Social theory, extroversion and autonomy: Impasses and horizons of (semi) peripheral contemporary sociology

Abstract

This article analyzes the production of peripheral social theory in different geopolitical eras and stages of modernity, with a special focus on (semi) peripheral contemporary sociology. We argue that the current research agenda is focused on an intellectual movement of a criticism that fights Eurocentrism and modernity, however without being able to create systematic theoreticalmethodological formulations, as it had occurred in the middle of the twentieth century. We, therefore, seek to improve the basis for a more propositional instituting movement from two directions: on the one hand, by recovering the centrality of autonomous fields and aggregator circuits that may overcome intellectual extroversion; on the other hand, by analyzing, in a dialogue with Guerreiro Ramos, the possibilities of creating a theory in (semi)periphery as one of the main ways to undo more permanently the hegemony of theories from central countries and its customary use outside its original place.