(C) Emerald Group Publishing ‘‘PROVINCIALIZING’’ SOCIOLOGY: THE CASE OF A PREMATURE POSTCOLONIAL SOCIOLOGIST Manu Goswami ABSTRACT This essay seeks to extend the original gambit of this forum, of thinking possible modes of postcolonial sociology, unto a more relational terrain. It takes as its point of departure the vexed status of history in sociology and the hermeneutic suspicion of comparison in postcolonial theory. Any potential rapprochement between postcolonial theory and sociology must engage with the deeply incongruent status of history and comparison across these fields. I attempt to bridge this divide historically by revisiting an anti-imperial internationalist sociology forged in interwar colonial India. I seek thereby to show what Pierre Bourdieu called a ‘‘particular case of the possible’’ and to participate in ongoing efforts to ‘‘provin- cialize’’ sociology. This forum invites us to think possible modes of a postcolonial sociology. If we follow the cartographic logic of many cross-disciplinary reflections, of surveying a particular field for the evidence of another, then one line of response might appear relatively straightforward. This might entail mapping Postcolonial Sociology Political Power and Social Theory, Volume 24, 145–175 Copyright r 2013 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 0198-8719/doi:10.1108/S0198-8719(2013)0000024012 145