Decolonization, difference and social theory

Résumé du document

Central issue in contemporary social theory: the challenge of difference. Since the 1960s, sociologists have begun to revisit the issue of difference. Many factors to explain that: social movements- anti-colonial revolutions, civil-rights struggles, development of feminism, gay liberation. The discipline of sociology became more diverse.

Theorizing difference:
Gender and race are fundamental categories of experience that need to be analysed. Theorizing difference - at least 3 things:
-Correcting for the false generalizations - dimensions of difference (such as gender and race) brought into our thinking about social life.
-Questioning whether these categories have objective and stable meanings. How are these concepts produced historically? What ambiguities are ignored to make the distinctions appear natural?

E.g. children of Black/White marriage were considered as black. Novelty: biological classifications of races. However, sociologists insist on the fact that culture is also important in the recognition of racial distinctions.

E.g. Gender biological distinctions but sociologists highlight the role of culture and power relations. Distinction "sex" (biology, reproduction) /"gender" (social and cultural identifications). "Gender" is a social construction that varies across time and cultures. However, there is also an intrusion of cultural values into the very linkage of "sex" to reproduction - historically: homosexuality as a transgression of both gender roles and sexual classification.

Extraits

[...] Colonialism: both external domination and psychological repression. He explains that “growing up under colonial rule (or other sorts of domination) may produce a kind of psychological internalization of the power and the oppressor”. Emphasis on ontology (the study of being - influence of French existentialism) rather than on epistemology, or a study of knowing (as Collins and Smith). Colonies: “being black for the White (notion of ‘being for others'). He says that a strong identity is something people have to achieve (no biology, no culture). [...]

[...] The master differs basically from the master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity whereas the white master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants from him is not recognition but work. The Negro wants to be like the master, he is less independent than the Hegelian slave. Bibliography: - Craig Calhoun et al (eds.) (2012) Contemporary Sociological Theory, 3rd Edition Wiley, Introduction to part VII - Frantz Fanon, ‘Black Skins, White Masks' in Craig Calhoun et al (eds.) (2012) Contemporary Sociological Theory, Chap. [...]

[...] She explains that social theories are not only developed in abstract scientific writings but are ‘created as part of narratives that carry their own lessons about how the social world works' - the experience of women and racial minorities is obscured or ignored by dominant ways of thinking. Threefold matrix of domination: class, race, and gender. E.g. subordinate position for Black women in the three dimensions. The problem is that we can still say that she neglects other subcategories and we could introduce further distinctions (e.g. black immigrant women, and even, Somali immigrant women). [...]

[...] He has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man. His customs have been wiped out. In the white world, the man of colour encounters problems in the development of his bodily schema. Experiments have been tried in laboratories to produce a serum for “denegrification” - to throw off the burden of that corporal malediction. a Negro”, see the Negro! I'm frightened” - experience of people afraid of him - spatial occupation of the Negro based on historicity. [...]

[...] Theorizing difference Gender and race are fundamental categories of experience that need to be analysed. Theorizing difference - at least 3 things: - Correcting for the false generalizations - dimensions of difference (such as gender and race) brought into our thinking about social life. - Questioning whether these categories have objective and stable meanings. How are these concepts produced historically? What ambiguities are ignored to make the distinctions appear natural? E.g. children of Black/White marriage were considered as black. Novelty: biological classifications of races. [...]