Postcolonial Feminisms and Introducing Sociology in the Imperium

Sociology is usually represented as having emerged alongside European modernity. The latter is frequently understood as sociology's special object with sociology itself a distinctively modern form of explanation. The period of sociology's disciplinary formation was also the heyday of European colonialism, yet the colonial relationship did not figure in the development of sociological understandings. While the recent emergence of postcolonialism appears to have initiated a reconsideration of understandings of modernity, with the development of theories of multiple modernities, I suggest that this engagement is more an attempt at recuperating the transformative aspect of postcolonialism than engaging with its critiques. In setting out the challenge of postcolonialism to dominant sociological accounts, I also address `missing feminist/queer revolutions', suggesting that by engaging with postcolonialism there is the potential to transform sociological understandings by opening up a dialogue beyond the simple pluralism of identity claims. feminism, identity, modernity, multiple modernities, postcolonialism, sociological theory

Journal of Classical Sociology., 2024

Gregor McLennan sees my book, The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire, as inaugurating a new phase of “multiplex” postcolonial sociology. This approach moves away from sweeping generalizations about Eurocentrism, Manicheaism, complicity, and pervasive coloniality in “Western” sociology. It pays closer attention to sociology’s internal heterogeneity and is less distrustful of scientific norms such as validity, objectivity, evidence, autonomy, scientific neutrality, and explanation. More specifically, my approach relies (1) on the idea of “context” from the classic sociology of knowledge and intellectual history; (2) on the concept of “field” from Bourdieu; (3) on methods of “close reading” and textual interpretation from literary criticism; and (4) on the “historians’ craft” (Bloch) of using the most extensive available archive of published and unpublished sources. I argue that we can evaluate historical thinkers in their contexts, assessing the constraints and spaces of possibility they faced, and then examine their intellectual choices, the moves they make in the social scientific game. This approach aligns more closely with the ideas of the founders of postcolonial theory, who were more interested in classical texts that “brush up unstintingly against historical constraints” than in texts that remain “inertly of their time (Edward Said). McLennan agrees that postcolonial sociology is indebted to European Enlightenment traditions; I focus on its roots in the sociology of knowledge and sociological historicism. The article then responds to McLennan’s main “probes.” The first concerns the methodological problem of “labelling investigations as ʽsociologyʼ and specific people as ʽsociologistsʼ,” and the limits of field theory. The second concerns my “outline of a theory of colonial sociological practice,” which tries to understand the dilemmas facing sociologists in colonial situations and the historians who study them. The third probe addresses the question of the scientific exploitation of empire. The sociologists I emphasize did not approach the colonized as a pool of resources to be extracted and exploited but worked across the colonial boundary line in generating knowledge. Although the book focuses on the mid-20th century decades, I return in my comments to Durkheim, upon whose shoulders much of the later work was erected. The key is that Durkheim theorized colonialism and empires and politically an anticolonialist. He described colonies as anomic spaces and rejected the biological race concepts and hierarchical notions of civilization. He rejected universalistic values, while advocating an international system of states governed by historically specific morality and law rather than violence. Finally, Durkheim reversed the “imperial gaze,” directing it back at Europe.

This article addresses the way in which perceptions about the globalized nature of the world in which we live are beginning to have an impact within sociology such that sociology has to engage not just with the changing conceptual architecture of globalization, but also with recognition of the epistemological value and agency of the world beyond the West. I address three main developments within sociology that focus on these concerns: first, the shift to a multiple modernities paradigm; second, a call for a multicultural global sociology; and third, an argument in favor of a global cosmopolitan approach. While the three approaches under discussion are based on a consideration of the ''rest of the world,'' their terms, I suggest, are not adequate to the avowed intentions. None of these responses is sufficient in their address of earlier omissions and each falls back into the problems of the mainstream position that is otherwise being criticized. In contrast, I argue that it is only by acknowledging the significance of the ''colonial global'' in the constitution of sociology that it is possible to understand and address the necessarily postcolonial (and decolonial) present of ''global sociology.''

What is “postcolonial sociology”? While the study of postcoloniality has taken on the form of “postcolonial theory” in the humanities, sociology’s approach to postcolonial issues has been comparably muted. This essay considers postcolonial theory in the humanities and its potential utility for reorienting sociological theory and research. After sketching the historical background and context of postcolonial studies, three broad areas of contribution to sociology are highlighted: reconsiderations of agency, the injunction to overcome analytic bifurcations, and a recognition of sociology’s imperial standpoint.

Global Agenda for Social Justice 2

2021

The editorial summarizes the main conceptual and epistemological challenges of theorizing on society across borders. Its particular aim is to initiate the dialogue between theories of society and cross-border studies that address global, transnational and postcolonial relations. In essence, this special issue addresses four interrelated concerns of studying societal processes across borders. The first of these concerns is prompted by a decades-old critique of methodological nationalism. The second concern addresses the question of how can 'society' and the boundaries of 'societalization' be conceptualized, if global, transnational and postcolonial processes straddle the boundaries of nation-states? The third concern relates to the fact that sociological 'grand' theories have been criticized for failing to analyze recent developments of societies on a meso-and micro-level. Fourthly, a conversation between social theory and cross-border studies is also challenged by epistemic inequalities. Therefore, theories of society should be able

Current Sociology, 2014

This Afterword maps out the methodological constituents that organize global sociology. It suggests that the starting point for doing global sociology is to deconstruct the inherent Eurocentrism which is there in the discipline’s cognitive frames. Also, it suggests that Eurocentrism is not merely represented in sociological theories and methods but is also enmeshed in practices and sites that administer and govern sociological knowledge, such as journals and curricula. Additionally, Eurocentric frames are organically connected with the discipline of anthropology with which sociology was interfaced through coloniality. It then discusses the other three methodological constituents that help to frame global sociology: provincialization, methodological nationalism and endogeneity. It concludes by suggesting that global sociology is possible if we work with these methodological constituents at many levels.

The American Historical Review, 2011

Standard historical-sociological accounts of modernity are predicated on notions of rupture and difference: a temporal rupture between an agrarian, pre-modern past and an industrial, modern present, and a cultural difference between the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’. While sociology’s long-standing linear accounts of modernization, based on notions of societal convergence, have been tempered by a recent emphasis on ‘multiple modernities’, the wider postcolonial critique has not been sufficiently answered. One of the most significant charges of this critique has been that the universality ascribed to sociological concepts such as modernity has been based on a parochial reading of the histories of Europe and the US as internally homogenous and qualitatively distinct from histories elsewhere. In other words, the world historical character of such concepts rests on a partial understanding of what happened in the West with little consideration of events in other places – more specifically, of the necessarily global conditions of these events. In this article, I assess the contributions of four developments in sociology and history which seek to take into account the world beyond the West in our understandings of modernity: namely, third wave cultural historical sociology, multiple modernities, micro-histories and global history. These different endeavours provide promising avenues of redress to earlier Eurocentred narratives, but to be effective they must not only provide us with ‘new data’ but also participate in the dialogue of how these new considerations may prompt us to think differently about the concepts in question.

Imagining & Remembering the Other and Constructing Israelite Identities in the Early Second Temple Period

Gender <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&amp;"/> History, 1998