Article

European Journal of Social Theory

1–18
Sociologies of the South and ª The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1368431015613714
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Possible convergences for
an ontoformative sociology

Marcelo C. Rosa
University of Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

Abstract
This article analyses the contributions of the sociologies or theories of the South to the
contemporary debates on the production of theory in the social sciences. Starting with
the assumption that these projects adopt a critical view of how sociology has privileged
certain objects over others in a colonial way, it proposes an analysis that makes use of
certain aspects of the actor-network theory. This approach, it is suggested, will help the
sociologies of the South to focus on the production of ontoforms as their specific object,
ontoforms which expand and at times challenge the established hegemonic notions of
the social and of agency in this area of knowledge.

Keywords
actor-network-theory, decoloniality, post-colonialism, sociologies of the South, south-
ern theories

Recent works in the social sciences that have used the terms ‘theories of the South’,
‘sociologies of the South’, and ‘epistemologies of the South’ are presented as attempts
to enhance contemporary sociological thought. These writings ‘of the South’, from the
point of view of this article, are a political stance in the contemporary debates that seek
to emphasize the theoretical and methodological consequences of the colonial way in
which the discipline was established, excluding from its canons both authors and

Corresponding author:
Marcelo C. Rosa, University of Brasilia, Campus Universitário Darcy Ribeiro, Instituto de Ciências Sociais,
Departamento de Sociologia, Brasilia, 70910-900, Brazil.
Email: marcelocrosa@gmail.com

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2 European Journal of Social Theory

experiences from outside Euro-America. These are works whose analyses include both
the sociology of knowledge as well as the sociology of power.1 In this regard, in addition
to those who use the term ‘South’ like R. Connell, B. Sousa Santos or Comaroff and
Comaroff, I believe we can add to this group the theoretical movements that were started
by Latin American, Asian and African intellectuals in an attempt to highlight inequalities
in the production of knowledge in the social sciences. This group would thus include cer-
tain aspects of postcoloniality (Chakrabarty, 1992), decoloniality (Mignolo, 2007; Qui-
jano, 2000;), indigenous sociologies (Adesina, 2002; Akiwowo, 1999; Butler, 2006),
endogeneity (Alatas, 1993; Hountondji, 1997; Mafeje, 2000; Nyamnjoh, 2012) and fem-
inist theories (Mohanty, 1984).
A power struggle with theoretical and methodological consequences: these are the
terms with which I intend to begin a dialogue and establish an association between these
‘theories of the South’ and certain characteristics of the actor-network theories (ANT).2
In the view of some of ANT’s key authors, including John Law (2004; 2015), Bruno
Latour (2013) and Helen Verran (2002), this theoretical movement born in the social
studies of science is presented at specific points in time as a critique of the hegemonic
way of anchoring the social sciences in narratives of modernity/modern and in their
restricted set of ontoforms (Connell, 2012; Mol, 1999).
Promoting dialogue between these theoretical movements is not an entirely new pro-
posal. Yehia (2007), in an analysis of the modernity/coloniality/decoloniality project,
and Go (2013), in examining writings identified as postcolonial, noted the similarities
between these theories and those of the actor-network. In this regard, the authors empha-
size how both ANT and the ‘southern movements’ question the epistemological coloni-
alism still at work in hegemonic social theories. These common features are also noted
by Anderson (2009) to justify a comparison of the Social Studies of Science and postco-
lonial literature. Recent contributions of the authors connected to the actor-network the-
ory (Latour, 2001, 2013; Law, 2015; Verran, 2002)3 have also drawn attention to the
sociological and political convergences of their proposals and that of the literature ‘of
the South’.
In the following, with these connections, I intend to examine a specific hypothesis on
the possible similarities between these two movements: I believe that there is a need for a
profound methodological examination of certain principles of the theories of the South/
epistemologies of the South. In my view, these texts offer important critiques and evi-
dence of the colonial dimension of modernity as adopted by sociology in its institutional
and subjective implications. While they successfully bring new categories to the fore-
front, they are still seeking methods that can reveal both ontologies and agencies that are
not part of the traditional scope of sociology.
Based on the provisional alternative that I intend to offer, three premises of the actor-
network theory could be incorporated to reinforce some of the ‘theories of the South’ in
their quest to challenge global sociology: (1) that the social is not a defined or stable
force (Latour, 2005; Law and Urry, 2004); (2) that sociology should be active in the pro-
duction of ontologies; and (3) that it is necessary to include new ‘ontological politics’
(Law and Benshop, 1997; Mol, 1999) within the scope of sociology.
The argument of the article is divided into four sections in which I will (1) briefly
present what I consider to be theories of the South; (2) explore the claim of these authors

