Creative Social Research

Reviews / Votes

There has been an unprecedented flourishing of new social movements around the world in recent years. This revival has opened our eyes to wider horizons, and strengthened our confidence in the fact that "another world is possible". Ananta Kumar Giri's book gives inspiring glimpses of this process. -- Jean Dreze, Delhi School of Economics A book that gives voice to the unsung heroes of the world-wide struggle for social justice, a values based society and a transformed humanity, and which identifies the huge reservoir of creativity that resides in contemporary social movements. -- John Clammer, Sophia University In the midst of social changes can social science remain immune? Given major transformations of the "modern project" - globalization, the rise of new social movements, and the ambivalent resurgence of religion - can social scientists blithely adhere to "business as usual"? With verve and astute insight, the authors of this volume plead for a "rethinking" of prevailing theories and methods and in favor of a creative social inquiry inspired by cross-cultural dialogue and attentive to the "acknowledged dependence" or social embeddedness of human life. -- Fred Dallmayr, Packey J. Dee Professor, University of Notre Dame Here, at last, is a book that records the challenges facing the humanities and social sciences, both theoretically and methodologically, in the wake of the transformation of modernity and the emergence of the world society of the twenty-first century. Both the postnational and the transdisciplinary thrust of the work are particularly notable. Straddling the divides between East and West and North and South, as he does, Ananta Kumar Giri was just the right person to bring together such a range of exiting essays by an impressive cast of international and Indian authors. -- Piet Strydom, University College Cork, Ireland Creative social research contains a persistent current of both moral and political anxiety, the prodct of lingering inequalities but also of more immediate wars and modalities of imperialism. -- James D. Faubion, Rice University This fascinating collection brings together work from scholars in South Asia and Europe and covers a wide range from philosophy of history to critical reflection on social science and methodology, economics and development studies. The probing articles combine multiple dimensions of analysis and the conjunction of diverse perspectives from different geographies and cultural settings leads to innovative findings. -- Jan Nederveen Pieterse, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign