Postgraduate Course: Anticolonial Social Theory and Global Thought (SCIL11044)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course reads social theory through an intellectual and global history of the anti-colonial era. Engaging with works by revolutionary writers and activists that span the Arab, Southern African, Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, this course considers what reading social theory from the political margins and epistemic lens of revolutionary thinkers invite into our traditions and habits of sociological imagination. Further, this course asks, what kind of intellectual inheritances and political sensibilities have been imparted from sites of subjugation including the prison, camp, plantation, Bantustan and colony? This course engages with these questions through intertextual analysis to think further about modernitys discontents through anti-imperial and anticolonial liberatory movements. |
| Course description |
The formation of Sociology as an academic discipline emerges with, not adjacent to the rise of global colonialism, imperialism and empire. Despite this legacy, canonical claims to the discipline often rest on Eurocentric standpoints, methodological nationalism and assumed notions of objectivity, while reproducing epistemes and practices faithful to colonial traditions and habits of thinking, knowing, sensing and being. This course invites a globally oriented approach to Sociology that asks instead, what does reading social theory from the political margins and epistemic lens of revolutionary writers and activists of the anticolonial era invite into our traditions and habits of sociological imagination?
This course is organized across three units which span the scope and scale of the quotidian to the study of global macro-social processes. These units include: 1) Power and Knowledge Production; 2) Modernity and Its Discontents; and 3) Agency, Resistance and Refusal. Within these units, we will investigate key sociological problems across a number of themes and topics including epistemology, ontology and ethics, violence and the politics of representation, nationalism and the nation-state, race, capitalism, gender, sexuality and the law, feminist debates on war and terror, religion, agency, anti-imperial resistance, Indigenous refusal and the politics of return.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
60 %,
Practical Exam
40 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
40%: Oral Presentation + Written Summary (x1), 1000 words max
60%: Final essay, 3,500 words max |
| Feedback |
Feedback on all assessed work shall normally be returned within three weeks of submission. Where this is not possible, students shall be given clear expectations regarding the timing and methods of feedback. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Explain the history, main theories and concepts of social and global thought that emerge from the anticolonial era.
- Demonstrate knowledge of theoretical and methodological inquiry pertinent to anticolonial thought and praxis.
- Analyze, reflect and discuss course content with peers on issues related to the production of race, colonialism and imperialism under modernity.
- Develop a capacity to examine contemporary critiques of modern power, colonial subjugation and resistance under empire.
- Distill course readings to peers and present on course content by way of oral and/or written presentation.
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Reading List
Al-Hardan, A (2021). Empires, Colonialism, and the Global South in Sociology. Contemporary Sociology; (51,1), 16-25.
Alatas, F. S & Sinha V (2017). Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan.
Biko, S [1978]. I write what I like. University of Chicago Press.
Césaire, Aimé [1972]. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Pinkham, Joan. New York: Monthly Review.
Kanafani, G. [1972]. The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine. New York, Committee for a Democratic Palestine; London: Tricontinental Society.
Fanon, F. [1961]. Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.
Mahmood, S. (2005).Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton University Press.
Meghji Ali (2021). "Decolonizing Sociology: An Introduction" (2021). Cambridge: Polity Press. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Cultivate close reading practices on original and secondary texts
Develop capacity for intertextual reading analysis, oral communication and multisensory based engagement
Develop communication skills for translating social theory into everyday lexicon
Acquire reflexivity, listening and responsiveness to peers
Develop a global understanding of power and social formations under empire
Acquire knowledge of historical processes that lead to social and political unrest and transformation |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Shaira Vadasaria
Tel: (0131 6)51 3060
Email: svadasar@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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