Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World

This innovative book deals with how we think about and understand global change. A transnational cast of multidisciplinary thinkers engages with how others have conceived and created knowledge of the social world, from the late colonial period through to the contemporary era. Some contributors tackle a range of previously underexplored questions about the practices involved in the production, assessment and use of diverse forms of social knowledge. They examine the contested meanings of globalisation – moving beyond the conventional distinctions between the global and the local, the universal and the particular, the East and the West – to assess how social knowledge is being made and re-made along more critical trajectories. Other essays offer striking accounts of how significant actors have framed a range of worldviews: colonial cosmopolitans, organic intellectuals, state elites, indigenous communities, rural women, pop culture audiences, filmmakers, novelists, students of Islam and political activists. In doing so the authors present a critical genealogy of social-scientific and related forms of knowledge, of the social world. Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World will be essential reading for students and general readers of anthropology, contemporary history, cultural studies, development studies, politics, religious studies and social theory.