Against Epistemic Apartheid

In this intellectual history-making volume, multiple award-winning W. E. B. Du Bois scholar Reiland Rabaka offers the first book-length treatment of Du Bois's seminal sociological discourse: from Du Bois as inventor of the sociology of race to Du Bois as the first sociologist of American religion; from Du Bois as a pioneer of urban and rural sociology to Du Bois as innovator of the sociology of gender and inaugurator of intersectional sociology; and, finally, from Du Bois as groundbreaking sociologist of education and critical criminologist to Du Bois as dialectical critic of the disciplinary decadence of sociology and the American academy. Against Epistemic Apartheid brings new and intensive archival research into critical dialogue with the watershed work of classical and contemporary, male and female, black and white, national and international sociologists and critical social theorists' Du Bois studies. Against Epistemic Apartheid offers an accessible introduction to Du Bois's major contributions to sociology and, therefore, will be of interest to scholars and students not only in sociology, but also African American studies, American studies, cultural studies, critical race studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies, as well as scholars and students in 'traditional' disciplines such as history, philosophy, political science, economics, education, and religion.

This book critically examines the collection, interpretation, and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from an Afrocentric perspective. The necessity of interpretive Afrocentric research is relevant to position agency and to locate Africana studies in place, space, and time. This study will provide readers with a compilation of literary, historical, philosophical, and social science essays that describe and evaluate the Africana experience from a methodological perspective. Paradoxically, the collection presents measurable and qualitative research, in order to flush out a global Pan–Africanist consciousness.

This book examines the ways in which decolonial theory has gained traction and influenced knowledge production, praxis and epistemic justice in various contemporary iterations of community psychology across the globe. With a notable Southern focus (although not exclusively so), the volume critically interrogates the biases in Western modernist thought in relation to community psychology, and to illuminate and consolidate current epistemic alternatives that contribute to the possibilities of emancipatory futures within community psychology. To this end, the volume includes contributions from community psychology theory and praxis across the globe that speak to standpoint approaches (e.g. critical race studies, queer theory, indigenous epistemologies) in which the experiences of the majority of the global population are more accurately reflected, address key social issues such as the on-going racialization of the globe, gender, class, poverty, xenophobia, sexuality, violence, diasporas, migrancy, environmental degradation, and transnationalism/globalisation, and embrace forms of knowledge production that involve the co-construction of new knowledges across the traditional binary of knowledge producers and consumers. This book is an engaging resource for scholars, researchers, practitioners, activists and advanced postgraduate students who are currently working within community psychology and cognate sub-disciplines within psychology more broadly. A secondary readership is those working in development studies, political science, community development and broader cognate disciplines within the social sciences, arts, and humanities.

European colonization played a major role in the acquisition, formation, and destruction of different ways of knowing. Recently, many scholars and activists have come to ask: Are there ways in which knowledge might be decolonized? Epistemic Decolonization examines a variety of such projects from a critical and philosophical perspective. The book introduces the unfamiliar reader to the wide variety of approaches to the topic at hand, providing concrete examples along the way. It argues that the predominant contemporary approach to epistemic decolonization leads one into various intractable theoretical and practical problems. The book then closely investigates the political and scientific work of Frantz Fanon and Amílcar Cabral, demonstrating how their philosophical commitments can help lead one out of the practical and theoretical issues faced by the current, predominant orientation, and concludes by forging links between their work and that of some contemporary feminist epistemologists.

When Frantz Fanon's critiques of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism are brought into the ever-widening orbit of Africana critical theory something unprecedented in the annals of Africana intellectual history happens: five distinct forms of Fanonism emerge. Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon's Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization is discursively distinguished from other engagements of Fanon's thought and texts insofar as it is the first study to consciously examine his contributions to Africana Studies and critical theory or, rather, the Africana tradition of critical theory. Forms of Fanonism identifies and intensely analyzes Fanon's contributions to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory. In highlighting his unique 'solutions' to the 'problems' of racism, sexism, colonialism, capitalism, and humanism, five distinct forms of Fanonism materialize. These five forms of Fanonism allow contemporary critical theorists to innovatively explore the ways in which his thought and texts can be dialectically put to use in relieving the wretched experience of this generation's wretched of the earth. Critics can also apply these forms to deconstruct and reconstruct Africana Studies, radical politics, and critical social theory using their anti-imperialist interests. Throughout Forms of Fanonism, Reiland Rabaka critically dialogues with Fanon, incessantly asking his corpus critical questions and seeking from it crucial answers. This book, in short, solemnly keeps with Fanon's own predilection for connecting critical theory to revolutionary praxis by utilizing his thought and texts as paradigms and points of departure to deepen and develop the Africana tradition of critical theory.

First English translation of two important works by the major revolutionary figure, Amilcar Cabral.

It is impossible to separate the content of a book from its form. In this study, Filipe Carreira da Silva and Mónica Brito Vieira expand our understanding of the history of social and political scholarship by examining how the entirety of a book mediates and constitutes meaning in ways that affect its substance, appropriation, and reception over time. Examining the evolving form of classic works of social and political thought, including W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk, G. H. Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society, and Karl Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Carreira da Silva and Brito Vieira show that making these books involved many hands. They explore what publishers, editors, translators, and commentators accomplish by offering the reading public new versions of the works under consideration, examine debates about the intended meaning of the works and discussions over their present relevance, and elucidate the various ways in which content and material form are interwoven. In doing so, Carreira da Silva and Brito Vieira characterize the editorial process as a meaning-producing action involving both collaboration and an ongoing battle for the importance of the book form to a work’s disciplinary belonging, ideological positioning, and political significance. Theoretically sophisticated and thoroughly researched, The Politics of the Book radically changes our understanding of what doing social and political theory—and its history—implies. It will be welcomed by scholars of book history, the history of social and political thought, and social and political theory.

This book explores the concept of 'cognitive injustice': the failure to recognise the different ways of knowing by which people across the globe run their lives and provide meaning to their existence. Boaventura de Sousa Santos shows why global social justice is not possible without global cognitive justice. Santos argues that Western domination has profoundly marginalised knowledge and wisdom that had been in existence in the global South. She contends that today it is imperative to recover and valorize the epistemological diversity of the world. Epistemologies of the South outlines a new kind of bottom-up cosmopolitanism, in which conviviality, solidarity and life triumph against the logic of market-ridden greed and individualism.