Gurminder K. Bhambra

Postcolonial and decolonial dialogues

The traditions of thought associated with postcolonialism and decoloniality are long-standing and diverse. Postcolonialism emerged as an intellectual movement consolidating and developing around the ideas of Edward W Said, Homi K Bhabha and Gayatri C Spivak. While much work in the area of postcolonial studies has directly addressed issues of the material, of the socio-economic, there has also been a tendency for it to remain firmly in the realm of the cultural. In contrast, the modernity/coloniality school emerged from the work of, among others, the sociologists Anibal Quijano and María Lugones, and the philosopher and semiotician, Walter D Mignolo. It was strongly linked to world-systems theory from the outset as well as to scholarly work in development and underdevelopment theory and the Frankfurt School critical social theory tradition. As well as a disciplinary difference, there is also a difference in geographical ‘origin’ and remit; that is, the geographical locations from where the scholars within the particular fields hail and the geographical focus of their studies. Postcolonialism emerged as a consequence of the work of diasporic scholars from the Middle East and South Asia and, for the most part, refers back to those locations and their imperial interlocutors (Europe and the West). Decoloniality similarly emerged from the work of diasporic scholars from South America and, for the most part, refers back to those locations and their imperial interlocutors— again, primarily to Europe although addressing a much longer time frame. Whereas postcolonialism refers mainly to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, decoloniality starts with the earlier European incursions upon the lands that came to be known as the Americas from the fifteenth century onwards. Postcolonial and decolonial arguments have been most successful in their challenge to the insularity of historical narratives and historiographical traditions emanating from Europe. This has been particularly so in the context of demonstrating the parochial character of arguments about the endogenous European origins of modernity in favour of arguments that suggest the necessity of considering the emergence of the modern world in the broader histories of colonialism, empire, and enslavement. However, there has been little work, thus far, bringing together the various trajectories of these fields. This piece—necessarily selective and incomplete—is one contribution to this larger project of what I call ‘connected sociologies’. In it, I examine the traditions of postcolonialism and decolonial thinking and discuss their radical potential in unsettling and reconstituting standard processes of knowledge production. Postcolonial Studies, 2014, Vol. 17, No. 2, 115–121

Historical sociology, international relations and connected histories

This article addresses three recent developments in historical sociology: (1) neo-Weberian historical sociology within International Relations; (2) the ‘civilizational analysis’ approach utilized by scholars of ‘multiple modernities’; and (3) the ‘third wave’ cultural turn in US historical sociology. These developments are responses to problems identified within earlier forms of historical sociology, but it is suggested each fails to resolve them precisely because each remains contained within the methodological framework of historical sociology as initially conceived. It is argued that their common problem lies in the utilization of ‘ideal types’ as the basis for sociohistorical analysis. This necessarily has the effect of abstracting a set of particular relations from their wider connections and has the further effect of suggesting sui generis endogenous processes as integral to these relations. In this way, each of the three developments continues the Eurocentrism typical of earlier approaches. The article concludes with a call for ‘connected histories’ to provide a more adequate methodological and substantive basis for an historical sociology appropriate to calls for a properly global historical sociology.

The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology: A Postcolonial Perspective

This article addresses the way in which perceptions about the globalized nature of the world in which we live are beginning to have an impact within sociology such that sociology has to engage not just with the changing conceptual architecture of globalization, but also with recognition of the epistemological value and agency of the world beyond the West. I address three main developments within sociology that focus on these concerns: first, the shift to a multiple modernities paradigm; second, a call for a multicultural global sociology; and third, an argument in favor of a global cosmopolitan approach. While the three approaches under discussion are based on a consideration of the “rest of the world,” their terms, I suggest, are not adequate to the avowed intentions. None of these responses is sufficient in their address of earlier omissions and each falls back into the problems of the mainstream position that is otherwise being criticized. In contrast, I argue that it is only by acknowledging the significance of the “colonial global” in the constitution of sociology that it is possible to understand and address the necessarily postcolonial (and decolonial) present of “global sociology.”

Talking among Themselves? Weberian and Marxist Historical Sociologies as Dialogues without ‘Others’:

Historical sociology is divided between two broad approaches, Weberian and Marxist. The first utilises a methodology of ideal types, presenting a largely endogenous examination of Western history in its account of modernity. The second acknowledges capitalism as a ‘world system’, but also identifies its central dynamic with processes having a European origin. Within the Weberian tradition, theories of multiple modernities allow modernity to be understood as culturally inflected and diverse in its instantiations, but retain the idea of a distinctive European modernity against which other forms are measured. Similarly, within Marxism, the emphasis on a distinctive capitalist mode of production allows space for uneven development globally, or the contingent association of non-capitalist forms, but retains an account of the logic of capitalism derived from European experience. Although the social relations of colonialism, imperialism and slavery are coextensive with capitalism, each tradition renders them peripheral to the development of capitalist modernity. This article discusses the limitations of the two approaches, arguing that any model that posits a world historical centre from which developments diffuse outwards is problematic, especially when such a model does not address the ‘others’ with which it comes subsequently to engage. What is needed is a ‘connected histories’ approach counter to the otherwise dominant forms of historical sociology.

