Raewyn Connell’s book Southern Theory has attracted a great deal of attention in the field of sociology. As an example of the use of ‘South’ within a particular discipline of knowledge, it is worth reflecting on the responses. It has won awards and been the subject of many conference sessions, but it has also engendered [...]
Posts under ‘Sociology’
Raewyn Connell ‘Thinking South: Re-Locating Australian Intellectual Culture’ 18 March 2010
The first seminar in the Southern Perspectives series at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies features Raewyn Connell, author of Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Her book has proven to be a significant and highly controversial intervention into sociology and related disciplines.She has spoken about Southern Theory in academic forums around [...]
Sociology goes south
Last Wednesday, 2 December, at the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), there was a plenary titled ‘Southern Perspectives’. Speakers included Raewyn Connell, Chilla Bulbeck, Margaret Jolly and Peter Beilharz. They considered the following questions:
Is there a ’southern sociology’?
What kind of sociology do we teach and research in Australia?
Should southern [...]
A new conversation begins, after the missionaries
Domain House proved a wonderfully theatrical setting for the initial conversations around ‘After the Missionaries’. On Melbourne’s coldest night of the year, a few brave souls ventured through the howling winds and rain, into the gloom of the domain, past the eerie Shrine of Remembrance, into what was for many years Melbourne’s centre for contemporary [...]
Thoughts on ‘Siútico’ by Oscar Contardo
Chile has a lively publishing industry that produces serious non-fiction on cultural themes, often Latin American, particularly Chilean. Given the issues of language and subject, these works are rarely read outside Latin America. The leading art theorist Ticio Escobar, for instance, is hardly translated into English at all.
Sometimes there are books that are both [...]
Peter Beilharz
Peter Beilharz is Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University where he edits Thesis Eleven, an interdisciplinary academic journal on theories of modernity. Here he offers his perspective on the way south.
My planned research includes a co-written book on the life and work of the founding mother of Australian sociology, Jean Martin; a book on [...]
To reform or to start again? An argument across the south
In Kuala Lumpur 24-26 January 2009 there was a south-south event titled The International Conference on Hegemony, Counter Hegemony and Alternatives to Hegemony: Implications for the South. This event was part of a ’scholarly collaboration program’ between three major academic networks across the South – CODESRIA, APISA and CLACSO. The participants represented a tri-continental range [...]
Interview with Raewyn Connell
Professor Raewyn Connell explains the thinking behind her book Southern Theory.
What were your aims in writing "Southern Theory"?
Fourteen years ago, when I began this work, I aimed simply to correct a historical error – the textbook belief that sociology was invented to explain the new industrial society of Europe. I found that the creation [...]
Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences
JAPSS Press, a branch of the Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences is calling for chapter proposals for an Edited Volume dealing with Regionalism and Development in the Asia Pacific Region. Some possible topics are the following: – South to South Cooperation – International Norms and [...]
