Olivia: The 'Founding Fathers' of sociology—Marx, Weber, Durkheim. We're taught they gave us the universal keys to understanding society. What if they only gave us the keys to one very specific, very privileged house, and told us it was the whole world? Jackson: Whoa. That’s a heavy opener. You’re basically saying my entire Sociology 101 course was built on a faulty premise. Olivia: That's the explosive question at the heart of Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science by the brilliant Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell. And it’s a book that, once you read it, you can’t un-see the world in the same way. It’s been praised as this major, intellectually liberating work for a reason. Jackson: Australian? That's interesting. I feel like most of the big sociology names we hear about are European or American. Olivia: Exactly! And that's her whole point. Connell writes from this unique position—a wealthy, Western country, but one that's also on the periphery of global power, with its own history of colonialism. It gives her this incredible insight into how knowledge gets produced and who gets to call their ideas 'theory' versus who gets labeled as just 'culture' or 'data'. Jackson: Okay, I’m hooked. So where does she start? How do you even begin to dismantle the entire foundation of a scientific field? Olivia: She starts by giving the problem a name. She calls it 'Northern Theory'.

Jackson: Northern Theory? Sounds like a weather forecast for Scandinavia. What does she mean by that? Olivia: It’s a fantastic term, isn't it? She uses it to describe the body of social theory that originates from the 'metropole'—think Europe and North America—but presents itself as universal truth. It’s the default setting for social science. These are the theories that claim to explain modernity, capitalism, and society for everyone, everywhere. Jackson: But they don’t. Olivia: They can’t. Because they are born from the perspective of the colonizer, the wealthy, the powerful. They look out at the world from the center. Connell argues that this isn't a moral failing of the theorists, but a structural feature of how knowledge has been organized globally. And the most incredible part is how persistent this bias is, even when people are actively trying to fight it. Jackson: What do you mean? Olivia: She gives this absolutely perfect, almost tragic, example. In the mid-1990s, the prestigious Gulbenkian Foundation got together a panel of distinguished international experts. Their mission was to 'Open the Social Sciences'—to rethink the whole field for a globalized era. The panel was chaired by the famous sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein. Jackson: Sounds promising. A diverse panel, a global mission. This is where they fix it, right? Olivia: You'd think so. They met for years, deliberated, and finally produced their big report. And what did they find? They presented a history of social science that was almost entirely Eurocentric. The story of sociology was the story of Europe and North America. Ideas and thinkers from the rest of the world? They were literally relegated to the footnotes. Jackson: Come on. In the 90s? Even after all the post-colonial critiques? Olivia: That’s what makes it so powerful. It shows how deep the programming runs. Even with the best intentions, the panel reproduced the very problem they were supposed to solve. They were looking at the world through a Northern lens without even realizing it. Jackson: Wow. It’s like asking Hollywood to make a film about world cinema, and they just focus on European directors with a brief, patronizing mention of 'foreign films'. Olivia: That’s a perfect analogy. And Connell points out this has real consequences. She quotes the French anthropologist Louis Dumont, who once declared that the idea of a 'Hindu sociology' was a contradiction in terms. Jackson: Why? Olivia: Because in his view, and the dominant view, social science can only have one universal body of concepts and methods—and that body was created in the global North. Any other way of thinking, like from an Indian perspective, is relegated to the past. It’s treated as 'tradition' or 'culture'—something to be studied as an object, not a source of intellectual authority in the present. Jackson: So the North gets to make the theories, and the South just provides the raw data. The exotic examples. Olivia: Precisely. Paulin Hountondji, a philosopher from Benin, called this the 'colonial science pattern'. Data-gathering happens in the colony, but the real thinking, the theorizing, happens back in the metropole. And Connell argues this pattern is still deeply embedded in social science today. Jackson: That’s infuriating. It’s like the whole system is designed to keep certain people as the subjects of study, never the authors of the study. Okay, so the North has a blind spot the size of several continents. What's the alternative? What is this 'Southern Theory'?