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Rosa 3

that there are ontologies and theories that should be incorporated into the universe of a
global social theory;(3) establish possible connections between the proposals of the
actor-network theory and the challenges presented for the theories of the South; and
(4) use the notions of ‘ontological politics’ and ‘ontoformativity’ to map out a possible
path for the sociologies of the South. In the conclusion, I will suggest that the sociologies
of the South could in fact take a prominent role within the global debate of sociology if
they undertake the theoretical and methodological construction of new ontologies. These
new ontologies must expand but also contest the forms of knowledge production cur-
rently available and accepted in the field of the social sciences.

Why sociologies of the South?

It remains very difficult if not impossible to speak of a single ‘sociology of the South’ or
even a ‘theory of the South’. As we will see later, these expressions, which also include the
‘epistemologies of the South’, represent a pretty recent attempt to rework criticisms that
lack both conceptual and methodological uniformity. In a previous work (Rosa, 2014), I
demonstrated that when speaking of the South, authors look at completely different sub-
jects. For authors like Comaroff and Comaroff (2011), it is the ‘practical theory’ of the
disenfranchised that matters, while for Santos and Meneses (2009), it is the subjugated
‘epistemology’ of certain groups. In Connell’s work, the focus is on both the academic and
the practical theories, however (Connell, 2007). By using the term ‘South’, what these
movements share is a critique of the geopolitics of the social sciences with regards to the
production, circulation and distribution of knowledge. Its objects are processes, objects
and methods but also theories and theorists ignored by the grand sociological narratives
due to the fact that they are situated outside the Euro-American academic circuit.4
It is important to note that the South here does not refer to any geographical marker,
that is, a theory does not necessarily question the geopolitics of knowledge simply
because it originated outside Euro-America – nor does an author subscribe to the theory
merely because he or she was born in the South (Nyamnjoh, 2012).The South can pro-
duce good mainstream sociologies that are not necessarily from the South. The expres-
sion tends to gain analytical force only when arguments/actors/processes/histories
strategically presented as regional are mobilized to critique the dominant standards,
methods or narratives of the discipline.
The South and the North (or Euro-America) are reasonably dynamic (and limited)
metaphors here that help us to understand both the history of the discipline as well as
a precise type of critique and reaction that has gained force in contemporary publications
and debates. This critique is anchored in specific features of certain corpuses, countries,
cultures and cosmologies in order to put forth global challenges. For that reason, as I
stated in the introduction, I believe it is possible to extend its scope to certain texts of
postcolonial, decolonial, feminist, endogenous and indigenous literature.

Social theories and the colonial legacy

In this section I would like to briefly present the arguments of certain authors who delib-
erately employ sociologies, theories and epistemologies ‘of the South’ as an alternative

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4 European Journal of Social Theory

to the established sociological models. Almost all of these works (despite their differ-
ences, as analysed in Rosa, 2014) make three main types of arguments: (1) one that
draws attention to and criticizes the negative effects of colonialism/capitalism on the
production, distribution and circulation of knowledge produced in the South; (2) another
that indicates the existence of processes/actors/histories that have emerged in the colo-
nial encounter and have not received either local or global attention due to the force of
these geopolitics of knowledge; and (3) a third – one they do not all share to the same
degree – that points to still undefined local agencies that exist in the South independent
of the modern/colonial system. As I will reiterate later, the second and especially the
third propositions still need to be developed, since their theoretical/methodological
framework can offer significant challenges to the mainstream social theory.

