Description
Book SynopsisIn Southern Theory Raewyn Connell presents the case for a new 'world social science' - one that is inclusive of many voices - by arguing for a more democratic global recognition of social theory from societies outside the dominant European and North American metropole.
Trade ReviewAwarded the Stephen Crook Memorial Prize for Best Authored Book in Australian Sociology 2005-2008 "Profoundly generative ... an original book, elegantly written and covering a vast gamut of topics."
British Journal of Sociology of Education
"It weaves an awe-inspiring command of knowledge into a devastating critique of metropolitan social thought ... no ordinary academic text ... widely accessible to an intelligent readership spanning an array of disciplines."
Journal of Sociology
"A multifaceted argument. It narrates an alternative 'origin story' for sociology and, by implication, anthropology."
Australian Humanities Review
"I highly recommend Southern Theory for every social scientist."
Transnational Social Review
"Raewyn Connell makes a strong claim to 'propose a new path for social theory that will help social science to serve democratic purposes on a world scale' ... This book offers unequivocal points of engagement: what is the text(ure) and mess(age) of the intellectual traditions that inform what is taught in universities in anglo/european/northamerican centres of learning? It stimulated me to recognize the elisions and gaps in the knowledge that I take for granted, and to think differently about the global constructions of sociological knowledge."
New Zealand Geographer
Table of ContentsIntroduction.
Acknowledgments.
Part I: Northern Theory.
Empire and the creation of a social science.
Modern general theory and its hidden assumptions.
Imagining globalisation.
Part II: Looking South.
The discovery of Australia.
Part III: Southern Theory.
Indigenous knowledge and African Renaissance.
Islam and Western dominance.
Dependency, autonomy and culture.
Power, violence and the pain of colonialism.
Part IV: Antipodean Reflections.
The silence of the land.
Social science on a world scale.
References.
Index
