Knowledge and Global Power breaks new ground by casting a sharp light on the imaginative work of researchers in the Global South under conditions that still reflect the asymmetries of power in relation to the Global North.
Too much of the accounting for research in developing countries is still stuck in colonial legacies and neo-colonial dependency.
What is much needed in studies on the global research enterprise is rich descriptions of subalten scholarship that deepens our understanding of the politics of knowledge and gives a sense of hope that dissolves unhelpful binaries about an all-powerful north and a powerless south.
This book is a must-read for students in the sociology and politics of knowledge.
– Jonathan Jansen, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Stellenbosch
Knowledge and Global Power is a ground-breaking international study which examines how knowledge is produced, distributed and validated globally.
The former imperial nations – the rich countries of Europe and North America – still have a hegemonic position in the global knowledge economy. Fran Collyer, Raewyn Connell, João Maia and Robert Morrell, using interviews, databases and fieldwork, show how intellectual workers respond in three Southern tier countries, Brazil, South Africa and Australia.
The study focuses on new, socially and politically important research fields: HIV/AIDS, climate change and gender studies.
The research demonstrates emphatically that ‘place matters’, shaping research, scholarship and knowledge itself. But it also shows that knowledge workers in the global South have room to move, setting agendas and forming local knowledge.
About the editors:
Fran Collyer is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. Her recent books include Mapping the Sociology of Health and Medicine, for which she won the Stephen Crook Memorial Award for the best Australian monograph 2014, and the Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine.
Raewyn Connell is Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney and is one of Australia’s leading social scientists. Her recent books are Southern Theory; Gender: In World Perspective (with Rebecca Pearse); and El género en serio: Cambio global, vida personal, luchas sociales.
João Maia teaches in the School of Social Sciences (CPDOC) at Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro. He researches the history of social sciences, Brazilian social thought and sociological theory in the global South.
Robert Morrell is an historian working in research development at the University of Cape Town. His books include From Boys to Gentlemen: Settler Masculinity in Colonial Natal and Africa-Centred Knowledges: Crossing Fields and Worlds (edited with Brenda Cooper).
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