Remarks of the-Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Launching a new journal is always an endeavor full of excitement, hope, and some trepidation. We are embarking on this project with the conviction that sociology has come of age in South Asia and it is time to advance the institutionalization of this process to which a journal like SAJSS will play an important role. Sociology was once perceived as "a peculiarly western cogitation" in the words of Peter Berger. We have come a long way from such a provincial vision and see it as truly global, cosmopolitan project, the way the founders of this discipline from Ibn Khaldun to Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and the more recent protagonists, Pierre Bourdieu or Immanuel Wallerstein see this venture. Equipped with such visions and ambitions, we are launching this journal in keeping with the rise of South Asia as a region, which needs to consolidate its intellectual force and fortitude. The journal, we hope, will provide a platform for the young sociologists and social scientists of South Asia who need to be heard. We hope the journal will play a modest role in fostering an evidenced-based research culture in the region. And as young social scientists use this space to widen their horizons by exchanging their research findings, sharing their ideas, and creating new knowledge of the region and the world, it will also play a role in bringing the region together as an intellectual space.

The editorial board of the South Asian Journal of Social Sciences (SAJSS) has been drawn from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka and the USA with a calibrated mixture of the young and the matured social scientists representing multiple perspectives and expertise.

The journal will be published in both hard copy and online formats. We hope the online version will reach the remotest corners of the region and the world to share ideas and generate new thought kindling the "sociological imagination" of a wider community of social scientists beyond territorial boundaries.

We sincerely hope that the journal will evoke interest in social scientific research and provide a space for dialogue and cross-fertilization of a variety of intellectual orientations. As a shared intellectual space generating ideas and examining challenges the region faces, we hope our journal will provide opportunities for the social scientists to network contributing to their professional development and by inspiring their role as public intellectuals make a small but determined contribution towards peace in the region through knowledge and understanding.

Editor-in-Chief

South Asian Journal of Social Sciences (SAJSS)