Decolonizing Theory: Thinking across Traditions aims at disentangling theory from its exclusively Western provenance, drawing insights and concepts from other thought traditions, connecting to what it argues is a new global moment in the reconstitution of theory. The key argument, which is the point of departure of the book, is that any serious theorizing in the non-West should be fundamentally suspicious of any theory that only gives you one result-that four-fifths of the world does not and cannot do anything right. Everything in the non-West, from its modernity and secularism to its democracy and even capitalism, is always seen to be deficient. In other words, all it tells us is that we do not live up to the standards set by Western modernity. From this point of departure, it seeks to create a conceptual space outside (Western) modernity and capitalism, by insisting on a rethink of non-synchronous synchronicities. The book takes three key themes around which the whole story of modernity can be unraveled, namely the question of the political, capital and historical time, and secularism for a detailed discussion. It does so by bracketing, in a sense, the autobiographical story that Western modernity gives itself. In each case, it tries to show that past forms never simply disappear, without residue, to be fully supplanted by the modern, and merely applying theory produced in one context to another is, therefore, very misleading.

Widely used since the mid-twentieth century, GDP (gross domestic product) has become the world's most powerful statistical indicator of national development and progress. Practically all governments adhere to the idea that GDP growth is a primary economic target, and while criticism of this measure has grown, neither its champions nor its detractors deny its central importance in our political culture. In The Power of a Single Number, Philipp Lepenies recounts the lively history of GDP's political acceptance—and eventual dominance. Locating the origins of GDP measurements in Renaissance England, Lepenies explores the social and political factors that originally hindered its use. It was not until the early 1900s that an ingenuous lone-wolf economist revived and honed GDP's statistical approach. These ideas were then extended by John Maynard Keynes, and a more focused study of national income was born. American economists furthered this work by emphasizing GDP's ties to social well-being, setting the stage for its ascent. GDP finally achieved its singular status during World War II, assuming the importance it retains today. Lepenies's absorbing account helps us understand the personalities and popular events that propelled GDP to supremacy and clarifies current debates over the wisdom of the number's rule.

Through what he terms "bibliographical sociology", Suman Gupta explores the presence of English-language publications in the contemporary Indian context – their productions, circulations and readerships – to understand current social trends.

India Migration Report 2020 examines how migration surveys operate to collect, analyse and bring to life socio-economic issues in social science research. With a focus on the strategies and the importance of information collected by Kerala Migration Surveys since 1998, the volume: Explores the effect of male migration on women left behind; attitudes of male migrants within households; the role of transnational migration and it effect on attitudes towards women; Investigates consumption of remittances and their utilization; asset accumulation and changing economic statuses of households; financial inclusion of migrants and migration strategies during times of crises like the Kerala floods of 2018; Highlights the twenty-year experience of the Kerala Migration Surveys, how its model has been adapted in various states and led to the proposed large-scale India Migration Survey; and Explores issues of migration politics and governance, as well as return migration strategies of other countries to provide a roadmap for India. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, demography, sociology and social anthropology, and migration and diaspora studies.

This book analyses the quality of statistics such as geographic area, census population and sample survey statistics in a developing country. Using field interviews, archival sources, and secondary data covering the last seven decades, it explores the shifting relations between various kinds of statistics over their lifecycles and charts their cradle-to-grave political career. It uncovers a mutually constitutive relationship between data, development, and democracy and offers an exciting account of how government statistics are social artefacts dynamically shaped by political and economic factors. The book also quantifies the impact of data quality on the statistics of interest to policy makers such as household consumption expenditure and federal transfers. Numbers in India's Periphery makes a major contribution to the growing literature on the political economy of statistics in developing countries through a novel analysis of the shifting determinants of the nature of data in North East India.