Global Knowledge Production in the Social Sciences: a Critical Assessment

Knowledge is a commodity and knowledge production does not occur in a geo-political vacuum. With respect to this, it has to be argued that neo-imperialism involves economic and knowledge flows across continuous space, which is transnational and distinct from the old forms of colonialism which were based on country-to-country occupation. In the context of contemporary geo-politics, these conditions render territorial terrain as less important than discursive terrain (Lo 2011). So, how is global knowledge in the social sciences (and more specifically in criminology) produced and shared? Where does this production take place? Who are the producers? Whose experiences and whose voices are reflected in dominant academic discourses? How is knowledge disseminated and who gets access to it? These are some of the questions that the project of southern criminology seeks to tackle. To access the full text of the introductory article to this special issue on southern criminology, download the accompanying PDF file.

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The Social Life of the “Forever Chemical”

Environment and Society ◽

10.3167/ares.2021.120109 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 146-163

Author(s):

Daniel Renfrew ◽

Thomas W. Pearson

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Social Life ◽

Cultural Dimensions ◽

Ethnographic Research ◽

The Public ◽

Toxic Event ◽

The Social ◽

The Subject ◽

Polyfluoroalkyl Substances

This article examines the social life of PFAS contamination (a class of several thousand synthetic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) and maps the growing research in the social sciences on the unique conundrums and complex travels of the “forever chemical.” We explore social, political, and cultural dimensions of PFAS toxicity, especially how PFAS move from unseen sites into individual bodies and into the public eye in late industrial contexts; how toxicity is comprehended, experienced, and imagined; the factors shaping regulatory action and ignorance; and how PFAS have been the subject of competing forms of knowledge production. Lastly, we highlight how people mobilize collectively, or become demobilized, in response to PFAS pollution/ toxicity. We argue that PFAS exposure experiences, perceptions, and responses move dynamically through a “toxicity continuum” spanning invisibility, suffering, resignation, and refusal. We off er the concept of the “toxic event” as a way to make sense of the contexts and conditions by which otherwise invisible pollution/toxicity turns into public, mass-mediated, and political episodes. We ground our review in our ongoing multisited ethnographic research on the PFAS exposure experience.

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Stretching Situated Knowledge

International Relations in a Relational Universe ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198850885.003.0005 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 87-105

Author(s):

Milja Kurki

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Social Theory ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Critical Social Theory ◽

Situated Knowledge ◽

Ir Theory ◽

The Social ◽

Standpoint Epistemology ◽

Critical Social

This chapter, first of three to develop relational cosmology in conversation with critical social theory and IR theory, argues that at the heart of relational cosmology lies a commitment to situated knowledge. This perspective on knowledge production is similar in some regards to standpoint epistemology but also diverges from it in key respects. The chapter argues that IR scholarship can benefit from close engagement with relational cosmology suggestions as to how our knowledge is limited and how we might need to ‘deal with it’, especially in the social sciences, where there is a tendency to glorify the role of the human in knowing the human.

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Indigenising Eurocentric sociology: The ‘captive mind’ and five decades of sociology in Nigeria

Current Sociology ◽

10.1177/0011392117704242 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 66 (6) ◽

pp. 831-848 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Ifeanyi Onwuzuruigbo

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Southeast Asian ◽

Sociological Knowledge ◽

The Social ◽

Material Conditions

Over the years, the social sciences and related disciplines in postcolonial societies have agitated against the dominant Eurocentric mode of knowledge production. In this case, the grouse against Eurocentric knowledge production is that it undermines attempts at indigenising Eurocentric sociology in Nigeria. This article is an engagement with efforts to evolve a Nigerian sociology. It draws upon the concept of the captive mind, developed by Syed Hussein Alatas, a Southeast Asian intellectual, to critically explore the indigenisation of sociology in Nigeria. In doing so, the article explores the development and entrenchment of Eurocentric sociology as well as attempts at indigenising it over five decades of the production of sociological knowledge in Nigerian universities. It portrays the ways in which the ‘captive’ Nigerian sociologists, students of sociology and the antagonistic material conditions of producing and propagating knowledge connive against the indigenisation of sociology in Nigeria.

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Globalization, Class and Culture in Global Systems

Journal of World-Systems Research ◽

10.5195/jwsr.2000.198 ◽

2000 ◽

pp. 636-656 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Jonathan Friedman

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Critical Assessment ◽

Global Perspective ◽

Social Scientists ◽

The Social ◽

Global Age ◽

The World ◽

Immanuel Wallerstein ◽

Global Systems ◽

Proper Account

The work of Immanuel Wallerstein has been criticized by certain anthropologists for not having taken culture into proper account. He has been accused of the sin of political economy, a not uncommon accusation, a re?ex of the 80s and post-80s anthropological jargon that might ?nally today be exhausted. Years earlier a number of social scientists were engaged in a critical assessment of the social sciences from a distinctively global perspective. Wallerstein, Frank and others were at the forefront of this critique which had a powerful impact on anthropology. The global perspective was not a mere addition to anthropological knowledge, not a mere of extension of the use of the culture concept, i.e. before it was local and now it is global, before culture stood still, but now in the global age, it ?ows around the world. It was a more fundamental critique, or at least it implied a more fundamental critique. This critique could only be attained from a perspective in which the very concept of society was re-conceived as something very different, as a locus constructed within a historical force ?eld which was very much broader than any particular politically de?ned unit.

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Researching the Dynamics of National Social Policy in a Globalized Society. A Proposal for a De-Nationalized Analytical Framework

Swiss Journal of Sociology ◽

10.2478/sjs-2021-0010 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 47 (1) ◽

pp. 137-155

Author(s):

Erica Righard

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Social Policy ◽

Old Age ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Social Protection ◽

Analytical Framework ◽

Pension Scheme ◽

The Public ◽

The Social

Abstract Epistemological hierarchies in the social sciences stipulate that sedentarism is naturalised as a normality, and that mobility is viewed as a deviation. This article sets out to propose an analytical framework that takes the analysis beyond this kind of nationalized knowledge production, and to empirically show the gains of de-nationalized frameworks for analysis of social protection and dynamics of in-/equality in the globalised society. I will do this relying on the empirical example of the public old-age pension scheme in Sweden.

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Sociology’s encounter with the decolonial: The problematique of indigenous vs that of coloniality, extraversion and colonial modernity

Current Sociology ◽

10.1177/0011392120931143 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 001139212093114 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sujata Patel

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Political Economy ◽

Knowledge Production ◽

Sociological Theory ◽

The Political ◽

Colonial Modernity ◽

Politics Of Difference ◽

Everyday Practices ◽

The Social ◽

Everyday Knowledge

How did the process of decolonization reframe the social sciences? This article maps the interventions made by theorists of and from the ex-colonial countries in reconceptualizing sociology both as practice and as an episteme. It argues that there are geographically varied and intellectually diverse decolonial approaches being formulated using sociological theory to critique the universals propounded by the traditions of western sociology/social sciences; that these diverse knowledges are connected through colonial and global circuits and that these create knowledge geographies; that collectively these diverse intellectual positions argue that sociology/social sciences are constituted in and within the politics of ‘difference’ organized within colonial, nationalist and global geopolitics; that this ‘difference’ is being reproduced in everyday knowledge practices and is being structured through the political economy of knowledge; and that the destabilization of this power structure and democratization of this knowledge is possible only when there is a fulsome interrogation of this political economy, and its everyday practices of knowledge production within universities and research institutes. It argues that this critique needs to be buffered by the constitution of alternate networks of circulation of this knowledge.

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