A sociological dilemma: Race, segregation and US sociology

US sociology has been historically segregated in that, at least until the 1960s, there were two distinct institutionally organized traditions of sociological thought – one black and one white. For the most part, however, dominant historiographies have been silent on that segregation and, at best, reproduce it when addressing the US sociological tradition. This is evident in the rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other ‘African American Pioneers of Sociology’, as Saint-Arnaud calls them, are presented as core sociological voices within histories of the discipline. This article addresses the absence of African American sociologists from the US sociological canon and, further, discusses the implications of this absence for our understanding of core sociological concepts. With regard to the latter, the article focuses in particular on the debates around equality and emancipation and discusses the ways in which our understanding of these concepts could be extended by taking into account the work of African American sociologists and their different interpretations of core themes.

Introduction: Global Challenges for Sociology

With the 50th anniversary of the journal, this special issue takes stock of the progress that has been made within sociology to become a more globally oriented discipline and discusses the new challenges for the future that emerge as a consequence. From its inception, classical sociology was primarily concerned with the European origins of processes of modernity that were to become global. There was little discussion of how the global might be understood in terms of structures, processes and social movements not directly identified as European but nonetheless contributing to modernity. The challenge for sociology has been to take into account these other phenomena and to rethink its core categories and concepts in light of newly understood alternative formations of the global and the social movements that bring them about.

Whither Europe? Postcolonial versus neocolonial cosmopolitanism

The financial collapse of 2008, and its consequences of recession in the Eurozone and beyond, has exacerbated tensions at the heart of the postwar European project. The politics of austerity has provoked populist and far-right political responses, scapegoating migrants and minorities and increasingly calling the project of integration into question. In this essay I focus on responses by social theorists to the emerging crisis. In particular, I address the contrast between their reaffirmation of ‘European’ cosmopolitanism and their associated criticisms of multiculturalism, which, instead, is posed as a threat. In this way, while they challenge those who wish the dissolution of the European project, they do so at the expense of those seen to be internal ‘others’, whose scapegoating is one aspect of the populist threat to that integration. It is their failure to address the colonial histories of Europe, I argue, that enables them to dismiss so easily its postcolonial and multicultural present. As such, they reproduce features of the populist political debates they otherwise seek to criticize and transcend. A properly cosmopolitan Europe, I suggest, would be one which understood that its historical constitution in colonialism cannot be rendered to the past by denial of that past.

The Attack on Education as a Social Right

The essay addresses recent government proposals for higher education in England. It argues that they represent a neoliberal attack on the idea of public higher education. Where public higher education had previously been widely accepted as a social right and a condition of liberal citizenship, higher education is now to be understood as a private responsibility, an investment in human capital necessary to secure positional advantage in a deeply unequal society.

Undoing the epistemic disavowal of the Haitian revolution : a contribution to global social thought

ABSTRACT The Haitian Revolution is not only one of the most important foundational moments in the emergence of the modern world, but also one of the most neglected within the social scientific literature. In this article, I ask what can be learnt, both from its omission from accounts of events claimed to be of ‘world historical’ significance, and from how social theory would need to be re-thought once we took such events seriously. In particular, I want to examine what is at stake in such rethinking and how we might consider alternative formulations through an approach I call ‘connected sociologies’.

Comparative historical sociology and the State : problems of method

Historical sociology can be understood both as a specific sub-field of sociology and as providing general conceptual underpinnings of the discipline, to the extent that it provides an understanding of the specificity of the modern state and the perceived emergence of modernity within Europe. The association of modernity with Europe (and with a European history limited to the self-identified boundaries of the continent) is commonplace and pervasive within the social sciences and humanities. What such an understanding fails to take into consideration, however, are the connections between Europe and the rest of the world that constitute the broader context for the emergence of what is understood to be the modern world and its institutions, such as the state and market. In this article, I suggest that integral to this misunderstanding, and its reproduction over time, is the methodology of comparative historical sociology as represented by ideal types. In contrast, I argue for ‘connected sociologies’ as a more appropriate way to understand our shared past and its continuing impact upon the present. I examine these issues in the context of historical sociological understandings of nation-state formation.