ABSTRACT
The search for alternative discourses is a contribution to the universalization of the social sciences to the extent that alternative civilizational voices are added to the ensemble of ideas and works. The context of academic dependency and mental captivity led to the problematization of a number of issues in the social sciences, such as those of Eurocentrism and orientalism. Eurocentric and orientalist social science was held to lack relevance in one way or another. The formative period of the various disciplines of the social sciences and the institutions in which they were taught in much of Asia and Africa was initiated and sustained by colonial scholars and administrators after the eighteenth century, as well as directly and indirectly by other Europeans in vicariously colonised areas. Therefore, the sociological approach to the question of reliable knowledge must be extended to include politicai and various other sociological aspects of the cognitive process hitherto not dealt with in the sociology of knowledge.
