The social sciences are implicated in the reproduction of the very structures of inequality that are ostensibly their objects of concern. This is partly the result of their failure to acknowledge the “connected histories” of one of their primary units of analysis – the modern nation-state.
In the inaugural Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity Keynote Lecture, Professor Bhambra explored the social sciences’ failure to acknowledge the extent to which modern nation-states were bound up with relations of colonial extraction and domination. Without putting such relations at the heart of our analyses, we cannot address global inequality effectively.
Positing colonial histories as central to national imaginaries and the structures through which inequalities are legitimated and reproduced, she explored a framework for a reparatory social science, oriented to global justice as a reconstructive project of the present. The past cannot be undone, she concluded, but its legacies can be transformed to bring about a world that works for us all.
Speaker
Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra
Gurminder K. Bhambra is a Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies in the Department of International Relations in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. While her research interests are primarily in the area of postcolonial and global historical sociology, she is also interested in the intersection of the social sciences more generally with recent work in postcolonial and decolonial studies. Her recent work addresses the political economy of race and colonialism.
Chair
Professor Armine Ishkanian
Armine Ishkanian is the Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme and Professor in the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research examines the relationship between civil society, democracy, development, and social transformation.
Banner Image: Photo of the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, by jhaadityaroshan via Pixabay
