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11 - The Environmental Sociology of Radhakamal Mukerjee

from Part III - Dissident Sociologists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2025

Anaheed Al-Hardan
Affiliation:
Howard University
Julian Go
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

This chapter reexamines the theoretical contributions of an early anticolonial and ecological sociologist, Radhakamal Mukerjee, as a way of (1) provincializing early twentieth century Anglo-American social thought and (2) integrating anticolonial and ecological theorizing in the social sciences. It shows that Mukerjee engaged in a uniquely promiscuous form of scholarship that drew eclectically, yet rigorously, on both Anglo-American mainstream and Indian sources of knowledge to address the ecological challenges of his time, largely rooted in his observations of the social and ecological devastation of British colonialism in India. Further, Mukerjee was an active, if underrecognized, critic of metropolitan thought and epistemologies, especially in economics and sociology. If we take planetary environmental crisis to be one of the core challenges of the twenty-first century, a reconsideration of Mukerjee’s claims, often involving thinking in totalities of interconnectedness between humanity and nature, may help us rethink our own theoretical dilemmas.

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Print publication year: 2025

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