A Decolonial Imagination: Sociology, Anthropology and the Politics of Reality

While the recent proliferation of sociological engagements with postcolonial thought is important and welcome, central to most critiques of Eurocentrism is a concern with the realm of epistemology, with how sociology comes to know its objects of study. Such a concern, however, risks perpetuating another form of Eurocentrism, one that is responsible for instituting the very distinction between epistemology and ontology, knowledge and reality. By developing a sustained engagement with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’s work, as well as establishing possible connections with what has been termed the ‘turn to ontology’ in anthropology, in this paper I argue that in order for sociology to become exposed to the deeply transformative potential of non-Eurocentric thinking, it needs to cultivate a decolonial imagination in order to move beyond epistemology, and to recognise that there is no social and cognitive justice without existential justice, no politics of knowledge without a politics of reality

Ecuador's experiment in living well:Sumak kawsay, Spinoza and the inadequacy of ideas

In April 2017 Ecuador halted the continental drift to the conservative right in Latin America by electing leftist Lenín Moreno to the Presidency. Attention has turned, therefore, to the legacy of outgoing President Rafael Correa’s decade in power. To that end, this paper examines one of Correa’s signature programmes, ‘Buen Vivir’ (Living Well), a strategic plan for development underscored by the indigenous Kichwa cosmology of ‘sumak kawsay’. Sumak kawsay is a notion that has been co-opted into policy mechanisms in an attempt to both challenge neoliberal modes of governance, and to disrupt the ontological bifurcation of nature and society. Given the emphasis placed on ecological sensibility in sumak kawsay and Buen Vivir, critics have been quick to highlight the contradictory relations between Ecuador’s mode of environmental governance and its extractivist agenda. Such critiques are as staid as they are well rehearsed. Acknowledging the precarious composition of sumak kawsay, the paper questions the extent to which the ethos of experimentalism in politics can be sustained, eliding stymied technocratic forms of the political. It turns, therefore, to Baruch Spinoza’s treatise on adequate and inadequate ideas. In so doing, the paper examines how one can critique an idea without perpetuating a moral economy in judgment. Consequently, the paper considers the way in which Spinoza’s thought can be charged to recuperate imperilled political ideas

Monadology and ethnography: Towards a Tardian monadic

This article outlines the project of a ‘monadic ethnography’ based on Gabriel Tarde’s monadology. Tarde’s key contention is that ‘everything is a society’, i.e. that the world is made up of composite and relational entities of infinitesimal complexity called monads. These assemblages of heterogeneous elements engaged in relations of mutual possession constitute the object of study of ‘monadic ethnography’. Their analysis, in turn, has a series of methodological and formal implications, including a transformation of concepts of scale, spatiality and temporality and the need to find representational strategies suitable for conveying the monads’ dynamic qualities. A fieldwork example which discusses the making of a car part in a small workshop based in the Can Ricart factory in Barcelona is provided. Throughout the article, the idea of ‘monadic ethnography’ is discussed in relation to the recent rediscovery of Tarde’s work, the work of Bruno Latour and Gilles Deleuze, and the so-called ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences

What is poststructuralism?

In this essay, I discuss the vitality and the limits of the poststructural archive. I argue against the temptation to essentialise poststructuralism or define its ‘ontology’, instead I present some of the avenues that can be taken to further its theoretical practice. With Trump and the rise of ‘post-truth’ politics, poststructural political thought has recently come back to the centre of political debate. By using Pierre Macherey and François Châtelet’s perspective on Marxism, I turn to contemporary problems and studies to imagine how to renew the poststructuralist experience of thought. Following Boris Groys, I suggest that by producing theory as form, artists had a more immediate recourse to theoretical practice, by using all sorts of media to perform knowledge. Finally, by mainly referring to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, I present some elements of a poststructural critique of political economy. I do this not by forcing the application of poststructural theories or concepts onto a supposedly external reality, but by immanently integrating more and more social and political problems into the schemes of thought. A poststructural theoretical practice means integrating into thought problems and events, in order to compose with them, and not simply study discursive strategies.<br/

The moral work of subversion

This article critically reconsiders dominant understandings of morality and subversion within organizations. Existing organizational literature does not adequately address the important productive role of morality for producing and justifying everyday subversive practices as well as the use of subversion to legitimate power relations and dominant values. Drawing upon interactionist insights, we develop a practice-based account of morality, highlighting the means through which subversion retroactively legitimates the diverse range of actions performed by organizational subjects. This form of retrospective reasoning, which we term ‘moralization’, serves as an important resource for subjects to actively negotiate the often competing moral and practical demands placed on them as organizational subjects. Consequently, we position subversion as an important means of accomplishing, legitimating and preserving a given organizational order, rather than a ‘common sense’ view that subversion necessarily subverts organizational values. In doing so, we make explicit the ‘positive’ function of rule-bending for processes of organizational control