Riksbankens Jubileumsfond has approved Henrik Chetan Aspengren's application for an initiation grant for the project "Towards Global Social Theory? Possibilities and tensions".
The project asks: how do we formulate theories of our social world that includes ideas from the South, and addresses social theory’s Northern bias? What are the benefits and misgivings of such a venture?
Scholars have argued that theory coming out of the North has dominated sociological explanations of societies globally since the mid 1800s, and that ideas from the South have been marginalised. Subsequently, the question has been raised of how to include Southern thinkers into the social science canon, and whether a search within Southern theory might produce concepts that more successfully explain the social processes in the non-West. In order to further research on this topic we propose to invite around ten well renowned scholars researching the issue, to a workshop in Delhi 18-20 April 2017. The gathering will be organised by the applicant and the Nordic Centre in India to which eight Swedish universities belong, and will be co-funded by the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. The participants will reflect on what a turn to Global social theory might imply conceptually and empirically, what it means for their respective academic disciplines, and for the interplay between social theory and political mobilisation. The project will provide a unique possibility to identify the main strands of the emerging field, and to discuss the formulation of theory for a globalised world. The presented papers will be edited into an anthology for the benefit of students, scholars and the concerned public."