The South in the political economy of knowledge

By questioning the logic of the extraverted knowledge production in Africa, Hountondji
(1997: 2) establishes a parallel between the absence of factories/laboratories and
acknowledged theories from the continent. Due to their absence, those who live in this
region are relegated to being producers/exporters of raw materials (either natural
resources or research data) and importers of manufactured goods and grand theories.
In both cases, the result is dependency (technological or intellectual, or in some cases,
both) that characterizes what S.H. Alatas (2000) has referred to as the ‘captive mind’.
The main argument of S.H. Alatas is the same used by Connell (2012), Comaroff and
Comaroff (2011) and Santos and Meneses (2009) to denounce the imperialistic and
dependent relationship in knowledge production within the social sciences. By criticiz-
ing the international division of academic work, all of these authors emphasize the fact
that in our field, theory and method take centre stage, as they do in all academic settings.
Theories also define the identities of each discipline, as the presence of Marx, Weber and
Durkheim constantly reminded us.5 The problem arising from this literature is that in
publications, conferences and academic courses, theorists and theories are transformed
into adjectives and nouns that almost exclusively describe masculine Euro-American
entities.
The explanation for the theoretical and methodological extraversion of the sciences in
general – and more specifically, of the social sciences – is obviously not that theories are
not produced in the South (or by women, for that matter). In spite of the importance of
the conditions for economic dependency noted by Hountondji (1997) and Sitas (2014), as
S. F. Alatas (2006) shows, sociology has predecessors who came from outside Euro-
America (such as Ibn Khaldun, among others), and it continues to produce theory in dif-
ferent corners of the world, as noted by Connell (2007) and Maia (2014). The problem,
then, is not so much in the production but in the distribution and circulation of these the-
ories, which in many cases are taken captive by national or regional contexts or by cer-
tain subjects (Patel, 2014). Such theories contribute to explaining, for example, Africa,
Latin America, India, women or racism, but rarely do the epistemological challenges
they raise appear in general debates (or even in university classes) on social theory. In
the words of Arjomand (2013: 34), who in turn is referencing Connell, what happened

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Rosa 5

was ‘the erasure of the historical experience of a very sizeable portion of humankind
from the foundation of social theory’.
This erasure contributed to what Quijano (2000) and Lander (2000) have called the
coloniality of power and knowledge – a type of domination that goes beyond territorial
or economic colonialism and is mainly focused on the classification power drawn from
Eurocentric social theories and methods. Out of a need for extraversion, many southern
theorists end up internalizing their role as peripheral or provincial and accepting that
their intellectual contributions will have only a local scope.6 The South thus becomes
a legitimate place that is looked at only to ponder and experience poverty, exclusion,
racism, inequality or underdevelopment among other malaises (which also exist in Eur-
ope and in the United States).7
The paths and possible solutions to this dilemma are clear and connected to a classical
political economy perspective. It is necessary to intervene in the distribution and circu-
lation of sociological knowledge, forging a path in books, courses, departments and con-
gresses for classic and contemporary theories and for methods designed in the South.
Critiques such as these have unquestionably contributed to thinking about the colonial
implications of the predominant theories and methods in our discipline. By positioning
themselves in the South and identifying the hegemonic theoretical and methodological
models as limited to the North, these critiques are – at the very least – producing a desir-
able effect in the narratives of the history of sociology in both the South and the North.
Doing so does not necessarily entail a demand for epistemological or ontological
changes within the discipline.

