Indigenising Eurocentric sociology: The ‘captive mind’ and five decades of sociology in Nigeria

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 831-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ifeanyi Onwuzuruigbo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Sociological Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Conditions

Over the years, the social sciences and related disciplines in postcolonial societies have agitated against the dominant Eurocentric mode of knowledge production. In this case, the grouse against Eurocentric knowledge production is that it undermines attempts at indigenising Eurocentric sociology in Nigeria. This article is an engagement with efforts to evolve a Nigerian sociology. It draws upon the concept of the captive mind, developed by Syed Hussein Alatas, a Southeast Asian intellectual, to critically explore the indigenisation of sociology in Nigeria. In doing so, the article explores the development and entrenchment of Eurocentric sociology as well as attempts at indigenising it over five decades of the production of sociological knowledge in Nigerian universities. It portrays the ways in which the ‘captive’ Nigerian sociologists, students of sociology and the antagonistic material conditions of producing and propagating knowledge connive against the indigenisation of sociology in Nigeria.

scholarly journals The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew ◽  
Thomas W. Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
Toxic Event ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

Stretching Situated Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology ◽  
Critical Social

This chapter, first of three to develop relational cosmology in conversation with critical social theory and IR theory, argues that at the heart of relational cosmology lies a commitment to situated knowledge. This perspective on knowledge production is similar in some regards to standpoint epistemology but also diverges from it in key respects. The chapter argues that IR scholarship can benefit from close engagement with relational cosmology suggestions as to how our knowledge is limited and how we might need to ‘deal with it’, especially in the social sciences, where there is a tendency to glorify the role of the human in knowing the human.

Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiebke Keim ◽  
Ercüment Çelik ◽  
Veronika Wöhrer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Global Knowledge ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Researching the Dynamics of National Social Policy in a Globalized Society. A Proposal for a De-Nationalized Analytical Framework

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Erica Righard
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Pension Scheme ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social

Abstract Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a normality, and that mobility is viewed as a deviation. This article sets out to propose an analytical framework that takes the analysis beyond this kind of nationalized knowledge production, and to empirically show the gains of de-nationalized frameworks for analysis of social protection and dynamics of in-/equality in the globalised society. I will do this relying on the empirical example of the public old-age pension scheme in Sweden.

Sociology’s encounter with the decolonial: The problematique of indigenous vs that of coloniality, extraversion and colonial modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Patel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Everyday Knowledge

How did the process of decolonization reframe the social sciences? This article maps the interventions made by theorists of and from the ex-colonial countries in reconceptualizing sociology both as practice and as an episteme. It argues that there are geographically varied and intellectually diverse decolonial approaches being formulated using sociological theory to critique the universals propounded by the traditions of western sociology/social sciences; that these diverse knowledges are connected through colonial and global circuits and that these create knowledge geographies; that collectively these diverse intellectual positions argue that sociology/social sciences are constituted in and within the politics of ‘difference’ organized within colonial, nationalist and global geopolitics; that this ‘difference’ is being reproduced in everyday knowledge practices and is being structured through the political economy of knowledge; and that the destabilization of this power structure and democratization of this knowledge is possible only when there is a fulsome interrogation of this political economy, and its everyday practices of knowledge production within universities and research institutes. It argues that this critique needs to be buffered by the constitution of alternate networks of circulation of this knowledge.

Knowing Through Tripping: A Performative Praxis for Co-Constructing Knowledge as a Disabled Halfie

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vandana Chaudhry
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Ethnography ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Constructing Knowledge ◽  
Disability Research

This article reflects on a performative praxis entailing cultural, symbolic, embodied, and political processes involved in negotiating difference and sameness from the perspective of doing disability research in India as a disabled “halfie.” Based on my own disability experience that disrupted binaries between insider and outsider, I argue that researchers’ disability identities themselves may not be sufficient for becoming an insider to the disability community, due to varying intersectional and cultural contexts. Exposing inadequacies of the liberal disability studies methodology in the social sciences, I draw from critical qualitative methods rooted in performative, postcolonial, and critical ethnography to address questions of positionality and reflexivity, facilitating similitude and knowledge production.