Olivia: This is where the book gets really exciting. Because Connell doesn't just stop at the critique. She takes us on a journey to discover the powerful intellectual work that has been happening all along in the global South. And she’s clear: 'Southern Theory' isn't just any theory that happens to be written by someone from a southern country. Jackson: Right, it’s not a geographical label. Olivia: It’s relational. It’s theory that arises from the experience of being on the periphery of global power. It’s social thought forged in the fires of colonialism, dependency, and the struggle for autonomy. And she argues it has as much intellectual power as metropolitan theory, and often, far more political relevance. Jackson: I’m curious, can you give an example? What does that look like in practice? Olivia: One of the most electric examples she discusses is from Iran. In the 1960s, a writer and intellectual named Jalal Al-e Ahmad wrote a short, explosive book called Gharbzadegi. The title is usually translated as 'Westoxication' or 'West-struck-ness'. Jackson: Westoxication. I love that. What is it? Olivia: Al-e Ahmad diagnosed a cultural sickness. He argued that Iran was suffering from a blind, uncritical infatuation with the West. It was like a plague, a cholera, that made Iranians devalue their own culture, their own history, their own identity, and replace it with a cheap imitation of Western modernity. He saw it in the architecture, the education system, the way people thought. Jackson: That sounds incredibly potent. And I’m guessing the government at the time loved this message? Olivia: Oh, absolutely not. The book was written under the Shah's regime, a brutal pro-American dictatorship. The government immediately banned Gharbzadegi. They seized the printing plates. But it was too late. Bootleg copies were already circulating. It became this legendary underground text, a symbol of intellectual resistance. Jackson: So this wasn't just an academic debate in a university journal. This was a book with real-world, life-and-death stakes. Olivia: Exactly. And this is Connell's point. This is theory with teeth. Al-e Ahmad wasn't just writing an analysis; he was, as Connell puts it, "creating the public it addresses." He was giving people a new language to understand their own situation, to see the invisible forces shaping their lives. That’s a kind of social theory that is deeply, politically alive. Jackson: It’s a tool for liberation, not just for observation. Olivia: Yes! And this is happening all over the world. She points to the Subaltern Studies group in India, a collective of historians who decided to rewrite the history of India, not from the perspective of the British colonizers or the Indian nationalist elites, but from the perspective of the 'subaltern'—the peasant, the villager, the marginalized. Jackson: So they were telling the stories of the people who are usually just footnotes in the grand historical narratives. Olivia: They were showing that these people weren't just passive victims. They had their own politics, their own consciousness, their own forms of resistance. They were active agents in their own history. Again, this is a profound theoretical intervention. It completely changes how you understand power, history, and society. It’s knowledge produced from the ground up, from the perspective of the oppressed. Jackson: It’s a completely different starting point for understanding the world. It’s not looking down from the metropole; it’s looking up from the periphery. Olivia: And that viewpoint, Connell argues, is not a distortion. It’s a clarification. It reveals the violence, the inequality, and the power dynamics that Northern theory so often smooths over or ignores completely.

Jackson: Okay, so this is all incredibly powerful. But what's the big takeaway here? Should we just throw out all of Western sociology? Is Marx cancelled? Olivia: No, and Connell is very clear about that. This isn't about creating a new dogma or simply replacing one canon with another. It’s not about throwing anything out. The goal is to provincialize the North. Jackson: Provincializing the North? What does that mean? Olivia: It means seeing Northern theory for what it is: a powerful, important, but ultimately local knowledge tradition. It’s one voice in a global conversation, not the only voice. The goal is a truly democratic social science, a dialogue where different intellectual traditions can learn from each other. Jackson: So it’s about creating a more honest and complete picture of the world. Olivia: Exactly. It's about recognizing that the people who have been on the receiving end of global power have a unique and vital perspective on how the world actually works. Their experience is not just 'data' for our theories; it is theory. Connell brings up the struggles of Indigenous peoples, for instance. The Yolngu people in her own country of Australia fought a landmark legal case for their land rights. Jackson: A fight they initially lost in court, right? Because the Western legal system couldn't comprehend their relationship with the land. Olivia: Yes, the judge ruled they had a relationship, but not a 'proprietary' one. But that struggle, that articulation of a different way of knowing and being, is a profound form of social theory. It challenges the very foundations of Western ideas about property, law, and society. The Aboriginal activist Mick Dodson put it so powerfully, and Connell quotes him. He said: "Culture is the land... Removed from our lands, we are literally removed from ourselves." Jackson: Wow. That hits hard. You can't separate the people from the place. That’s a truth that so much of abstract, placeless Northern theory just completely misses. Olivia: And that's the ultimate point. A social science that ignores the land, that ignores the pain of dispossession, that ignores the voices of the majority of humanity, is not a global social science. It's an impoverished one. Jackson: It really makes you rethink your own education. What 'universal' truths did you learn that might have been just one, very specific, very powerful perspective? Olivia: Exactly. And that's a question we should all be asking. We'd love to hear from our listeners. What's a piece of 'Southern Theory'—a book, a film, an idea from outside the usual Western canon—that changed how you see the world? Let us know on our socials. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.