The Postcolonial Turn and Global Sociology

Session Submission Type: Invited Session (90 minute)

Description

This panel features scholarship investigating global crises, dynamics and processes from postcolonial perspectives. Sociology has long had a “global imagination,” but recent epistemic revolutions in social science have summoned the need to rethink global sociology. In particular, the postcolonial turn in sociology (which covers “anticolonial” and “decolonial” approaches) provokes scholars into looking beyond the conventional European or Northern-centric concepts that define the discipline’s approach to global sociology and consider alternative theories and concepts that place empire, imperialism and colonialism in the center. The session highlights how the ideas of postcolonial, anticolonial or decolonial thinkers and centering empire or colonialism help us better apprehend global phenomena, whether past or present. These phenomena include but are not restricted to: global racial and economic inequality, climate change, international relations between states, global health, revolution, the global rise of populism, international organizations, global humanitarianism, economic crises, and war.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Julian Go, University of Chicago

Panelists

• Anaheed Al-Hardan, Howard University

• Crystal Nicole Eddins, University of Pittsburgh

• Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge

• Michael Warren Murphy, Occidental College

• Alexandre White, Johns Hopkins University

Session Organizer

• Julian Go, University of Chicago