Drawing on previous work on knowledge production in the Arab world in the last 15 years, as well as the reports produced by the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, this article contributes to the debate about how scholarship in the Arab region has struggled with some dichotomies (tradition/modernity, East/ West, immanent nature/transcendent supernatural, imperialism/cosmopolitanism, reason/faith, rational/irrational, English language/vernacular language, and universalism/contextualism) before being able to partially transgress them. After a brief overview of the themes in the Arab social sciences, the article presents different research trends that have evolved from the mainstream critical “glocal” (global/local) paradigm to the more polarized “identity politics,” ones such as the symbolic liberal paradigm. Finally, it shows how a potential dialogical turn can overcome the identity politics paradigm.
This article examines global sociology through national and regional traditions beyond Western Europe and North America, drawing on the contributions to this special issue on Latin America, India, mainland China, Central and Eastern Europe, the Arab region, Brazil, and South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that although sociology has become increasingly global, the authority to define central problems and formulate concepts with universal standing remains highly concentrated. Sociologies beyond the centres have not simply received Euro-American theories but have selected, translated, contested and transformed them. At the same time, the article cautions against idealising Southern, local or indigenous knowledge, which may reproduce internal hierarchies, nationalism or authoritarianism. It proposes a relational, multiscalar and dialogical global sociology aimed at challenging the division of intellectual labour between theory-producing centres and data-producing peripheries, while fostering multidirectional circulation, reciprocal critique and more equal conditions of theoretical production.
The polite line of questioning when confronted by a proper name is to ask “Who is …?” The polite line of questioning when confronted by a proper name of eminent description is to ask “What is …?” Steven Lukes is such an eminence. A wholly irreplicable career, deservedly celebrated, revisited here through The Diversity of Morals , a book which brings multiple lines of Lukes’ thought, spanning decades, together and possibly to culmination. So what is Lukes? A social theorist of the truest kind, a verifiably voracious and omnivorous reader, an incomparable compiler and organizer of arguments, a superlative curator of quotation! All are correct. Most accurately, however, Lukes is a tutor (a “Don”) in the Oxford tradition, and in The Diversity of Morals , this uniquely literate, metadisciplinary, supra-professor visits several iterations of moral diversity, from politicized points of fracture, to untranslatable words, to incompatible research specialities, exposing all of them to be gradients of the same lie. For Lukes, “the category of the moral” is the most adequate expression of an all-too-human, unifying power— power over fate —particularly the fate of having to live among those whom we despise, i.e., who seem to “come like fate.” The effort is a significant, self-contained tutorial, but can morals prove as interesting as unifiers as they are as dividers, as Lukes hopes? Perhaps, but only if it is hope, indeed, that morals enliven.
Examining a discipline’s thematic preferences is an effective means of understanding its development through the process of knowledge production. The research topics addressed in the literature at any given time generally reflect the discipline’s shifting priorities and intellectual concerns. Analysing these topics enables the identification of themes that have emerged, evolved or declined in significance, leading to insight into the broader directions the field is moving in. Drawing on publications from a leading sociology journal, Sociological Bulletin , this paper examines the range of topics discussed in Indian sociological research and traces their emergence and decline over time. By analysing journal publications from the past decade (2016–2025), this paper offers a systematic overview of the thematic patterns that have shaped contemporary Indian sociology. The paper employs scientometric tools to extract and analyse the themes in these publications, mapping their interconnections, the strength of their associations, their frequency of occurrence and their scholarly impact, as measured by citation counts. In addition, it explores the temporal trends to show the shifts in the discipline’s thematic emphasis during this period. The findings contribute to knowledge of the relative significance of different sociological themes and the internal dimensions of specific topics, as revealed through their linkages with related themes. This analysis also helps identify themes that are more influential in the literature and have greater potential for citation impact.
