Discussion with Julian Go's Southern standpoint

BEIGEL, FERNANDA

Sociologica

Il Mulino

Lugar: Bologna; Año: 2016

1971-8853

The paper ?Globalizing Sociology, Turning South. Perspectival Realism and theSouthern Standpoint? [2016] is an interesting piece, which main argument points out that social science?s concerns, categories and theories have been formulated, forged, and enacted of and for Anglo-European metropoles, but how to overcome this problem of ?metrocentrism? remains a dilemma. It discusses the available literature in order to show how some suggest that tracking extensive connections or global ?systems? can meet the challenge, while a different set of solutions comes from projects tending to ?indigenize? or draw upon ?Southern? theory.The author argues that the Southern Standpoint approach proposed in the essayis a friendly extension of an already-existing intellectual movement partly emergingfrom the Global South. This movement can be variously called ?Southern Theory,??epistemologies of the South,? or ?indigenous sociology.? It has received renewedattention of late, but it has a longer history. We could trace it back to somestrands of postcolonial theory in the humanities, for instance, and before that, tothe anticolonial thought of writers like Du Bois, Fanon, and Cesaire. My first commentto this paper is that this history is, in fact, longer and wider. The Latin Americantraditions are virtually not brought into the argument, even when a renownLatin American thinker is a relevant part of the paper. Just to mention two majorcontributions to indigenous social thought: José Marti?s Nuestra América [1891]and José Carlos Mariátegui?s Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana[1928].