Postcolonial Critique: The Necessity of Sociology

McLennan, Gregor

doi:10.1108/s0198-8719(2013)0000024011

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In contrast, in the UK there have been productive disciplinary contact zones between development studies, race and ethnic relations, cultural studies, as well as post-colonial theories with sociology. Though there have also been tensions in the UK, with the relationship at times bordering on vehement resistance to, for instance, the presence of post-colonial studies in sociology (Mclennan, 2013).…”

Section: Tracks In the Sand Of Global Sociologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Puzzlement of a déjà vu: Illuminaries of the global South

Puwar

2019

The Sociological Review

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The act of decentring established Euro-North American sites and flows of knowledge as longstanding geopolitical anchors of epistemological authority presents déjà vu scenarios, involved in centre-staging processes. The very position of being a messenger from the ‘North’ of knowledge and theory from the ‘South’ can reproduce the same patterns the undertaking seeks to unsettle. The context in which academic performativity is shaped is integral to both the making and taking of space in intellectual circuits of production and circulation. This article considers how centre-staging in academia performatively involves particular features. As a case in point, the focus is on the centre-staging of Boaventura de Sousa Santos (epistemology of the South) and Raewyn Connell (Southern Theory), who have become globally known for insisting on bringing knowledge from the South to the North. The wider ecology of the global circuits of academia, as well as their own performative dramaturgy, constitutes points of observation. A self-enterprising ownership of big global conceptual programmes places them high in the decentring of knowledge. There is a leap frogging over former stocks of published academic knowledge, as well as a centre-staging of knowledge projects, whereby it is they who become the flag bearers of this enterprise. Within this process it is important to recognise who is illuminated. Bibliographic tracks become traced over, in the very ways in which fields are mapped in order to produce a point of intervention.

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Section: Tracks In the Sand Of Global Sociologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Puzzlement of a déjà vu: Illuminaries of the global South

Puwar

2019

The Sociological Review

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“…Connell (2007) advocates bringing Southern scholars into the discipline, and to be open to ‘Southern theory’ such that a new form of sociology based on plural ways of knowing can emerge. And De Sousa Santos (2008) calls for ‘intercultural translation’ that will help us ‘re-invent social emancipation’ (McLennan, 2013: 19). McLennan is lukewarm to these critiques because they are not that different from critiques from within the discipline, or they end up supporting oppressive positions rather than emancipatory ones, or because they revert to sociological abstraction themselves, such as ‘north and south’, or ‘west versus the rest’, etc.…”

Section: The Debate Within and Across Disciplinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 But the skirmishes between postcolonial theory and Marxism are now staged across a wider range of disciplines. McLennan (2013) notes that it is not surprising that Sociology as a discipline has been a key target of postcolonial criticism for its Eurocentricity, system--thinking, structuralism, empiricism, claims of neutrality and objectivity, as well as abstract universality. He provides examples of a number of key postcolonialist scholars who specifically advocate the eschewing of 'sociological' thinking, not least for the close relation between it and the subjugation of colonised population, and the emergence of ultimately oppressive governmental apparatus.…”

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confidence: 99%

Marxism and Postcolonial Theory: What’s Left of the Debate?

Sinha

Varma

2015

Critical Sociology

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This article provides an introduction to the special issue, ‘Marxism and Postcolonial Theory: What’s Left of the Debate?’ It casts a critical glance at the long history of engagements between Marxism and postcolonial theory that have been both collaborative and antagonistic. The authors argue that far from materializing the end of either postcolonial theory or of Marxist approaches, these exchanges have been productive and have underscored the continuing currency of both, pointing to ways that go beyond the impasse. The article also provides a critical overview of the debates within different disciplines and suggests new and creative ways of reconceptualizing Marxism and postcolonial theory for the current conjuncture.

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“…Robbins,11 2013); another is whether postcolonial analysis itself can plausibly do without sociological categories, aspirations to generalised theoretical validity, and a political morality of human progress (see e.g. McLennan, 2013); and a third is whether the classic Enlightenment theorists, though undoubtedly people of their ideological times, were in effect laying out the basis for the intellectual critique of 'racial' thinking about people and cultures. Gellner certainly thought so, though in typically arrogant fashion, he snappily brushed off the charge of Eurocentrism.…”

Section: Eurocentrismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is secularism history?

McLennan¹

2015

Thesis Eleven

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In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner’s work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today’s postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner’s project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless to distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm ‘bottom lines’ from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner’s essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner’s stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner’s critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics.

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Postcolonial Critique: The Necessity of Sociology

Cited by 25 publications

References 6 publications

Puzzlement of a déjà vu: Illuminaries of the global South

Puzzlement of a déjà vu: Illuminaries of the global South

Marxism and Postcolonial Theory: What’s Left of the Debate?

Is secularism history?

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