La sociologie et l’anthropologie indiennes entre quête décolonisatrice et Occident. Réflexion à partir du cas d’Irawati Karve

Abstract

This paper analyses the scientific knowledge production of Indian anthropologist/sociologist Irawati Karve (1905-1970) against the backdrop of India’s decolonisation. I shed light on her efforts to engage with internationally validated social scientific knowledge and to adapt it to local and national questions and traditions of inquiry. Through an analysis of her work’s reception, which includes sharp criticism by Louis Dumont, I discuss how Karve’s efforts were restricted not only by an international system of validation majorly influenced by scholars in centres in the global North, but also by the pervading colonial legacy of anthropology. Thinking with Karve’s case as an example of a double bind between nationalising/indigenising impulses in the creation of scientific knowledge and global inequalities in the geopolitics of international science, I reflect on the difficult position occupied by sociologists and anthropologists in the global South in response to the quest of decolonising knowledge.