transnational processes and transregional entanglements

Current sociological understandings tend to presuppose that the transformation of inequality patterns entails a series of “new” phenomena, which make the coining of new concepts such as the “Europeanization” and the “transnationalization” of social inequality necessary. In turn, the paper argues that, at least since the European expansion into the Americas, inequalities have been the result of transnational processes arising from transregional entanglements between shifting metropolitan and peripheral areas. To this end, the paper uses the example of the Caribbean as “Europe’s fi rst colonial backyard” (S. Mintz) in order to show the historical continuities between “creolization” as a term originally coined to describe processes specific to the Caribbean and what is being analyzed today under the label of the “transnationalization” of (Western) Europe. In showing how the transregional fl ows of people, goods, and capital established transnational links between inequality patterns between Europe and its colonies in the Caribbean as early as the sixteenth century, the paper subsequently claims that theorizing the continuum of structures of power linking colonialism to (post) coloniality is an essential element in of the endeavor of creolizing Europe

Global inequalities: transnational processes and transregional entanglements

Current understandings tend to presuppose that the transformation of inequality patterns entails a series of new phenomena, which make the coining of new concepts such as the Europeanization and the transnationalization of social inequality necessary. The paper argues that, at least since the European expansion into the Americas, inequalities have been the result of transnational processes arising from transregional entanglements between shifting metropolitan and peripheral areas. To this end, the paper uses the example of the Caribbean as Europe's first colonial backyard in order to show the historical continuities between creolization as a term originally coined to describe processes specific to the Caribbean and what is being analyzed today under the label of the transnationalization of (Western) Europe. The paper subsequently claims that theorizing the continuum of structures of power linking colonialism to (post)coloniality is an essential element of the endeavor of creolizing Europe

DESIGUALDADES GLOBAIS: filiações teóricas e críticas radicais

This article argues that Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-system approach was instrumental in revealing sociology’s theoretical and methodological blind spots and in formulating a comprehensive framework for the study of global inequalities. In doing so, he anticipated both the critique of Eurocentrism and the methodological nationalism put forth by transnational and postcolonial approaches, as well as the debates over the increasing global inequalities by several decades. This paper traces this analytical primacy to several factors: first, the methodological shift in world-systems analysis from the nation-state to the whole capitalist world-economy as an early global sociology; second, to the relationship between the methodological shift towards an epistemological critique and its role in Wallerstein’s early approach to global inequalities. Finally, the text addresses the relationship between the self-definition of world-systems analysis as a form of protest against mainstream social science (rather than as a theory) and the theoretical and political affiliations with postcolonial and decolonial approaches, to show how they contributed together to the prominence of global inequalities as a topic.Cet article soutient que l’approche du système-monde d’Immanuel Wallerstein a contribué à révéler les angles morts théoriques et méthodologiques de la sociologie et à formuler un cadre global pour l’étude des inégalités mondiales. Ce faisant, il a anticipé de plusieurs décennies à la fois la critique de l’eurocentrisme et du nationalisme méthodologique avancée par les approches transnationales et postcoloniales, et les débats sur la montée des inégalités mondiales. Cet article relie cette primauté analytique à plusieurs facteurs : premièrement, au changement méthodologique de l’analyse des systèmes mondiaux de l’État-nation à l’ensemble de l’économie mondiale capitaliste, en tant que sociologie mondiale précoce ; deuxièmement, la relation entre l’évolution méthodologique vers la critique épistémologique et son rôle dans l’approche précoce de Wallerstein sur les inégalités mondiales. Enfin, le texte aborde la relation entre l’auto-définition de l’analyse des systèmes-monde comme une forme de protestation contre le courant dominant des sciences sociales (plutôt que comme une théorie) et les affiliations théoriques et politiques avec les approches postcoloniales et décoloniales, pour montrer comment elles ont contribué ensemble à la proéminence des inégalités mondiales en tant que sujet.Este artigo argumenta que a abordagem do sistema-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein foi fundamental para revelar pontos cegos teóricos e metodológicos da Sociologia e para formular um quadro abrangente para o estudo das desigualdades globais. Ao fazê-lo, antecipou tanto a crítica ao eurocentrismo como ao nacionalismo metodológico, apresentada pelas abordagens transnacionais e pós-coloniais, e os debates sobre o aumento das desigualdades globais em várias décadas. Este artigo liga essa primazia analítica a vários fatores: à mudança metodológica da análise dos sistemas-mundo do Estado-nação para toda a economia-mundo capitalista como uma Sociologia global inicial; e à relação entre a mudança metodológica para a crítica epistemológica e seu papel na abordagem inicial de Wallerstein às desigualdades globais. Finalmente, abordo a relação entre a autodefinição da análise dos sistemas-mundo como forma de protesto contra a ciência social dominante (e não como uma teoria) e as filiações teóricas e políticas com abordagens pós-coloniais e decoloniais, para mostrar como elas contribuíram em conjunto para identificar as desigualdades globais como tema

Postcolonialism and Sociology

In dieser per E-Mail geführten Debatte diskutieren wir über das Verhältnis von Postkolonialismus und Soziologie. Während post- und dekoloniale Ansätze in den Geistes- und Literaturwissenschaften vergleichweise breit diskutiert wurden, war die Rezeption in der Soziologie eher verhalten. Die Gründe für diesen Unterschied werden ebenso angesprochen wie aktuelle Verbindungen zwischen postkolonialer Theorie und Soziologie. In this email debate we discuss the relation between postcolonialism and sociology. While post- and decolonial approaches had a significant impact on the humanities, reception in sociology has been more reluctant. The reasons for this difference are as well discussed as recent connections between postcolonial thought and sociology

