Global Sociology: Towards an Alternative Southern Paradigm
Abstract
The project to (re)construct a global sociology is one where there is no agreed paradigm or even a shared understanding of the main issues that would be needed to secure a new robust and credible paradigm. What I seek to do here is to simply clarify the terms of the debate so as to establish whether we might pursue the quest for an alternative paradigm with some conviction. I first consider the ‘strong case’ for a global sociology based on the assumptions of globalisation theory which, overall, seems to suffer from economism in my view. Next I present a postcolonial perspective which posits a fundamental division between the global South and the North, an enterprise I find to be marked by a certain culturalism. I then present elements for an alternative approach towards a new paradigm based on an understanding of complexity, uneven development and the politics of scale. A brief Latin American excursus at the end seeks to provide some texture to the overall argument that a new global sociology could develop through a critical Southern lens and a focus on cultural political economy.
Downloads
References
Acosta, A. (2010), «El buen vivir en el camino del post–desarrollo», Friederich Ebert Stiftung, Policy Paper No. 9.
Albrow, M. (1996), The global age: State and society beyond modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Althusser, L., & Balibar, E. (1970), Reading capital, London: Verso.
Arrighi, G., Silver, B., & Brewer, B. (2003), «Industrial convergence, globalization, and the persistence of the north–south divide», Studies in Comparative International Development, 38 (1), pp. 3–31.
Aschroft, B., Griffiths, G., & Tiffin, H. (Eds.) (1995), The post–colonial studies reader, London: Routledge.
Balibar, E. (1995), The philosophy of Marx, London: Verso.
Bartra, R. (2002), Blood, ink and culture: Miseries and splendors of the post–mexican political condition, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Benjamin, W. (1969), Illuminations, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Best, J., & Paterson, M. (Eds.) (2010), Cultural political economy, New York: Routledge.
Bhambra, G. (2007), «Sociology and postcolonialism: Another ‘missing’ revolution?» Sociology, 4 (5), pp. 871–884.
Bhambra, G. (2014), Connected sociologies, Bloomsbury Academic.
Bieler, A., Lindberg, I., & Pillay, D. (Eds.) (2008), Labour and the challenges of globalization, London: Pluto.
Bisley, N. (2007), Rethinking globalization, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Burawoy, M. (2008), «Rejoinder: For a subaltern sociology», Current Sociology, 56 (3), pp. 435–444.
Calderón, F., Hopenhayn, M., & Ottone, E. (1996), Esa esquiva modernidad: Desarrollo, ciudadanía y cultura en América Latina y el Caribe, Caracas: Nueva Sociedad.
Canclini, N. G. (1995), Hybrid cultures: Strategies for entering and leaving modernity, Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press.
Canclini, N. G. (2002), Latinoamericanos buscando lugar en este siglo, Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1969), Dependencia y desarrollo en América Latina, Mexico: Siglo XXI.
Cardoso, F. H., & Faletto, E. (1979), Dependency and development in Latin America, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Castells, M. (1996), The information age–Volume I: The rise of network society, Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. (1997), The information age–Volume II: The power of identity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Chandhoke, N. (2005), «How global is global civil society?» Journal of World Systems Research, 11 (2), pp. 355–371.
Chernilo, D. (2011), «The critique of methodological nationalism: Theory and history», Thesis Eleven, 106 (1), pp. 98–117.
Coates, D. (2005), Varieties of capitalism: Varieties of approaches, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cohen, R., & Kennedy, P. (2000), Global sociology, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cohen, R., & Kennedy, P. (2013), Global sociology (3rd ed.), Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Connell, R. (2007), Southern theory. The global dynamics of knowledge in social science, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Coronil, F. (2008), Elephants in the Americas? Latin American postcolonial studies and global decolonization, en M. Moraña, E. Dussel, & C. Jáuregui (Eds.), Coloniality at large: Latin America and the postcolonial debate (pp. 396–416). Durham: Duke University Press.
Day, R., & Gaido, D. (2009), Witnesses to permanent revolution, Chicago: Haymarket.
Delaney, D., & Leitner, H. (1997). The political construction of scale. Political Geography, 16 (2), pp. 93–97.
Drainville, A. (2004), Contesting globalisation: Space and place in the world economy, London: Routledge.
Eisenstadt, S. (2000), «Multiple modernities» Daedalus, 129 (1), pp. 1–29.
Escobar, A. (2010), Worlds and knowledges otherwise: The Latin American modernity /coloniality research program, en W. Mignolo & A. Escobar (Eds.), Globalization and the decolonial option (pp. 33–64). New York: Routledge.
Firebaugh, G. (2003), The new geography of global income inequality, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Friedman, T. (2005), The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty–first century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Fukuyama, F. (1992), The end of history and the last man, New York: Free Press.
Gandhi, L. (1998), Postcolonial theory: A critical introduction, New York: Columbia University Press.
Ghemawat, P. (2007), «Why the world isn’t flat», Foreign Policy, March–April.
Gouldner, A. (1970), The coming crisis of western sociology, New York: Basic Books.
Gramsci, A. (1971), Selections from the prison notebooks, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Grzanka, P. (2014), Intersectionality: A foundations and frontiers reader, Boulder: Westview Press.
Habermas, J. (1985), «A philosophical–political interview», New Left Review, I (15).
Hall, P., & Soskice, D. (2001), Varieties of capitalism: The institutional framework of comparative advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hart, G. (2002), Disabling globalization: Places of power in post–apartheid South Africa, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Herod, A. (2001), Labor geographies: Workers and the landscapes of capitalism, New York: The Guilford Press.
