Theorizing Gender in Populist Times: Understanding the Challenge to Critical Social Sciences

Both authoritarian and neoliberal regimes which dominate the world today have an intrinsic hostile relationship to the social sciences and humanities. Both recognize the potential of a critical social science to usher in democratic visions that challenge such regimes though the details of how they reshape the social sciences in specific contexts may differ. This session will highlight and initiate a global dialogue:

• to examine empirically the challenge that social science theorization faces globally;
• and articulate why gender theorization offers a critical vantage point to build a social science for a democratic and just world.

The intent to initiate a dialogue across borders as well as generations is propelled by an awareness that while academia in the Global North increasingly engages with voices from the Global South, a gap exists between “looking south” and “living” in the everyday world of the Global South. Critical knowledge building is crucial to bridge the gap. Building knowledge that draws from different parts of the world is imperative in populist times where distinctions between the social sciences and common sense have blurred. An urgent need exists to draw from sociology and gender theory to debunk taken-for-granted knowledge or common-sense, which is often prejudiced and discriminatory. Such common-sense unfortunately is legitimated by power today. This session calls for papers that focus on knowledge-shaping processes in the Global South based on a critical dialogue with gender theory.