Theme: Shifting the Paradigm
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
Metrocentrism, therefore, is when social scientists unreflexively apply those concepts and theories to the rest of the world under the assumption of universality. Of course, all knowledge emerges from a social location. It comes from a place. The problem is that while social science is located and hence provincial, it purports not to be. 1
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
By a subaltern standpoint, I mean a social position of knowing akin to a feminist standpoint, just that it is not rooted primarily in gender but rather in geopolitics and global social hierarchy. 3 It refers to the social position—and hence, the activities, experiences, concerns and perspectives—of peripheral populations. It refers to a geopolitical and social position, constituted historically within broader relations of power, which embeds the viewpoint of peripheral groups. Just as feminist standpoint theory posits a standpoint defined by gendered structures, a subaltern standpoint approach posits global hierarchies forged from empire as the defining relation. As such, it offers an alternative to the dominant metrocentric standpoint of conventional social theory. Rather than being grounded in the particular concerns and metropolitan context of what Connell calls “Northern theory”; it is grounded in the concerns, categories, and contexts of subaltern groups. The goal of a postcolonial sociology based upon a standpoint epistemology follows: to recover and work from the standpoint of subordinated positions in the imperially forged global hierarchy. 3
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
A postcolonial social science starting with the subaltern standpoint would approach empirics similarly. It would start from the activities, experiences, and perspectives of subaltern groups, but it would not end there. It would use those standpoints as the basis for scaling the analysis upward. 5
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
Although standpoint theory insists upon first seeing the world through the subjectivity of actors, it does not deny the existence of an objective knowable world. Its more minimal claim is the social situatedness, that is, the perspectivism, of knowledge, and hence partial but objective truths. What we know about objective reality is partially dependent upon our social position—hence our location, history, experiences, and perspective. Where one stands influences what one sees, which is not the same as saying that where one stands determines the very thing one sees. 6
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
There is yet another benefit of a subaltern standpoint approach. It can yield entirely new social objects for analysis; objects grounded in, and, therefore, more appropriate to, the localities of their inception. This is not just about crafting new theories or concepts of social objects that theorists already problematize or examine; it is about identifying entirely new social practices, forms, or processes that have gone under the radar—hence not seen and not theorized at all. This is about opening up new sociological concerns, facilitating a process of true discovery that, in turn, yields new concepts or theories. 7
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
The difference with conventional sociology is not that we reject generalizability. The difference is that we never unreflexively start with it. Instead of starting from atop or from afar, instead of starting with theories and concepts cultivated from the standpoint of power, we start on the ground. We start from the standpoint of the subjugated. 8
Go points toward mapping as an example of perspectival realism: maps depict an objective geographical reality but background, foreground, and distort aspects of that reality depending on their creators’ social positions. One of the challenges that cartographers face is mapping a three-dimensional object--the earth--onto a two-dimensional plane. The most widely accepted solution to this challenge has been Mercator Map Projection, a technique that makes landmasses seem bigger the closer they are to the North and South Poles. Critics of Mercator Map Projection argue that because the approach makes countries and continents in the Northern Hemisphere--like North America and Europe--seem larger than they are, it makes them seem more geopolitically important. Check out Nature Magazine’s animated map showing the true size of different countries in comparison to their Mercator Projection sizes. Then check out the “Invasion of America” interactive map, which depicts over time the increasing colonization of the the geographic area that became the United States. How can these maps help us think about knowledge as simultaneously objective and subjective? How might Mercator Projection maps distort our thinking about geography and the importance of different areas of the globe? What kinds of information does the “Invasion of America” map include that most maps of the United States make invisible? Ultimately, what/whose experiences are made invisible by these maps, and what/whose experiences are foregrounded?
Here Go is laying out one of his central points: that all social science knowledge comes from a particular standpoint, even though some scientists write as though their science were objective, positionless, and universal. Go is critiquing the tendency among European social scientists to act as though their findings are universal while critiquing the situatedness of everyone else’s. Go calls this Eurocentric assumption of universality metrocentrism.
Go is arguing for taking seriously indigenous voices and knowledge about the social world (indigenous sociology) as a form of standpoint theory, pioneered by scholars like Dorothy Smith (check out Smith’s Profile and writing to learn more about Standpoint Theory). Recall that standpoint theory is a feminist approach that holds that all knowledge comes from particular social perspectives; no knower is fully objective or knows comprehensively. Go wants us to think about indigenous knowledge as valid in the same way that think about we other ways of knowing, recognizing that it can reflect an objective reality while simultaneously representing just one perspective on that objective reality.
