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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 12, 2020

Sociologists in South Asian countries have also been de-linked from local
knowledges, epistemology, indigenous knowledge traditions (philosophical, cultural,

literary, oral) to the extent of not being able to produce social theory relevant to the
local contexts. Sociologists and anthropologists are not capable of connecting

intellectually with indigenous intellectual, philosophical, religious traditions due to
the inherited colonial-modernist mindset and associated practices or they are

consciously neglecting such possibilities due to their intellectual and

epistemological dependencies on the dominant modes of knowledge production and
dissemination inherited from the Western colonial-modernist paradigm. Writers like

Vasavi and Patel have discussed the non-inclusion of local intellectual traditions in
mainstream Sociology due to definitional and disciplinary reasons.

Conclusion

This paper discussed various dimensions of the Western social science domination,
modernist paradigm, and its critique as well as the nature of the crisis facing South

Asian sociology. The paper noted that sociologists in south Asia have not yet
evolved adequate perspectives and theories to critically assess their relationship with

the dominant Western social science traditions –though this dominance and
dependency have been recognised by the sociological and anthropological

community of scholars. It further noted that the questions of what to study, how to

study and where to study are deeply connected with the Western modernist
education framework, associated institutions and processes that perpetuate the same

even under the post national conditions prevailing in South Asia. As much as the
Western Social Science domination involves tools and methods, developing counter

hegemonic discourses in sociology and anthropology requires the development of
relevant tools and methods from the global periphery, in this case south Asia. To

secure cognitive justice, South Asian sociologists, anthropologists, and other

intellectuals with a Southern or Subaltern consciousness can play a critical and re-
invigorating role by distancing themselves from the metropolitan theory based on

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