Canons and Colonies: The 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.

IR theory and Area Studies: a plea for displaced knowledge about international politics

“…Here, the hierarchical distinction, far from being descriptive of differences between academic fields, appears as the simple expression of the familiar colonial spatialization and temporalization that describes Europe and the West as the actualization of a universal development towards modernity, and on this basis solely capable of producing universal theory (Baber 2003). As Raewyn Connell has shown, the binary division between theory and empirical research on non-Western societies was a core part of the racialized gaze of 'colonial science', the co-production of (social) scientific knowledge and colonial practices of population management that is at the origin of modern IR and the social sciences as a whole (Connell 1997(Connell , 2019Vitalis 2012). It was common for early social scientists to draw on examples of 'primitive societies' in the colonies to make points about the evolution of social systems in the West.…”

Mapeando o debate sobre o ensino de Sociologia no Brasil: uma análise dos temas e agentes presentes nos GTs do Eneseb (2013-2021)

“…Refletindo ainda a expansão da agenda de pesquisa sobre gênero e raça, assim como sobre as perspectivas afro-indígenas, tem havido, ao menos desde o IV Eneseb, GTs que têm articulado essas questões com o ensino de Sociologia. Esse movimento parece refletir, ao mesmo tempo, a consolidação desses debates no campo das Ciências Sociais (Barreto, Rio, Neves, & Santos, 2021;Franch & Nascimento, 2020) e também a emergência de uma perspectiva cada vez mais plural de Sociologia, que passa a perceber a existência de cânones para além da perspectiva eurocêntrica (Connell, 2019).…”

Deparochialising the Canon: The Case of Sociological Theory

“…Although it is recognised that the canon is an historical product and is not defined as fixed or static, it has tended to remain stable, and includes Marx, Weber and Durkheim (Connell, 1997). The canonization of the trinity, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, occurred between the 1930s and 1960s (Connell, 2019). Referring to the canon as pseudo-history,…”

“…Their major texts, notably Capital, Suicide, The Division of Labour in Society, and Economy and Society, form a canon widely known as Classical Theory. A less distinguished second team also contributed, made up of Tönnies, Spencer, Sumner, Simmel and Pareto (Connell, 2019).…”

“…Although it is recognised that the canon is an historical product and is not defined as fixed or static, it has tended to remain stable, and includes Marx, Weber and Durkheim (Connell, 1997). The canonization of the trinity, Marx, Weber and Durkheim, occurred between the 1930s and 1960s (Connell, 2019). Referring to the canon as pseudo‐history, Connell says:

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, society in Europe and North America went through a deep transformation, involving the industrial revolution, the advent of democracy, the rise of bureaucracy and the modern state, and cultural changes of which the core was secularization.

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