…you have been stellar!