The South as the experience of encounters

The second challenge facing many of the authors of the sociologies of the South is that of
transmuting their critique into a programme for a global transformation of the subjects of
the discipline. Based on the premise of exclusion traced along geopolitical lines, the
majority of the texts analysed – including the decolonial and feminist theories – empha-
size that in addition to Southern theories and methods, its processes, subjects and forms
of knowledge are also excluded from the Euro-American theories in terms of meaningful
agency.
The question, which has now grown more complicated, is how to bring these under-
mined subjects within the scope of discipline. Recognizing how life in the South is
affected by the geopolitical violence of colonial expansions, their focus will be on the
agencies that emerge from the encounter between modern/Western (and for some, colo-
nial as well) and other processes rooted in the Southern existence.
Comaroff and Comaroff (2011) embark upon this path by affirming that the Global
South, in addition to providing raw materials, should also supply insights for understand-
ing the rest of the world. These insights appear in terms such as inventions, accommoda-
tions and hybrids, all three of which are used profusely in their book Theories from
the South (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 6). For these authors, in the South, within dif-
ferent colonial contexts, ‘forms of domestic and urban life’. have been created, forms ‘of
peasant-proletarianization, and of displaced cosmopolitanisms forged in the spaces
between promise and privation, between inclusion and erasure’, forms that would

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6 European Journal of Social Theory

serve to establish their own contemporaneity and modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff,
2011: 7).
The forms that belong to the South appear in a similar manner in the works of Boa-
ventura Santos. According to this author, ‘the epistemologies of the South are the set of
epistemological interventions that protest this suppression ‘‘of the knowledges of colo-
nized people and nations,’’ value the knowledge that successfully resisted and explore
the conditions for a horizontal dialogue among knowledges’, referred to as the ‘ecology
of knowledges’ (Santos and Meneses, 2009: 13). These knowledges would be rooted in
‘societies on the fringes of the modern world system’, in which belief in a single way of
doing things is weaker. In such societies, other non-scientific and non-Western knowl-
edges prevail in the everyday practices of the populations (Santos and Meneses, 2009:
47). According to the author, the ideal subjects for demonstrating such knowledge would
be the indigenous, the peasantry (from several parts of the world) and the Brazilian
quilombolas.
Mignolo (2000, 2011) and Grosfoguel (2009), who both identify with the notion of a
decolonial social science, use the concept of ‘border theory’ to describe forms of think-
ing and acting originating from the South that deliberately challenge Western ways
(capitalism, communism, liberalism, political economics, Christianity) and connect with
sites on the borders of modernity. The border would not be that of the nation-states but
instead an epistemic and ontological border (Mignolo, 2011: 276). In these sites, whose
most recurring examples are the Bandung Conference (in which diverse countries from
the South opted not to align with communism or socialism), the notion of ‘learn by ask-
ing’ of the Mexican Zapatista movement and Frantz Fanon’s concept of sociogenesis, the
effects of modernity/coloniality would be experienced and interpreted in other ways.
Along these borders, the emancipatory logics of modernity would be redefined by the
experience of the cosmologies and epistemologies of the subaltern, the colonized and the
racialized. People of African descent and indigenous people across the world are exam-
ples of the existence of this border.8
As we can observe, the authors situate these encounters on the ‘fringes of the world
system’ or the ‘borders of modernity’, evoking privation and erasure. The usual depic-
tion of Southern lives in mainstream sociologies, though, is timidly challenged, with a
new emphasis on the creative ways in which the South deals with the poverty, exclusion,
racism and patriarchy caused by colonial processes.9 These are examples of a language
which, by attempting to deal with emergent realities, finds itself responding in the terms
of the criticized legacies of Euro-American history, time and space categories. The South
is relegated to the role of the victim before the powerful agencies of the North. This strat-
egy leads to the creation of Others who, at least to begin with, are ontologically depen-
dent or derivative of modernity narratives and matrixes of knowledge.10 Would a scholar
or any other producer of knowledge in the South be satisfied with the role of a victim in
this story?
To avoid these traps and escape this determinism, some of the contributions examine
the agencies that emerge in moments where histories, times and spaces of colonizers and
colonized collude and are affected by the encounters. In Connell’s words (inspired by her
gender studies), these moments are ‘ontoformative’, meaning that they produce new
structures, realities and agencies that differentiate the Southern social landscapes from

