ABSTRACT

This book revisits social theory with a view to highlighting certain essential features of ‘good’ social theory: its ability to raise certain questions, its explanatory power, its critical and reflexive interrogation of concepts, its search for objectivity, its concern to make sense of empirical data and its aim of projecting some degree of generality and abstraction. With particular attention to issues of nationalism, democracy, civil society, state, feminism, neoliberalism, minority rights, environment and North-East Indian society, it considers whether new and more relevant theoretical questions need to be asked.

It will therefore appeal to scholars of social theory and political sociology with interests in new approaches to social theory and the development of local or ‘indigenous’ social thought.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

part I|80 pages

New currents in social theory

chapter 121|15 pages

What is social theory?

chapter 2|10 pages

Social theory today

Revisiting hope

chapter 3|12 pages

Empathy between sociology and social neuroscience

New perspectives for an applied sociology

chapter 6|16 pages

Contemporary contributions to critiques of political economy and alternative planetary futures

Political economy, moral economy, moral sociology, spiritual ecology and beyond

part II|74 pages

Social theory and the context of neo-liberalism

chapter 10|13 pages

Neoliberal environmentalism and social theory

Constructing myth over reality

chapter 12|12 pages

Legitimizing menstrual leave at workplace

Documenting the sociological theories' explanations

part III|39 pages

Issues and challenges for social theory from India

chapter 14|11 pages

Eco-feminism in the context of the tribal society

The Khasis of Meghalaya

chapter 15|9 pages

Theorizing better

A debate of theory and practice in the context of an indigenous setting