The Teaching of Southeast Asian History

1966 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-96
Author(s):  
G. M. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
World History ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
European Research ◽  
Directed Attention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Asian History

Until comparatively recent times South-East Asia hardly entered into Western historical teaching and was of marginal concern for orthodox European research. While the world's societies stood in virtual isolation from each other, records were generally unknown and unstudied beyond their domestic orbit. Where Western historians ranged outside the Graeco-Roman and Middle Eastern spheres in any depth, their interest was individual and antiquarian rather than the reflection of their civilisation's historical bias. Because the techniques and preoccupations of modern scholarship had not emerged, moreover, such enquiries were mainly devoid of near-contemporary inference or consideration of those problems to which the social sciences later directed attention. World history, whether of narrow or wide conspectus, still remained to be elicited. In the passage of human affairs, the great civilisations had travelled in separate compartments.

scholarly journals POLITICAL AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS IDEAL DETERMINATION ROLE FOR MODERN WORLD DEVELOPMENT

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-37
Author(s):  
Никита Николаевич Равочкин
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alternative Scenarios ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
World Development ◽  
Auxiliary Role

Произошедший в социальных науках идеационный поворот способствовал усилению внимания к идеям и повышению их роли в самых различных процессах. Несмотря на отмеченную тенденцию большинство отечественных исследователей до сих склоняются к материальным интерпретациям, отводя идеям в лучшем случае вспомогательную роль. Обращение внимания к идейной детерминации институциональных преобразований в политико-правовой сфере представляет чрезвычайную значимость по ряду причин: (1) данные институты до сих пор занимают ведущее место среди прочих установлений, предлагая надежные объяснения развития конкретных обществ; (2) интеллектуальные ресурсы в контексте современного мира обладают несомненными преимуществами перед материальными условиями, поскольку сегодня далеко не всегда ресурсное изобилие коррелирует с эволюционной траекторией развития государств; (3) идеи трансграничны и трансисторичны, а содержащиеся в них смыслы легко операционализируются и адаптируются под необходимые реалии. Настоящая статья посвящена прикладному значению идей, которые воплощаются в политико-правовых институциональных формах как решающих структурах мирового развития. Обоснована значимость идей в контексте современного мира. Показано, что критическое отношение к односторонним концепциям позволяет создавать альтернативные сценарии мирового развития. Выявлена значимость учета адаптации содержания интеллектуальных конструктов для политико-правовых институтов в их взаимосвязи с последствиями для других сфер общественной жизни. В логике авторского подхода рассмотрены примеры идейной детерминации политико-правовых институциональных преобразований с учетом ведущих мегатрендов современности. Актуализирован междисциплинарный поиск в прикладных контекстах как ведущее направление сегодняшней социальной философии. Приведены соображения по поводу поливариантности мирового развития и необходимости адаптации конфигураций передовых идей под множественные цивилизационные геномы, что позволяет исключить устаревшую дихотомию «Запад - Незапад». В заключение обобщаются основные выводы и подводятся итоги исследования. The ideational turn that has taken place in the social sciences has contributed to an increased attention to ideas and an increase in their role in a variety of processes. Despite the noted tendency, the majority of Russian researchers are still inclined towards material interpretations, assigning ideas, at best, to an auxiliary role. Paying attention to the ideological determination of institutional transformations in the political and legal sphere is of extreme importance for a number of reasons: (1) these institutions still occupy a leading place among other institutions, offering reliable explanations for the development of specific societies; (2) intellectual resources in the context of the modern world have undoubted advantages over material conditions, since today resource abundance does not always correlate with the evolutionary trajectory of development of states; (3) ideas are transboundary and transhistorical, and the meanings contained in them are easily operationalized and adapted to the necessary realities. This article is devoted to the applied meaning of ideas that are embodied in political and legal institutional forms as decisive structures of world development. The significance of ideas in the context of the modern world has been substantiated. It is shown that a critical attitude to one-sided concepts allows one to create alternative scenarios of world development. Revealed the importance of taking into account the adaptation of the content of intellectual constructs for political and legal institutions in their relationship with the consequences for other spheres of public life. In the logic of the author's approach, examples of ideological determination of political and legal institutional transformations are considered, taking into account the leading megatrends of our time. The interdisciplinary search in applied contexts as the leading direction of today's social philosophy has been updated. Considerations are given about the polyvariety of world development and the need to adapt the configurations of advanced ideas for multiple civilizational genomes, which makes it possible to exclude the outdated dichotomy «West-Non-West». In conclusion, the main findings are summarized and the results of the study are summed up.

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