This special issue seeks to establish Indic Social Studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field of inquiry by encouraging scholarship that studies Indian society through its own civilizational categories, institutions, and knowledge systems. It aims to foster rigorous theoretical, historical, empirical, and policy-oriented research that contributes to the reconstruction of social studies from an Indic perspective.
Indic Cultural and Social Studies Journal (Special Issue)
Indic Cultural & Social Studies Journal (Special Issue)
Every civilization develops not only institutions through which society functions, but also categories through which society understands itself. The history of modern social studies, especially taught in India, however, reveals a striking asymmetry. While European historical experiences gave rise to disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics and anthropology, these disciplines gradually acquired universal authority, often treating concepts born within particular civilizational experiences as universally applicable. Consequently, societies across the world—including Bharat—came to be interpreted through analytical categories whose historical origins lay elsewhere.
This raises an important academic question. Can a civilization be adequately understood through concepts that emerged outside its own historical experience? Or does every civilization possess intellectual traditions, institutional structures and social categories that deserve to become sources of theory rather than merely objects of description?
Indic Cultural and Social Studies emerges from this question.
The special issue specifically seeks to:
- Develop original conceptual frameworks for understanding Indian society rooted in Indic epistemology and civilizational experience.
- Advance the study of Bharat as a civilization through interdisciplinary and evidence-based research.
- Reconstruct contemporary social studies by integrating Indic categories, institutions, and modes of inquiry with modern research methodologies.
- Encourage dialogue between Śāstric traditions, historical sources, archival evidence, ethnography, quantitative research, and contemporary field studies.
- Generate new analytical models for governance, society, economy, culture, education, ecology, and civilizational continuity.
- Promote comparative and global scholarship that positions Indic frameworks as contributors to contemporary social science rather than merely subjects of study.
- Encourage research that informs curriculum development, public policy, governance, and institutional innovation through civilizational perspectives.
Call For Research Papers
Call for Research Papers: Ideas of Indic Cultural and Social Studies
Call for Research Papers: Ideas of Indic Cultural and Social Studies
Call for Research Papers: Socio-Cultural Studies of Pasmanda Communities