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  • 5 - Political Sociology and the Postcolonial Perspective

  • from I - Theories of Political Sociology
  • Edited by Thomas Janoski, University of Kentucky, Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego
  • Book:
    The New Handbook of Political Sociology
    Published online:
    22 February 2020
    Print publication:
    05 March 2020, pp 132-152

  • Summary

    What can postcolonial theory teach us about politics and society? Part of that depends upon what “postcolonial theory” is. First and foremost, it must be clarified that postcolonial theory is not reducible to a singular “theory” in the conventional sense. It is not a set of ordered hypotheses about the social world or a “singular logically integrated causal explanation” (Calhoun 1995: 5). It is not concerned with meeting Homans’ requirement that “causal explanation” constitutes theory (Homans 1964). While it might include certain causal statements, postcolonial theory is not restricted to them. Postcolonial theory is better thought of as a perspective or worldview. To draw from Abend’s definition of theory, it is a “Weltanschauung, that is, an overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world” (Abend 2008). From this perspective, one might derive hypothetical causal statements.