Meaning as Cause: Critical Realism, Ubuntu, and Theorizing from the Global South

• In Event: Critical Epistemologies of the Global South (Co-sponsored by Global and Transnational Sociology Section)

Abstract

Cultural sociology’s interpretive turn has deepened our understanding of how meanings are constructed but often at the expense of explaining when and how they shape action. This article argues that critical realism offers a generative meta-theoretical foundation for cultural sociology by integrating interpretive sensitivity with ontological depth and causal inquiry. Extending Spillman’s call for causal inference in cultural analysis, I show how critical realism enables researchers to specify the conditions under which meanings move from interpretation to action. Drawing on two South African cases 1) the visitor-led entropic re-curation of Robben Island Museum and 2) divergent community responses during the 2021 Durban unrest, I theorize a process model of Contingent Memory Activation (CMA), through which collective memory guides crisis response under particular structural and narrative conditions. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, I engage Ubuntu, a Southern African ontology of relational personhood, to demonstrate how Global South epistemologies contribute not only critique but general social theory. Just as critical realism’s origins in Bhaskar’s engagement with Hindu philosophy in India foreground transcendence and relation, Ubuntu grounds ontology in constitutive relationality and ethical interdependence. Their convergence yields a decolonial cultural sociology capable of both interpretive nuance and causal explanation. Rather than provincializing theory from the “North,” this synthesis advances theorization from the South, offering a globally generative framework for understanding meaning-in-action.

Author

• Matthew Carl Coetzee, University of Notre Dame