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

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

It is now commonplace knowledge that sociological theorizing, especially in the United States is mostly shaped by Western thought, creating Eurocentric theories and analysis. In turn, this recognition leads to calls for the “recovery” of theorists not represented in the canon and a turn towards theorists from the Global South (understood as a political and social, rather than a geographical, category). In this panel, we use the second tactic, asking for papers that are critically grounded in the Global South, or more generally, non-Western frameworks either as theoretical development or empirical analysis. In submitting this joint call from the Theory and GATS section, we build on the strength of both sections and draw papers from across them. In this way, we hope to spur the growth of truly balanced sociological theories: afterall, sociological theories are not generalizable if they are based on only a small slice of the world.

Sub Unit

• Theory Section / Critical Epistemologies of the Global South (Co-sponsored by Global and Transnational Sociology Section)

Cosponsor

• Global and Transnational Sociology Section

Presider

• Angela Elena Fillingim, San Francisco State University

Individual Presentations

• Context of Inception: Rethinking Migration, Agency, and Conscription from a Global South Perspective - Carlos Alberto Aguilar Gonzalez, University of Pennsylvania

• Decolonizing Climate Change from the Ground Up: Labor as Critical Method in the Agrarian Worlds - Surabhi Pant, SUNY-Buffalo; Raka Sen, Assistant Professor, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Arizona State University

• Meaning as Cause: Critical Realism, Ubuntu, and Theorizing from the Global South - Matthew Carl Coetzee, University of Notre Dame

• Rooting Social Research in Indigenous and Participatory Ethos - Laurent Reyes, UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare; Lorraine Torres Colon, University of California-Berkeley; Samantha Keaulana-Scott, Department of Public Health Studies University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Session Organizer

• Angela Elena Fillingim, San Francisco State University