Transforming the Subjective and the Objective

This book introduces transpositional subjectobjectivity—a radical framework that transcends the subject-object dualism that has long constrained social scientific inquiry. Tracing debates over objectivity in social sciences from Max Weber through Michel Foucault to Amartya Sen's positional objectivity, this book offers a crucial intervention in the field, recognizing how perspective shapes observation. Moving beyond binary thinking, the chapters rethink the philosophy of science itself, exploring how subjectivity and objectivity interweave rather than oppose. Through transdisciplinary analysis drawing on philosophy, sociology, spirituality, and the arts, the book traces transpositional thinking from Plato to contemporary practice. It examines how religion, philosophy, and art have navigated the shifting contours of subjectobjectivity, offering new methodological possibilities for researchers. Essential reading for scholars and researchers of philosophy and the social sciences in general, this pioneering work cultivates innovative modes of understanding and engagement for twenty-first-century social science and humanities.

Ananta Kumar Giri is the Founding Honorary Executive Trustee of Vishwaneedam Center Asian Blossoming, Puducherry and Chennai and was a professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai. He has taught and done research in many universities in India and abroad. He has an abiding interest in social movements and cultural change, criticism, creativity and contemporary dialectics of transformation, theories of self, culture and society, and creative streams in education, philosophy and literature. Giri has written, edited, co-edited and translated more than six dozen books in Odia and English, including Global Transformations: Postmodernity and Beyond (1998); Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations (2013); Bahudhara Barnabiva (Splendrous Beauty of the Plural, 2021);)The Calling of Global Responsibility: New Initiatives in Justice, Dialogues and Planetary Realizations (2023); Rethinking Satyagraha: Truth, Travel and Translation (Editor, 2025); Cultivating Gardens of God: A Paradigm Shift in Faith (Editor, 2025); Contemporary Contributions to Critiques of Political Economy (Editor, 2024); New Works in Consciousness Corridors: Dialogues with Subhash Sharma and Creative Planetary Futures (Co-Editor, 2023); Rethinking Media Studies: Media, Meditation and Communication (Co-Editor, 2024); Towards a Dharma of Peace Building (Co-Editor, 2023); Social Healing (2023); Cultivating Integral Development (2023); and Covid-19 and the Challenges of Trauma and Responsibility (co-editor, 2025); Social Thought as Conversations: Towards a New Upanishad of Life and an Ecology of Hope (2026)