The basic purpose of this paper is two-fold. The first is to sketch certain dominant substantive and epistemological biases embedded in the institution and practice of social research in Nepal. The second is to forward a few tentative suggestions towards making social research speak more directly on the limitations, hopes and fears of the Nepali people.
The paper is made up of five sections. The first focuses on preliminaries; the second endeavours to sketch some of the dominant substantive biases of social research; the third summarises dominant epistemological biases of social research; the fourth tries to provide a few suggestions on research priority alternatives; and finally, the concluding section speculates on the relationship between social research and university teaching in Nepal.
