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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|80 pages
New currents in social theory
chapter 3|12 pages
Empathy between sociology and social neuroscience
chapter 6|16 pages
Contemporary contributions to critiques of political economy and alternative planetary futures
part II|74 pages
Social theory and the context of neo-liberalism
chapter 12|12 pages
Legitimizing menstrual leave at workplace
part III|39 pages
Issues and challenges for social theory from India