Postcolonial theory has enjoyed wide influence in the humanities but it has left sociology comparatively unscathed. Does this mean that postcolonial theory is not relevant to sociology? Focusing upon social theory and historical sociology in particular, this article considers if and how postcolonial theory in the humanities might be imported into North American sociology. It argues that postcolonial theory offers a substantial critique of sociology because it alerts us to sociology’s tendency to analytically bifurcate social relations. The article also suggests (...) that a postcolonial sociology can overcome these problems by incorporating relational social theories to give new accounts of modernity. Rather than simply studying non-Western postcolonial societies or only examining colonialism, this approach insists upon the interactional constitution of social units, processes, and practices across space. To illustrate, the article draws upon relational theories (actor-network theory and field theory) to offer postcolonial accounts of two conventional research areas in historical sociology: the industrial revolution in England and the French Revolution. (shrink)

Have we ever been religious? It may seem strange to open an essay on Derrida with a Latourean question. Yet, with regard to religion, what Derrida demonstrates is quite unavoidably this: we have long been, and are still being, Christianized. Whatever else we may have been, perhaps still are, constitutes but the space or espacement offered or relinquished, however reluctantly or even grudgingly (though more often than not quite willingly) to Christianization. This is a space that goes beyond whatever is (...) meant by the word or the concept of ‘religion’, under whatever definition. And though Derrida still refers to it, at times, in terms that have themselves become, for the most part, religious markers (Judaism, Islam, etc.), he leaves no doubt that such name calling is part of the Christianization he otherwise documents. This essay attempts to show that the question (let us call it Derrida's ‘Christian question’) is therefore: what is Christianity? (shrink)

Contemporary debates on decolonising knowledge production, inclusive of research on Africa, are crucial and challenge researchers to reflect on the legacies of colonial power relations that continue to permeate the production of knowledge about the continent, its peoples, and societies. Yet these are not new debates. Sixty years ago, Ghana’s first president and pan-Africanist leader, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, highlighted the importance of Africa-centred knowledge. Similarly, in the 1980s, Claude Ake advocated for endogenous knowledge production on Africa. But progress has been (...) slow at best, indicated by the enduring predominance of non-African writers on African issues within leading scholarly journals. Thus, we examine why decolonisation of knowledge production remains so necessary and what can be done within the context of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences. These questions are addressed at two levels, one more practical and one more reflective . At both levels, issues of power inequalities and injustice are critical. At the practical level, the asymmetrical power relations between scholars in the Global North and South are highlighted. At a deeper level, the critiques of contemporary African authors are outlined, all contesting the ongoing coloniality and epistemic injustices that affect knowledge production on Africa, and calling for a more fundamental reorientation of ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches in order to decolonise knowledge production. (shrink)

Our understanding of body–world relations is caught in a curious contradiction. On one side, it is well established that many concepts that describe interaction with the outer world – ‘plasticity’ or ‘metabolism’- or external influences on the body - ‘environment’ or ‘milieu’ – appeared with the rise of modern science. On the other side, although premodern science lacked a unifying term for it, an anxious attentiveness to the power of ‘environmental factors’ in shaping physical and moral traits held sway in (...) nearly all medical systems before and alongside modern Europe. In this article, I build on a new historiography on the policing of bodies and environments in medieval times and at the urban scale to problematize Foucault’s claim about biopolitics as a modern phenomenon born in the European eighteenth-century. I look in particular at the collective usage of ancient medicine and manipulation of the milieu based on humoralist notions of corporeal permeability (Hippocrates, Galen, Ibn Sīnā) in the Islamicate and Latin Christendom between the 12th and the 15th century. This longer history has implications also for a richer genealogy of contemporary tropes of plasticity, permeability and environmental determinism beyond usual genealogies that take as a starting point the making of the modern body and EuroAmerican biomedicine. (shrink)

Noting a lack of consensus in the recent literature on the Anthropocene, this article considers how social anthropologists might contribute to its theorizing and dating. Empirically it draws on the author’s long-term fieldwork in Hungary. It is argued that ethnographic methods are essential for grasping subjectivities, including temporal orientations and perceptions of epochal transformation. When it comes to historical periodization, however, ethnography is obviously insufficient and proposals privileging the last half-century, or just the last quarter of a century, seem inadequate. (...) Influential theories, which define ‘modernity’ in terms of developments emanating from the countries of the North Atlantic in the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (Gellner, Polanyi, Wolf), remain partial and Eurocentric. To comprehend the social preconditions of the Anthropocene in a holistic fashion (the crucial contribution of comparative anthropology), it is necessary to follow Jack Goody and trace how the urban revolutions of the Bronze Age united Eurasia through the diffusion of new forms of economy, polity and cosmology. (shrink)

