Social Reality and Tradition : Essays in Modes of Understanding

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. Objectivity in social understanding: 1. What makes something social?/Rajeev Bhargava. 2. Why objectivity?/Mohini Mullick. 3. History, hermeneutics and methodological objectivity/Rajan Gurukkal. 4. Postmodernism and social sciences/Gurpreet Mahajan. 5. The limits of the objectivity paradigm/T.V.S. Ramamohan Rao. 6. Social reality and social theory/Bijoy H. Boruah. 7. An ethno-social science for India: towards objectivity in understanding/Gurpreet Mahajan. II. Culture and tradition: 8. Tradition as narrative/Rajan Gurukkal. 9. Understanding Indian culture: the question of its unity and identity/G.C. Pande. 10. On tradition/A.K. Saran. Index. 

“What makes something social? Is human social reality, the object-domain of the human sciences, essentially opaque to the explanatory method of nomological objectivity that characterizes the physical sciences? Do historical and cultural underpinnings of human existence severely restrain the ambition of objectivity in the human sciences? Or, is there a sui generis paradigm of social objectivity in social enquiry, such as illustrated by Marxism and ethnomethodology? Besides, do diversity of traditions constrain social understanding in a way that inevitably results in cultural relativism? What does understanding tradition consist in, including whatever we might mean by “the Indian tradition”? These questions about humanity and tradition are dealt with in this book from a variety of interesting perspectives. Together these various modes on understanding provide an illuminating account of human self-understanding in social enquiry.” (jacket)