Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences. Made in Circulation, W. Keim, E. Çelik, C. Ersche, V. Wöhrer (Eds)

Knowledge is a commodity and knowledge production does not occur in a geo-political vacuum. With respect to this, it has to be argued that neo-imperialism involves economic and knowledge flows across continuous space, which is transnational and distinct from the old forms of colonialism which were based on country-to-country occupation. In the context of contemporary geo-politics, these conditions render territorial terrain as less important than discursive terrain (Lo 2011). So, how is global knowledge in the social sciences (and more specifically in criminology) produced and shared? Where does this production take place? Who are the producers? Whose experiences and whose voices are reflected in dominant academic discourses? How is knowledge disseminated and who gets access to it? These are some of the questions that the project of southern criminology seeks to tackle. To access the full text of the introductory article to this special issue on southern criminology, download the accompanying PDF file.

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Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences: a Critical Assessment

Sociologies in Dialogue ◽

10.20336/sid.v2i1.29 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 16 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sari Hanafi

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Critical Assessment ◽

Global Knowledge ◽

The Social

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On the Colonial Past of Anthropology: Teaching Race and Coloniality in the Global South

Humanities ◽

10.3390/h8020088 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 88 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Maria Andrea dos Santos Soares

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Necessary Conditions ◽

Race And Racism ◽

The Social ◽

International University ◽

Brazilian Culture ◽

Racial Hierarchies ◽

Made In ◽

Afro Brazilian

This article addresses some of the discussions taking place at the Social Sciences program of the Afro-Brazilian International University for Lusophone Integration (UNILAB), such as the coloniality of knowledge, racial hierarchies, and anthropology’s complicity in colonialism. The article reviews current literature and draws on ethnographic fieldwork for two main purposes: First, to analyze how Afro–Brazilians, and Afro–Brazilian culture have been depicted and used in the process of national formation. Second, to examine the role that social and anthropological analysis played by dismissing “race” and “racism” as a structuring feature of Brazilian society. I propose that the ethics of an anthropological praxis aiming to create the necessary conditions for a different kind of knowledge to emerge, would be critically reflective about its own process of knowledge production, and aware as well, of voices and locations where this knowledge is being produced. The process of decolonization relies on epistemological choices made in the field, at the institutional level within the departments and programs, and in classrooms.

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The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

Environment and Society ◽

10.3167/ares.2021.120109 ◽

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.

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Writing History: Problems of Neutrality

History and Morality ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198858713.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 87-126

Author(s):

Donald Bloxham

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Moral Evaluation ◽

Important Case ◽

Fourth Section ◽

The Third ◽

The Social ◽

Value Judgements ◽

Historical Accounts ◽

Value Neutrality ◽

Made In

Part 2 Writing History: Problems of Neutrality This Part of the book challenges widespread assumptions that, where it matters, it is possible or desirable for historians to avoid value judgements and the sorts of evocative descriptions that imply or could reasonably be expected to prompt such judgements. The first section distinguishes between History and particular traditions within the social sciences in order to show why the ‘rules’ about moral evaluation can be different in these differing endeavours. The second section establishes the widespread existence of evocations and evaluations in the very labelling and description of many historical phenomena, suggesting not just how peculiar works of History would look in their absence of evocations and appraisals, but that their absence would often distort what is being reported. These arguments are key to the distinction made in the third section about rejecting value neutrality as a governing ideal while insisting on truthfulness as a historian’s primary duty. The fourth section highlights the nature of most historical accounts as composites of a range of perspectives as it considers questions of context, agency, outcome, and experience. The composition gives rise to the overall impression, evaluative or evocative, provided by the work. The fifth section brings together a number of the chapter’s themes as it examines an important case of the historian’s judgement—judgement about the legitimacy of power in past worlds where legitimacy could be as contested as often today.

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Stretching Situated Knowledge

International Relations in a Relational Universe ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198850885.003.0005 ◽

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.

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Race in Global Perspective

Sociology ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0239 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Aurora Vergara-Figueroa

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Field Work ◽

Global Perspective ◽

Human Beings ◽

Race And Racism ◽

Legal Studies ◽

The Social ◽

Vast Literature ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Made In

Race and racism are key analytical constructs that express fundamental issues not only of power and inequality, but also of justice, democracy, equity, and emancipation. The study of race in the social sciences is an established, dynamic, multidisciplinary, and international field. Work began at the end of the 19th century. To study race with a global perspective, it is necessary to have a transdisciplinary view to read critically the phenomena that intersect with this variable. This field includes contributions from sociology, history, philosophy, legal studies, anthropology, cultural studies, political science, epidemiology, and journalism, among others. Several declarations have been made in recent years about the alleged end of racism or the end of a race-coded era. However, even though they are not new, every time they resurge these doxas underline new regimes of truth, reconfigure racisms, and strength inequality. The vast literature produced by scholars in this field provides evidence of how race is based on narratives created to enslave, subordinate, exploit, and exclude millions of human beings across the globe.

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

Current Sociology ◽

10.1177/0011392117704242 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 66 (6) ◽

pp. 831-848 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

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.

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