Citizenship, Gender and global Inequalities

Roth J, Boatcă M. Staatsbürgerschaft, Gender und globale Ungleichheiten. Feministische Studien. 2016;34(2):189-206

Postkoloniale Perspektivierung der Soziologie: Von Äpfeln und Birnen in der gegenwärtigen Debatte

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz strukturieren wir die seit 2018 in der SOZIOLOGIE geführte, anhaltende Diskussion um postkoloniale Soziologie anhand zentraler theoretischer Vorannahmen zu Raum, Wissen und Macht, sowie in Bezug auf zugrundeliegende Erkenntnisinteressen. Wir fokussieren uns auf Missverständnisse, die durch mangelnde Klärung theoretischer Vorannahmen entstehen können. Dabei gehen wir auf die für uns wesentlichen Argumente in der Debatte sowie auf die deutschsprachige postkoloniale Soziologie-Landschaft ein und plädieren für eine post- und dekoloniale Perspektivierung der Soziologie als Erkenntnismethode. Dies erlaubt aus unserer Sicht zweierlei: einerseits, blinde Flecken der Soziologie als Produkte eines bestimmten institutionellen Konstituierungsprozesses dieser Disziplin zu reflektieren; andererseits, die Soziologie systematisch als relationale, geschichtssensibilisierte, globale Soziologie der Macht neu zu denken. In this essay, we structure the ongoing discussion on postcolonial sociology taking place in SOZIOLOGIE since 2018 in terms of key theoretical presuppositions about space, knowledge, and power, as well as in terms of underlying epistemological interests. We focus on the misunderstandings that can arise from a lack of clarification of theoretical presuppositions. In doing so, we address what we consider to be the main arguments in the debate as well as the German-language postcolonial sociology landscape and argue for a post- and decolonial perspectivization of sociology as an epistemological method. In our view, this allows for two things: on the one hand, to reflect on blind spots in sociology as products of a particular institutional constitutional process of this discipline; on the other hand, to systematically rethink sociology as a relational, historically sensitive, global sociology of power

Women on the Fast Track? Coloniality of Citizenship and Embodied Social Mobility

Boatcă M, Roth J. Women on the Fast Track? Coloniality of Citizenship and Embodied Social Mobility. In: Cohn S, Lesser Blumberg R, eds. Gender and Development: The Economic Basis of Women's Power . Los Angeles: Sage; 2019: 162-174

Cross-Fadings of Racialisation and Migratisation: The Postcolonial Turn in Western European Gender and Migration Studies

Looking at feminist and anti-racist approaches situated in or focused on Western Europe, especially Germany, this article investigates how racism and migration can be theorised in relation to each other in critical knowledge production. Rather than being an article ‘about Germany’, my intervention understands the German context as an exemplary place for deconstructing Europe and its gendered, racialised and sexualised premises. I argue that a ‘postcolonial turn’ has begun to emerge in Western European gender and migration studies and is questioning easy assumptions about the connections between racism and migration. Discussing examples from academic knowledge production and media debates, I suggest to think of migratisation (the ascription of migration) as performative practice that repeatedly re-stages a sending-off to an elsewhere and works in close interaction with racialisation. In particular, drawing on postcolonial approaches, I carve out the interconnection of racialisation and migratisation with class and gender. I argue that equating racialisation with migratisation carries the risk of whitening understandings of migration and/or reinforcing already whitened understandings of nation and Europeanness. To make discrimination ‘accessible’ to critical knowledge production, I engage in an epistemological discussion of the potentials and challenges of differentiating analytical categorisations. With this, this article engages with ascriptions, exclusions and abjectifications and attempts to formulate precise conceptualisations for the ever shifting forms of resistance we urgently need in transnational feminist activism and knowledge productio

Postcoloniality without race? Racial exceptionalism and south-east European cultural studies

The black Dutch feminist Gloria Wekker, assembling past and present everyday expressions of racialized imagination which collectively undermine hegemonic beliefs that white Dutch society has no historic responsibility for racism, writes in her book White Innocence that ‘one can do postcolonial studies very well without ever critically addressing race’ (p. 175). Two and a half decades after the adaptation of postcolonial thought to explain aspects of cultural politics during the break-up of Yugoslavia created important tools for understanding the construction of national, regional and socio-economic identities around hierarchical notions of ‘Europe’ and ‘the Balkans’ in the Yugoslav region and beyond, Wekker’s observation is still largely true for south-east European studies, where no intervention establishing race and whiteness as categories of analysis has reframed the field like work by Maria Todorova on ‘balkanism’ or Milica Bakić-Hayden on ‘symbolic geographies’ and ‘nesting orientalism’ did in the early 1990s. Critical race theorists such as Charles Mills nevertheless argue that ‘race’ as a structure of thought and feeling that legitimised colonialism and slavery (and still informs structural white supremacy) involved precisely the kind of essentialised link between people and territory that south-east European cultural theory also critiques: the construction of spatialised hierarchies specifying which peoples and territories could have more or less access to civilisation and modernity. South-east European studies’ latent racial exceptionalism has some roots in the race-blind anti-colonial solidarities of state socialist internationalism (further intensified for Yugoslavia through the politics of Non-Alignment) but also, this paper suggests, in deeper associations between Europeanness, whiteness and modernity that remain part of the history of ‘Europe’ as an idea even if, by the end of the 20th century, they were silenced more often than voiced