Description
Book SynopsisGlobal, local, glocal reflecting on the area of world social science seems to be above all a matter of space. In these spatial dichotomies the global has no location and locations seem beyond this world. Discourses about world social science thought not only distinguish social thought along spaces where they are created. Space has become an attribute of thinking when social scientists reflect on the world of social thought: Southern, Western and Northern knowledge, the location in which thoughts are created, is not only a hint about the address of a thinker, but about the theoretical perspective through which social science thinkers look at social reality. Social thoughts are imagined as imprisoned in the spatial context in which they are created, and social science thinkers are imagined as representatives of spaces, whether these are defined politically, culturally, or in any other context in which their thoughts must be rooted as if the product of human minds was nothing but a voicing of the nature of spaces. And should we imagine the world social science arena, the encounter of all these spatially bound thoughts, as the encounter of many parochial knowledges that never manage to arrive at shared thoughts unless they already share the same spatial context? Why should we then at all meet each other? This book discusses examples of spatially constructed knowledges and the struggles these knowledges encounter as they seek to meet one another and escape from the mind prison of their spatial contexts. Or does the world social science arena after all only prove that the 'Western' dogma of contextualising social thought is a dead end road for social thought -- everywhere?
Table of ContentsForeword Section I: Global Social Thought 1. Concepts that Hinder the Progress of Sociological Research: Identity as an Epistemological Obstacle, by Youssef Salameh 2. Isn't Anthropology Already a Multiversalist Discipline? Assessing the Status of Anthropology in Asia, by Nestor Castro 3. Indigenised while Internationalised? Tensions and Dilemmas in China's Modern Transformation of Social Sciences in an Age of Globalisation, by Rui Yang 4. 'Academic Dependence': The World Social Science Arena-a Battlefield among Parochial Thought?, by Michael Kuhn Section II: Spatialized Thought and Local Knowledge Production 5. Michel Foucault and the Postcolonial African Theory: A Critical Essay, by Leon-Marie Nkolo Ndjodo 6. Knowledge Production: A Perspective from the Periphery, by Carmen Bueno 7. Civilizational Encounter, Cultural Translation, and Social Reflexivity: A Note on the History of Sociology in Japan, by Shujiro Yazawa 8. The community of sociologists in Morocco facing the internationalization of knowledge, by Kamal Mellakh 9. Internationalization of Research in Lebanon: The case of the American University of Beirut, by Sari Hanafi, Rigas Avanitis, Justine Baer Section III: Culture in Global Knowledge Encounters 10. Culture as a Dimension in International Social Science Encounters, by Doris Weidemann 11. The Manifestation of Scientific Cultures: A Sociophilosophical Study of Islamic Scientific Tradition, by Alparslan Acikgenc 12. The Study of Culture within Alternative Vision, by Mahmoud Dhaouadi Section IV: Globalizing Local Social Thought 13. The Transformation Processes in Global Social Knowledge, by Hebe Vessuri 14. Can Peripheries Talk Back? Alternative Intellectual Trends in Tamil Nadu and their Possible Lessons for Knowledge-Making Practices outside Intellectual Power Centers, by Kumaran Rajagopal 15. How to Overcome "Oriental" Sociology?, by Ebrahim Towfigh, Shirin Ahmadnia Authors