Jessop, B., & Sum, N. L. (2010), «Pre–disciplinary and post–disciplinary perspectives», New Political Economy, 6 (1), pp. 89–101.
Kapoor, I. (2008), The postcolonial politics of development, London: Routledge.
Kay, C. (1989), Latin American theories of development and underdevelopment, London: Macmillan.
Lutz, H., Vivar, M. T. H., & Supik, L. (2011), Framing intersectionality: Debates on a multi–faceted concept in gender studies, Farnham: Ashgate.
McEwan, C. (2009), Postcolonialism and development, London: Routledge.
Mezzadra, S. (2011), «How many histories of labour? Towards a theory of postcolonial capitalism», Postcolonial Studies, 14 (2), pp. 151–170.
Mignolo, W., & Escobar, A. (Eds.) (2010), Globalization and the decolonial option, London: Routledge.
Milanović, B. (2011), Global inequality: From class to location, from proletarians to migrants.
Policy Research Working Paper 5820. Poverty and Inequality Team: The World Bank.
Moore, A. (2008), «Rethinking scale as a geographical category: From analysis to practice», Progress in Human Geography, 32 (2), pp. 203–225.
Munck, R. (1999), Labour in the global: Challenges and prospects, en R. Cohen & S. Rai (Eds.), Social movements in the global age (pp. 83–100), London: Athlone Press.
Munck, R. (2002), Labour and globalisation: A new great transformation?, London: Zed Book.
Munck, R. (2006), «Global civil society: Royal road or slippery path», VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 17, pp. 325–332.
Munck, R. (2007), Globalization and contestation: The new great counter–movement, London: Palgrave.
Munck, R. (2013a), Rethinking Latin America: Development, hegemony and social transformation, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Munck, R. (2013b), «The precariat: A view from the South», Third World Quarterly, 34(5), pp. 747–762.
Patel, S. (Ed.) (2010), The ISA handbook of diverse sociological traditions, London: Sage Publications.
Patel, S. (Ed.) (2014), «Afterword: Doing global sociology: Issues, problems and challenges», Current Sociology, 62 (4), pp. 603–613.
Phillips, A. (1992), Universal pretensions in political thought, en M. Barrett & A. Phillips (Eds.), Destabilizing theory: Contemporary feminist debates, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Quijano, A. (2008), Coloniality of power, eurocentrism and social classification, en M. Moraña, E. Dussel, & C. Jáuregui (Eds.), Coloniality at large: Latin America and the postcolonial debate (pp. 181–224). Durham: Duke University Press.
Radcliffe, S. (2011), «Development for a postneoliberal era? Sumak kawsay, living well and the limits to decolonization in Ecuador», Geoforum, 43 (2), pp. 240–249.
Ramirez, R. (2010), Socialismo del sumak kawsay o biosocialismo republicano. En Los nuevos retos de América Latina: Socialismo y Sumak Kawsay, Quito: SENPLADES.
Reed, I. A. (2013), Theoretical labors necessary for a global sociology: Critique of Raewyn Connell’s Southern Theory, en J. Go (Ed.), Decentering social theory (pp. 157–171). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Reigadas, M. C. (1998), Neomodernidad y posmodernidad: Preguntando desde América Latina, en E. Marí (Ed.), Posmodernidad, Biblio Editores: Buenos Aires.
Robinson, W. (2011), Globalization and the sociology of Immanuel Wallerstein: A critical appraisal,
International Sociology, 26 (6), pp. 723–745.
Romero, M., & Margolis, E. (Eds.) (2005), The Blackwell companion on social inequalities, Oxford: Blackwell.
Said, E. (2002), A conversation with Neeladri Bhattacharya, Suvir Kaul, and Ania Loomba, en T. Goldberg & A. Quayson (Eds.), Relocating postcolonialism (pp. 1–14). Oxford: Blackwell.
Schmidt, V. (2006), «Multiple modernities or varieties of modernity?», Current Sociology, 54 (1), pp. 77–97.
Silver, B. (2003), Forces of labor: Workers’ movements and globalization since 1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sklair, L. (2001), Globalization: Capitalism and its alternatives, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sklair, L. (2002), Sociology of the global system, Harvester: Hemel Hempstead.
Smart, B. (2003), Economy, culture, and society: A sociological critique of neoliberalism, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Smith, N. (1984), Uneven development: Nature, capital and the production of space, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Stevis, D., & Boswell, T. (2008), Globalization and labor: Democratizing global governance, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Stiglitz, J. (2006), Making globalization work, New York: Norton.
Sum, N. G., & Jessop, B. (2014), Towards a cultural political economy, London: Edward Elgar.
Therborn, G. (1976), Science, class and society: On the formation of sociology and historical materialism, London: Verso.
Urry, J. (2003), Global complexity, Cambridge: Polity.
Wallerstein, I. (1979), The capitalist world–economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wallerstein, I. (1996), Open the social sciences. Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wallerstein, I. (2004), World–systems analysis: An introduction, Durham: Duke University Press.
Webster, E., Lambert, R., & Bezuidenhout, A. (2008), Grounding globalization: Labour in the age of insecurity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Williams, P., & Chrisman, L. (Eds.) (1994), Colonial discourse and post–colonial theory: A reader, New York: Columbia University Press.
Wimmer, A., & Schiller, G. (2002), Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation–state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2 (4), pp. 301–334.
World Bank. (2000), World development report 2000–2001: Attacking poverty. Washington DC: World Bank.
Copyright (c) 2023 Revista de Estudios Globales. Análisis Histórico y Cambio Social
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
