When we see age-old buildings, manuscripts and people who were once part of a numerous past, a sense of glory automatically basks us. Perhaps that’s the beauty of history. Keeping the same glory intact, in this dirigisme, when history is shaken and twisted to different extents, ‘speaking’ or ‘doing’ itself has become a tough task. I keep telling my friends – “Hey! We live in a society that speaks a lot, but hardly does anything whatever one speaks”. The question here is about doing and not saying. Why are we as a society not able to do a lot of things but at the same time able to keep blabbering a lot of things? Anybody with the help of recent AI tools can talk about Marx, Durkheim, Foucault or anybody without even bothering to know who they are. This is where I see an epistemic departure (Varma,2022) in quality and sense a kind of trepidation, especially when it comes to asking the self as well as the others a question of “Hey! What is it that is in store for us?”. Amidst such trepidations, a sense of relief includes spaces like Doing Sociology which inculcates a breathing space for people without being weighed down by any rubrics or guidelines. All they ensure is quality and legitimacy to build a sociological imagination, which they’ve been effectively doing for the past 5 years.
As an avid reader and contributor to Doing Sociology, I position this numerous breathing space as a moving history that allows people to say what they want to say, say whatever they do not want to say, say what they want to do, say what they do not want to do, review books without any clause attached (basically free reading, free interpretation) and most importantly, Doing Sociology inculcates a space for valued critiquing which in itself is gradually reducing these days.
I am sure in this duration of 5 years, Doing Sociology would’ve undergone a lot of wear and tear, yet I must confess it appears new and vibrant. When I write this piece, I feel very old looking back into my first contribution which was in the year 2022, which was just 3 years back. But still, 5 years of Doing Sociology and its contributions appear much younger to me as compared to 3 years of my contribution to Doing Sociology. May I please know why? Also, I was probing myself with a question of what if Doing Sociology was a living entity and not an intangible space? This question leads me to the task of looking back and thinking of a sociological imagination that is constantly in transition.
A lot of things have happened over these 5 years. Rafael Nadal retired, Manmohan Singh is no more, Pope Francis left for his heavenly abode, attacks and wars continue, sorrow flows in deep valleys and many more historical turns that drive one to question “What is that is in store for all of us?”. Leaving that question right there as I began, without seeking any answers thank you Doing Sociology for inculcating a space for all, without any othering. After all, not all questions require an answer and not all answers require a question too.
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Sankar Varma is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Economics, Christ (Deemed to be University).