Sociology under scrutiny. Challenges of post-colonial, global and development sociology

Abstract

Today, the post-colonial reasoning has reached mainstream sociology. The main point of criticism is sociology’s focus on the modern “West” and its ignorance of non-Western societies as well as the universalistic claim of sociological theories developed in the North Atlantic. This produces hierarchies and power in knowledge production and ignorance of epistemologies and research on and in the Global South. It is sometimes overlooked that this debate is not entirely new. Western hegemony is a long-standing topic in Development Sociology and led to the fundamental post-development critique. Later on, Global Sociology focused on inequalities in the science system and the exclusion of non-Western theories and epistemologies. With this article we organise this academic field, reveal differences and overlaps between these intellectual traditions and identify their particular focus, including their claims for future sociological studies. In conclusion, we argue for an empirical turn in the decolonisation of sociology.