Anticolonial thought, the sociological imagination, and social science: A reply to critics

Abstract

This essay responds to commentaries (this issue) on Go's “Thinking Against Empire: Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory” (this issue). The essay addressed shared concerns and underlying themes of the commentaries, most of which pivot around the problem of the anticolonial and the status of disciplinary sociology as a knowledge project. Is there a need for sociology to incorporate anticolonial thought? How does anticolonial thought as social theory differ from other epistemic projects? Is the distinction between sociology's imperial episteme and anticolonial thought fruitful or obfuscating? And what are the possibilities and limits of a social science informed by anticolonial thought? Ultimately, the essay maintains that anticolonial thought offers a powerful sociological imagination that can be fruitfully tethered to a project of realist social science. It also maintains that realist social science can be emancipatory; provided that it is reoriented by anticolonial thought.