The Other: Sociological Perspectives in a Post-Colonial Age

Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol. 33, No. 6 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07256868.2012.735108, 2012

The imagery of ‘otherness’ played a significant role in modern Europe's cognisance of the orient, the colonised, the feminine and the homosexual which were viewed as threats to the values of a ‘rational, progressive and civilised’ society. But how was ‘the non-European other’ represented in classical sociology's canons authored by the trinity of Durkheim, Weber and Marx? The paper focuses on Durkheim's examination of the Hindu sati as an altruistic suicide, Weber's theorisation that the European Protestant Christianity could only produce rationality and capitalism, and Marx's non-reflexive neglect of the progressive pre-modern from India's pre-colonial past. A critical post-colonial reading of the selected texts identifies the ahistorical, orientalist, racialised, colonialist and historicist fault lines that crisscross the sociological canons. The time is ripe to rectify the denial of subjecthood to the ‘non-western other’ that we often encounter in the sociological canons. The paper concludes that the ‘non-western other’ is capable of being a subject in her own right. The critical engagement with the sociological canons is a small step towards building the ground for a more reflexive and historically specific global sociology in the post-colonial era. As an intellectual endeavour of the post-colonial era, global sociology should be vigilant about global capitalism's tendency towards obliterating the diverse ways of thinking and acting.

Asian Social Science

Since the 1980s, feminism and post-colonialism began to exchange and dialogue, forming a new interpretation space, that is, post-colonial feminist cultural theory. There is a very complicated relationship between post-colonialism and feminism, both in practice and theory. It was obvious that they have always been consistent as both cultural theories focus on the marginalization of the "other" that is marginalized by the ruling structure, consciously defending their interests. Post-structuralism is used to deny the common foundation of patriarchy and colonialism—the thinking mode of binary opposition. However, only in the most recent period, Postcolonialism and feminism "Running" is more "near", it is almost like an alliance. (The factor contributing to this alliance is that both parties recognize their limitations.) Furthermore, for quite some time there have been serious conflicts between these two equally famous critical theories. They have been deepl...

Journal of Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Routledge., 2016

Millennium - Journal of International Studies, 2004

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 15(4) 461-473, 2014

In this paper I ask two sets of questions. First, given the organic links between power-knowledge, what frames of hegemonic social sciences organise global/international knowledge? Second, what are the protocols to be mobilised in order to displace these hegemonic trends in global/international social sciences?

Literatures on feminist theory abound: they challenge the dominant traditional modernist worldview that uses the male perspective as the standard by which all social phenomena are measured. Thanks to feminists, theories now span the whole range of the ideological spectrum. However, post-colonial feminism is still on the fringes. Rejecting sweeping generalizations, this paper highlights specific cases from Asia and Africa in order to analyze the different actions and discourses of women from the Third World. By so doing, this research contributes to mainstreaming women’s voices from the Global South as well as promoting post-structural analysis which treats women, not as an indistinct unified blob, but as a heterogeneous group of individuals and groups with discrete identities and dissimilar agenda.