Recall that standpoint theory holds that all knowledge comes from particular social positions. Feminist scholars wrote about standpoints in relation to gender. Go wants to take that idea of social standpoint and apply it to geopolitics, recognizing that all social knowledge comes from people whose societies are positioned differently in relation to each other. A subaltern perspective is one that comes from people whose societies are subjugated or marginalized within a global hierarchy—that is, it involves perspectives from societies that scholars often refer to as the “Global South,” including most societies outside of Europe and North America.
Colonialism sought to destroy indigenous knowledge by erasing the languages, cultural practices, and worldviews of indigenous people. Go argues here that social science conducted in colonizing societies supported—sometimes explicitly, but often implicitly—that erasure, both providing justifications for it (e.g., scientific racism) and creating ways of knowing that treated indigenous knowledge as non-valid. For an example of this latter point, consider the concept of “religiosity”—how religious someone is. Scholars have often measured religiosity based on how frequently people attend church or pray. But these measures are inherently Christian-centric. Many religions don’t have churches, regular meetings, prayer, or even gods. People who hold to these religions would be classified as unreligious, and their beliefs and practices not taken seriously, if studied through a Eurocentric understanding of religiosity as church attendance and prayer. Put differently, many religions would be made “invisible” by a metrocentric understanding of religion. A subaltern approach seeks to uncover the knowledge that metrocentric approaches to the social theory have made invisible, like religious practices and identities that don’t involve church attendance or prayer.
Go here addresses a potential critique of his approach to a subaltern sociology: the argument that such a perspective is too local to help us understand big structural stuff, like empire, crime, healthcare, etc. He points out—citing Dorothy Smith again—that subaltern perspectives can provide a point to begin analysis of big structural stuff. From a subaltern perspective, one probably wouldn’t start an analysis with a macro-level theory or large-scale quantitative data but, rather, by asking what it feels like to live within a particular structure. Scaling up would then involve analyzing why living in that structure affects people the way it does. But the analysis—Go argues—has to start with the experience of those living with the structure.
In this section, Go is addressing perhaps the most important critique of his subaltern approach: that it lapses into a “dangerous epistemic relativism” that treats all knowledge equally because it can’t differentiate between what’s true and false. Put differently, critics might say that subaltern sociology is only interested in subjective experiences but can’t differentiate those experiences from objective reality. Go responds that subaltern sociology, like standpoint theory more generally, adopts perspectival realism. This is an epistemological approach that recognizes two things. First, it acknowledges that there is an objective reality outside of human experience. That’s the “realism” part of perspectival realism. But second, the approach recognizes that we can only understand objective reality through our senses, which are always shaped by our social positions. This is the perspectival part of perspectival realism. In essence, then, we can grasp objective reality, but never fully, as our understandings are always shaped by our subjective positions, and we can never hold all positions simultaneously. Go follows this theoretical argument by pointing toward examples from biology, astronomy, and cartography, highlighting how things that we think of as objective and universal (vision; astronomical observation; city maps) are actually experienced differently based on the sensory/measurement tools that we use to perceive them and the things that we want to highlight (and background) when we communicate about them.
Go argues that a subaltern standpoint approach can help us understand and theorize about the world in ways that other approaches can’t. He uses Du Bois’s concepts of the veil and double-consciousness as examples, arguing that these theoretical concepts—which have proven immensely valuable and productive for scholars who study race and oppression—could only grow out of a the implicitly subaltern approach that Du Bois takes in trying to understand what it feels like to be a problem (check out Du Bois’s profile and writing to learn more about these concepts). Go similarly points out that Marx’s approach to alienation and Durkheim’s approach to anomy (check out Marx’s and Durkheim’s profile and writing to learn more about these concepts) have largely ignored what it feels like for a society to have its homeland violently stolen, as was the experience of most people on earth during the colonial period. A subaltern approach to anomy and alienation would center people’s experience of the violent dispossession of their ancestral homeland.
Here Go summarizes his argument: a subaltern sociology starts from people’s real experiences with subjugation and then builds up to examine macro-level structures, recognizing that all knowledge—including knowledge that claims universality—comes from a particular standpoint