Theorising the Caribbean against the grain. How West Indian social scientists established the Caribbean as a space of knowledge production in the 1950s

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the foundational and formative period of interdisciplinary social thought in the anglophone Caribbean to critically engage with hypothesis of academic dependency and shed further light on how West Indian scholars in the 1950s resisted institutional and epistemic structures of dominance. Manifold contributions outline the colonial and imperial legacy and entanglement of social sciences knowledge production, however often focus on macro-historical and epistemic discussions. To enhance these, I argue, concrete empirical case studies of social knowledge production in the Global South can be productive to elaborate and learn from non-hegemonic traditions of theorising and researching. Conducting a reconstruction of the institutional context of knowledge production and its interaction with each other, it will be shown that West Indian social scientists represent an inspiring example of how social theorising was practiced against the grain of centre-periphery relations.

Keywords

• Academic dependence
• Sociological theory
• Knowledge circulation
• Center-periphery
• Caribbean