El objeto de investigación del presente artículo es identificar y definir las diferentes perspectivas epistemológicas y metodológicas que han emergido desde la mitad del siglo XX: la multidisciplinariedad, la pluridisciplinariedad, la interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad. También aborda la irrupción de la globalización y los procesos transfronterizos haciendo un acercamiento genealógico a la epistemología del sur latinoamericana, africana, islámica y asiática. Por último, reivindica la necesidad de crear puentes transculturales entre los pueblos de todo el mundo para superar la encrucijada paradigmática (...) en la que nos encontramos como sistema-mundo, con la finalidad de alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible establecidos por los Naciones Unidas para el año 2030. (shrink)

The article focuses on the historical resources of the China’s model. Understanding the model is one of necessary preconditions of an analysis of China’s dynamic rise and development in recent decades. First, the article analyses the concept of historical development of multiple civilisations and modernities. It then examines the characteristics of China’s old civilisation and the associated model. It ends by showing how the historical Silk Road lives on in an updated modernised global version.

This article examines whether autonomy as an educational aim should be defended at the global scale. It begins by identifying the normative issues at stake in global autonomy education by distinguishing them from the problems of autonomy education in multicultural nation-states. The article then explains why a planet-wide expansion of the ideal of autonomy is conceivable on the condition that the concept of autonomy is widened in a way that renders its precise meaning flexibly adjustable to a variety of distinct (...) social and cultural contexts. A context-transcendent, core meaning of autonomy remains in place, however, according to which a person is only autonomous if she relates to the values and goals that direct her life in a way so that she sees them as her own and is able to identify and critically assess her principal reasons for action. Finally, the article addresses two challenges to the global expansion of autonomy education: the objection that autonomy is presently not the most important educational aim and the objection that global autonomy education is a form of cultural imperialism. It finds both objections wanting. (shrink)

Norbert Elias’s concept of the civilizing process is perhaps the most controversial aspect of his work, attracting frequent criticism for its perceived Eurocentrism, as well as impassioned defences that critics have misunderstood the concept. In this piece, I explore how The Civilizing Process channels unacknowledged Eurocentric stereotypes in ways that infuse the theory at a depth level. I then examine the downstream ramifications of these stereotypes by contrasting Elias’s analysis of the Holocaust, as presented in The Germans, with his analysis (...) of colonialism as presented in The Civilizing Process. I argue that Elias’s failure to integrate forms of state violence directed at the colonial periphery undermines his ability to analyse state violence in the core. A more adequate approach would theorize ‘civilization’ as an ambivalent and contradictory process whose violent character is often – though not always – more exposed and visible on the periphery. (shrink)

This article critiques theories of the civilizing process as expounded by its leading expositors: Mennell, Elias and Freud. It begins with a criticism of Stephen Mennell’s book The American Civilizing Process. This book relies on an even more famous work, Norbert Elias’s The Civilizing Process. Unfortunately, Mennell’s otherwise commendable attempt to capture American civilization in its historical scope and sociological complexity is misdirected because Eliasian theory is not applicable to America, as we will show, and, furthermore, offers a dubious account (...) of civilization in general. Elias’s approach is limited above all by its reliance on Sigmund Freud’s doubtful speculations about civilization, as presented in Civilization and its Discontents. (shrink)

This paper places Adam Smith within the long republican tradition, and offers an emancipatory reflection on the possible space of republican freedom within societies that harbour certain degrees of market activity. In doing so, it seeks to offer some criteria on the kind of political-institutional action that can be taken in modern societies in order to constitute markets that respect, and even promote, republican freedom. The paper is divided into four sections. Section 1 shows why Adam Smith's ethical-political analysis, which (...) was very influential in the shaping of classical political economy, can be presented as part of the broad republican tradition. Section 2 reflects on the possibilities for a realisation of republican freedom within markets. What I call 'commercial republicanism' is here analysed as a project for modern societies. Section 3 assesses the difficulties for commercial republicanism to unfold within capitalist societies, the structural features of which prevent individuals and groups from enjoying the kind of undominated social relations the republican tradition has always pleaded for. Finally, section 4 draws some conclusions on the epistemic and political meanings of commercial republicanism as an emancipatory project for contemporary societies. (shrink)