3234 - Decolonizing Global Sociology

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

In the past two decades, “global sociology” has become a buzzword, concomitant with the rise of “globalization studies” in the 1990s and, institutionally, with the emergence of various projects, journals and organizations seeking to understand “global cities”, “global health”, “global development”, “cosmopolitanism”, “global development”, “global diffusion,” “transnational social movements”, and so on. The emergence of the Global and Transnational Sociology section of the American Sociological Association marks an important milestone in this subfield. This session of the Global and Transnational Sociology Section asks us to reflect critically upon this subfield, consider its limitations and ways of transcending those limitations. Why, for instance, has global sociology been comparably silent on issues of race? Is the “global” and “transnational” just another term for the “imperial” and “colonial”? How does theorizing in the subfield of global sociology occlude Southern theoretical voices and thinkers? Presenters are invited to discuss these or other related matters.

Sub Unit

• Section on Global and Transnational Sociology

Session Organizer

• Julian Go, Boston University

Presider

• Zine Magubane, Boston College

Panelists

• Zine Magubane, Boston College

• Gurminder K. Bhambra, University of Sussex

• Anaheed Al-Hardan, American University of Beirut

• Jose Itzigsohn, Brown University