Do Western Sociological Concepts Apply Globally? Towards a Global Sociology

Abstract

The post-colonial debate challenges the self-certainty of sociology and the suggested universality of its theoretical premises. This has led to calls to provincialize sociological theories and concepts and include perspectives from the South. Thus, we need to ask whether sociological concepts apply globally. Burawoy’s notion of a professional ‘global sociology’ offers a starting point for provincializing sociological concepts without giving up their global applicability. The problems involved in applying the core sociological category of class to Kenya show that classical sociological concepts may be inadequate for analysing societies outside the European and North American context. For the analysis of inequality, we need a more open and empirically founded concept in which the classical notion of class describes just a particular pattern of social structure. For the development of sociological concepts, we always require a broad empirical and intercultural basis in order not to be caught in the trap of Eurocentrism.

When the state goes transnational: The political economy of China’s engagement with Indonesia

“…With the rise of non-Western economies such as China and other BRICS countries over the past decade, it is imperative to go beyond Western-centrism and investigate new economic dynamisms and market mechanisms associated with the emerging economies (see Liu, 2022b; Neubert, 2022). This trend is likely to persist in the near to medium term as increasingly more emerging economies band together to forge larger common markets such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which took effect in early 2022.…”

Starting from Lagos: International schooling and the diverse transnational status‐making projects of ‘Middling’ and ‘Elite’ Nigerians

“…11 They emphasized international exams, but this is usually an added 'extra' -one Director admitted that recently they had actually not had any pupils sit IGCSEs, lamenting the limited resources of local families, but their 'British-Nigerian' curriculum was still a selling point. This highlights that these schools serve 'unstable' middling groups (Neubert, 2022) squeezed by Nigeria's recent economic downturn. Educators were hyperaware of their local geographies of class.…”

“…(Director, Mid-Range School, Ejigbo) Though the migratory futures of their students may be uncertain, this arena of international schooling is often characterized as simply 'aspirational' and 'local' (Bunnell et al, 2016) in ways that overlook the already-existing transnational engagements of the schools and their clientele. 'Mid-range' Lagos international schools serve and are a product of (via remittances), a squeezed and unstable 'middle' with limited options in Nigeria (Neubert, 2022), who seek betterment through migration, yet have to contend with the fact it may bring precarity and 'status paradox' as well as financial resources (Nieswand, 2014). Furthermore, though 'mid-range' schools do engage with Anglo-American-centric global hierarchies, their creative embrace of a wide range of transnational horizons demonstrates that they are an arena in which alternative imaginaries of international education, beyond colonial legacies, are being explored.…”

“…Overall, it has been argued that in West Africa, education ‘remain[s] the most important determinant of class status’ (Budniok & Noll, 2018: 129), though feeding into different dynamics over time: Producing ‘hometown’ leaders engaged regional development in the 1930–1940s; incorporating national elites in the 1950–1960s; and since the 1970–1980s becoming a more uncertain route to security (Behrends & Lentz, 2012), with tertiary education now the ‘entry requirement’ into ‘the middle’. Considering this ‘middle’, scholars have grappled with the fact that it is clearly important to analyse the dynamics of social status in contemporary Africa, particularly the growth of heterogeneous ‘middling’ groups, yet measures of class based on income and expenditure, or Eurocentric models, are inadequate given the enduring importance of rural–urban ties, ethnic and religious networks, and cross‐class kinship groups to the way resources are shared and status is conferred (Lentz, 2015; Neubert, 2022; Scharrer et al., 2018). Rather than broad discussions of ‘the African middle classes’, there have been calls for specific analyses of how various groups are ‘doing class’ as ‘a bundle of social practices that may or may not be conscious, but that create and mark differences’ (Lentz, 2015: 41).…”

A field theory approach to international journalism: The case of Indian journalists in the middle east

“…To be sure, this is not a new question. In the 1980s and 1990s, this question generated intense debates on post-modernity, post-development, and postcolonialism, challenging cultural studies and the social sciences (Neubert, 2022). The criticism of Western-as-universal originated in literary and historical studies before shifting to the disciplines of sociology and communication.…”