While intellectual practices always take place within a definite socio-cultural context, disciplinary histories and practices have overlapped with the territorial boundaries of nation-states in South Asia. As a result, the disciplinary history of India, for example, appears to have no relation with that of any other country in the region.

Believing that disciplinary histories, even while engaging with the local and the national, are influenced by larger regional forces, Sociology and Social Anthropology in South Asia calls for a more complete understanding of history and culture in the region, over time and at specific moments.

In the various chapters, sociologists and social anthropologists from Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan show how social anthropology and sociology have worked as well as collapsed in South Asia, and how a more inclusive research agenda for this intellectually connected region can be imagined.

The authors explore the nature and scope of the disciplines emerging in each context; evaluate the relationship between sociology and social anthropology within a historical framework; and focus on the contemporary status of the disciplines, given the increasing thrust towards development objectives and agendas set by NGOs in each country.