Culture, Region and Pedagogy: Exploring the Future of Indian Sociology
It is a matter of great pride that the 51st All India Sociological Conference (51st AISC) of the Indian Sociological Society (ISS) will be hosted by the Department of Sociology, School of Liberal Studies, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha from December 27 to 29, 2026.
The theme of the conference is Culture, Region and Pedagogy: Exploring the Future of Indian Sociology. We are living through a period of rapid and significant social transformation. Across the globe, the rise of new forms of populist politics and mobilisation, the growing demand for specialised professional skills, and the rise of digital platform economies have collectively reconfigured the fabric of everyday social reality.
In their influential work On Decoloniality (2018), Walter D. Mignolo and Catherine E. Walsh observe that we are witnessing a “pluriversality of social problems”. In simple terms, this means that complex socio-human challenges can no longer be conceptualised through a single, universal model. Rather, localised crises — whether a regional ecological change, local caste resentments or neighbourhood-level housing struggles — are conditioned by their own unique specific historical and social contexts while remaining deeply tied to worldwide economic and political shifts. The world is not a uniform whole; it is a “pluriverse” made up of many interconnected worlds, each requiring empirically grounded sociological analysis.
The theme of the 51st All India Sociological Conference (2026) builds directly upon this intellectual heritage. It explores how local cultural expressions, regional specificities and classroom teaching practices can shape the future of Indian sociology in an interconnected yet fragmented world. The conference will be attended by national and international delegates, including renowned sociologists, professors, researchers, and students. The collective expertise of the scholars would help the participants to engage and extend the discourses within sociology.
