Global sociology revisited: Toward new directions

Abstract

As newly elected President of the International Sociological Association, I unfold my vision for new directions for global sociology. After defining what a global sociology is, I will point out two particular directions for this sociology: supplementing the postcolonial approach with an anti-authoritarian one, and theorizing post-secular society. One cannot but acknowledge the scars of the colonial era, but postcolonial studies have been rightly used but also abused. I would identify two abuses: the over-emphasis on external factors while neglecting local ones, and the binary logic of antagonistic categories such as East/West, universalism/contextualism. Thus, I make the call to supplement the postcolonial approach with an anti-authoritarian one. There are three levels of authoritarianism: one relates to the political regime; another relates rather to neoliberalism; and the third concerns attitudes. The authoritarian attitude is closely related to the difficulty of dealing with religion in our society. Global sociology should take into account in any contemporary analysis of society the new features of our post-secular society, a sort of low-key secularism in confluence with neoliberalism. In light of these two directions, I would like to see global sociology moving forward. But what should the features of this global sociology be? The article will discuss five features for global sociology.