ABSTRACT

This book is rooted in an epistemological approach to sociology in which the boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies are acknowledged and built on. It argues that knowledge is organised in conceptual spaces linked to paradigms and programmes which in turn are linked to ethnocentred knowledge processes; that until recently Western approaches, including Post-Colonial, French Social Science and American approaches, have dominated non-Western theories; and that Western theories have sometimes seemed incapable of explaining phenomena produced in other societies. It goes on to argue that the blurring of boundaries between Western and non-Western sociologies is very important; and that such a Post-Western approach will mean co-production and co-construction of common knowledge, the recognition of ignored or forgotten scientific cultures and a "global change" in sociology which imposes theoretical and methodological detours, displacements, reversals and conversions. The book brings together a wide range of Western and Chinese sociologists who explore the consequences of this new approach in relation to many different issues and aspects of sociology.

chapter |15 pages

Introduction

Doing Post-Western Sociology

part I|113 pages

Globalisation and post-Westernisation of sociology

chapter 4|17 pages

Between Charybdis and Scylla

French social thought faces globalisation

chapter 5|18 pages

Locations and locutions

Unravelling the concept of “world anthropology”

chapter 7|11 pages

The globalisation of critical theories

An essay on the sociology of ideas

part II|111 pages

Sociological traditions in Europe and in China

chapter 8|9 pages

Another thirty years

Society building from the perspective of transition sociology

chapter 11|16 pages

Returning to space-based sociology

Inheriting Professor Fei Hsiao-Tung’s academic heritage

chapter 12|13 pages

A new view on institution

A neo-Durkheimian point of view

chapter 13|19 pages

The totalitarian experience and knowledge productions

Towards a reflexive history of sociology in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–1989

part III|84 pages

Modernities, agency and individuation

chapter 15|12 pages

How are individuals in the South studied?

The Latin American case

chapter 16|11 pages

Domination and agency

chapter 19|16 pages

An alternative autonomy

The self-adaptations of Chinese sociology in the 1950s

chapter 20|12 pages

Ethnicity and individuation

The victim, the trickster and the hero