Decolonial Studies against Social Sciences: Missing the Mark

doi:10.1111/dech.70078

Decolonial Studies against Social Sciences: Missing the Mark

2026-07-09

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Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan

DOI：10.1111/dech.70078

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Proponents of decolonial studies criticize ‘the epistemology of the North’, inherited from the Enlightenment and inherent in the West's colonial domination of the world, and — in their view — still alive today. They contrast it with the ‘epistemologies of the South’, based on the traditional knowledges and worldviews of Indigenous and colonized peoples. But the decolonial perspective does not take into account the emergence of the empirical social sciences in the 20th century, which step by step broke with positivism (interpretative turn) and with social evolutionism (cultural relativism). This article argues that the persistence of a Western-centric ideology should not be confused with the current epistemology of social sciences, based on inquiry (empirical reason). Furthermore, while decolonial studies, drawing on ‘standpoint epistemology’, grants ‘epistemic privilege’ to identity-based positionalities for researchers belonging to subjugated groups, it overlooks the importance of researchers’ agency in choosing and constructing their positionality, and disregards internal diversity within dominated groups. Finally, it is true that many deplorable asymmetries characterize relations between researchers in the South and those in the North, to the detriment of the former. But the reasons for this are historical, political, educational, economic and social, not ‘epistemological’. The claim that endogenous/indigenous knowledge from the South should be placed on the same footing as social sciences fails to take into account the specific nature of the two forms of knowledge.

Decolonial Studies against Social Sciences: Missing the Mark

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