Social theory, extroversion and autonomy: impasses and horizons of (semi)peripheral contemporary sociology

This article analyzes the production of peripheral social theory in different geopolitical eras and stages of modernity, with a special focus on (semi)peripheral contemporary sociology. We argue that the current research agenda is focused on an intellectual movement of a criticism that fights Eurocentrism and modernity, however without being able to create systematic theoretical-methodological formulations, as it had occurred in the middle of the twentieth century. We, therefore, seek to improve the basis for a more propositional instituting movement from two directions: on the one hand, by recovering the centrality of autonomous fields and aggregator circuits that may overcome intellectual extroversion; on the other hand, by analyzing, in a dialogue with Guerreiro Ramos, the possibilities of creating a theory in (semi)periphery as one of the main ways to undo more permanently the hegemony of theories from central countries and its customary use outside its original place.

Sociological Theory; (semi)periphery; Global Modernity; Guerreiro Ramos; Epistemology