Saturday, March 02, 2013

Dalit social science?

My readings of anthropology literature tell me that most expertsconcede the utility of the sanskritization concept in explainingsocial reality. If Bro. Vijay is right then, Mr. M.N.Srinivas hasmanaged to hoodwink many professional anthropologists around theworld for around 40 years. That seems unlikely to me.There are few ways to disprove scientific theories likesanskritization1. Methodological or data incorrectness/inconsistency can be used todebunk the original studies and later validatory studies, whichestablished the concept.2. Come up with an alternative concept, which explains old and newdata adequatelyIf we do not disprove the theory in the above manner, then tillanthropologists finds data inconsistent with the sanskritizationtheory, we will have to bear with the "sanskritization" theory.Merely pointing out caste biases of academics without doing the abovewill lead to creation of dalit anthropology, dalit sociology, daliteconomics, .... I don't think that that is good for us.

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