Paper short abstract:

Fear of visuals plague social science scholarship in South Asia. Ironically, this is despite the abundance and prevalence of visuals in societies across the region. This paper builds up a case for enculturing social science scholarship in South Asia.

Paper long abstract:

Fear of visuals plague social science scholarship in South Asia. Particularly, in the field of sociology and social anthropology this fear is more pronounced. Ironically, this is despite the abundance and prevalence of visuals pertaining to art, cinemas, and performances in societies across the region.

This paper builds up a case for enculturing social science scholarship in South Asia by engaging with visual arts and performative politics. Bringing forth the cultural materials from the subtexts of scholarship, this paper performs an interpretative readings. Such materials from across the region, and particularly from India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, enables this paper to argue for a culturally sensitive ethnography. The idea is also to underline the presence of precedence in dealing with cultural artifacts in the social science scholarship. Such an exploration, the paper proposes, hinges on the possibility of a nuanced interdisciplinary framework.