Canons and Colonies: a Global Trajectory of Sociology

Abstract

The history of sociology as a field of knowledge, especially in the English-speaking world, has been obscured by the discipline’s own origin myth in the form of a canon of “classical theory” concerned with European modernity. Sociology was involved in the world of empire from the start. Making the canon more inclusive, in gender, race, and even global terms, is not an adequate correction. Important types of social knowledge, including movement-based and indigenous knowledges, resist canonization. The turn towards decolonial and Southern perspectives, now happening across the social sciences, opens up new perspectives on the history of knowledge. These can be linked with a more sophisticated view of the collective production of knowledge by the workforces that are increasingly, though unequally, interacting. Potentials for a more effectively engaged sociology emerge.