International Sociology

Like other pluralists, geographical pluralists oppose Western intellectual hegemony and advocate the diversity of sociological knowledge. Such appeals are reasonable and justified, but they give up the universality of knowledge while pursuing the diversity of knowledge, implicitly creating the danger of fragmenting knowledge. On the contrary, from the standpoint of discourse constructivism, a discourse pluralism can be constructed to enable us to not only deconstruct the intellectual hegemony of Western sociology but also pursue universal sociological knowledge.

This article focuses on the intellectual efforts to implement Western sociology into a Korean context during the country’s dynamic modernization. Three different types of responses are explored from the perspective of indigenization: historical sociology, critical sociology, public sociology, and comprehensive sociology. They suggest different approaches and strategies with their own research topics and academic activities. Although the simple dichotomy between Western universalism and Korean particularism is no longer presumed, intellectual efforts for indigenization remain an ongoing issue in Korean sociology.

This review essay discusses decolonial and revisionist approaches to the sociological canon, centring on a major new work, Colonialism and Modern Social Theory by Gurminder Bhambra and John Holmwood (2021). The challenge to ‘classical’ social theory and the demand to reconstitute the theory curriculum come in the context of increased visibility for wider decolonial agendas, linked to ‘fallist’ protests in South Africa, Black Lives Matter and allied antiracist organizing, and calls to decolonize public and civic spaces and institutions such as universities, effect museum restitution, and colonial reparations. The review identifies continuities and complementarities with Connell’s critique of the sociological canon, though Colonialism and Modern Social Theory takes a different tack from Connell’s Southern Theory (2009). Bhambra and Holmwood’s opening of sociology’s canon converges with Connell’s recent work to align a critical project of global and decolonial public sociology with a pragmatic programme for doing academic work differently.

This review essay critically engages with recent works by Mark Granovetter, an American sociologist whose articles about social networks are among the most cited in the history of the discipline, and Thomas Piketty, a French economist whose early, illustrious career turned to worldwide public recognition with the publication of le Capital au XXieme siècle in 2015. The contrast is therefore between a well-known sociologist, one of the foremost scholars in economic sociology in the English language, and an economist of international renown who has challenged mainstream economics with his research on economic inequality and his call for participatory public involvement in economic decision-making. Both insist on the economic as social, but in distinctive ways. In this essay, first, I consider Granovetter’s long-awaited Society and Economy: Framework and Principles and Piketty’s recent Capital et idéologie, a follow-up to his earlier, best-selling book, on their own terms. Second, I think through how each scholar might understand and critique the other, pointing to complementarities and important differences in their approaches. I conclude that although both Granovetter and Piketty challenge mainstream economistic accounts of economic life, while emphasizing human agency and so the contingency of given economic relationships, they differ significantly in their respective analytical and political-normative focus. For Granovetter, what matters is that economic life is a social fact, while for Piketty it is a social struggle.

This article reviews Brenner’s most recent monograph, New Urban Spaces, in which he demonstrates his systematic and decades-long effort into developing new epistemological perspectives, conceptual proposals, and methodological strategies for urban investigation in our so-called global ‘urban age’. We use images taken in the city of Toronto to interpret and visually explain some of Brenner’s key concepts and arguments. In our critical assessment, we point out that Brenner’s abstract theorizing and overgeneralization may have provoked an ignorance of the local variations in effect globally and a failure to tease out specific testable hypotheses for urban investigation. To conclude, we introduce a newly developed scenic approach, one that extends Brenner’s view on the urban by stressing the importance of local variations and testable hypotheses.

In this article, I review two films challenging the technological solutions and assumptions of ‘bright green’ environmentalism, Planet of the Humans and Bright Green Lies. I explain the ways these films showcase a ‘deep green’ challenge to what is charged as magical thinking in proposals for renewable energy transition. I summarize how filmmakers explore evidence that calls into question the potential for new forms of industrial expansion to save a biome in crisis. I consider the arguments raised in each film surrounding biological limits to extraction and growth. And I discuss the importance and value of exposing students to strong counter arguments to paradigmatic proposals for energy transition in a way that invokes a critical discussion of knowledge production and application.