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Rosa 7

the Euro-American ones (Connell, 2012: 12). Here certain social groups are brought to
the forefront by different authors: the landless (Santos and Meneses, 2009), the indigen-
ous (Connell, 2007; Santos and Meneses, 2009), peasants (Guha, 1997) and black
women from different places (Carneiro, 2001; Collins, 2000). In methodological terms,
making them the focus means extending to them the same positive properties as the
Euro-American subjects: rationality, reflexivity and historical agency.
This second argument covers the geopolitical consequences of Euro-American dom-
inance not only in terms of the production of academic knowledge, but also in relation to
the nature of the ontologies that are produced in the South in spite of it. Recognizing their
differential features allows these emergent subjects to be seen overcoming the crises of
capitalism (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011) or making contributions to a universal his-
tory of coloniality (Quijano, 2000) or to the ideals of a late global modernity (Domin-
gues, 2009).
In this second argument there is still little room for the ‘other’ parts of the encounter
suggested in the literature: those that are neither modern/colonial violence nor emergent
hybrid ontoforms.

The South as an ontological challenge: delinking

In the same literature we can find a third option which, I suggest, has an even greater
implication for the transformation of the social sciences. Some of these writings suggest
that selected social categories could also have properties that cannot be understood by
merely applying the most renowned sociological ontologies. These properties are present
both in the encounters with the Euro-American process and in corners of collective lives
that exist alongside modernity.
If the ones living and producing knowledges in the South are on ‘the other side’, ‘in
the borders’, it implies that they are faces still in the shadows because the modernist nar-
ratives of sociology have denied their possibility of ‘coevalness’ – a notion coined by
Fabian (1983) and reproduced by Comaroff and Comaroff (2011), Mignolo (2007) and
Santos and Meneses (2009). Among the Latin American thinkers, the process of giving
academic life (they both recognize their existence in practices outside scientific world)
was first called ‘de-coloniality’ and later ‘delinking’: ‘A delinking that leads to de-
colonial epistemic shift and brings to the foreground other epistemologies, other princi-
ples of knowledge and understanding and, consequently, other economy, other politics,
other ethics’ (Mignolo, 2007: 453).
In spite of the very clear differences and certain conflicts over the use of the terms,
some sociologists from Africa and Asia have called for a similar process called the indi-
genization and/or the endogenization (Adesina, 2002; Akiwowo, 1999, Alatas, 1993;
Hountondji, 1997, Nyamnjoh, 2012). Central to each of them are two challenges:11
(1) the need to transform Euro-American research agendas, methods and theories and
adapt them to local contexts (endogenization); and (2) the incorporation of forms, pro-
cesses and methods of local knowledges to expand the horizon of global sociology, bear-
ing in mind that the Euro-American or Western method, as Chakrabarty (2000) argues, is
also provincial (indigenization). Suggested examples include the use of religious
cosmologies like the Yoruba (Akiwowo, 1999), poetry (Adesina, 2002), secular Islamic

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8 European Journal of Social Theory

philosophy (Alatas, 2006), popular (not poor) epistemologies and their ways of convivi-
ality (Borges, 2009; Nyamnjoh, 2012).12 None of these are a necessary product or result
of the colonial encounter or a form of resistance.
In order to understand this ontological ‘coevalness’ that could broaden the scope of
social sciences, debates from the Southern feminist theories are also relevant. Authors
like Mama (2001), Curiel (2007) and Anzaldúa (1987) demonstrate that although indi-
genous and African women face some of ‘global’ forms of oppression, they do not neces-
sarily need – and in several cases, do not have – a single political identity or a unique
ontology that is dominated by only their gender relations as some white/Western acti-
vists claim. The very idea of an identity is challenged there, since identity tends to unify
a heterogeneous existence in a single body.
A similar claim can be found in the way the Australian aboriginal groups described by
Connell (2007) relate to their land. In the works of Verran (1998) and Glowczewski
(2004), dreams are central to the existence of these individuals. Their dreams are not
confined to Freudian guidelines. They serve as means of communication, as a form of
belonging and as a specific way to deal with time and space. It is also important to note
that these people are not in remote areas living in idealistic ‘tribes’ or ‘communities’ as
one might imagine. They live in cities, govern countries, teach sociology at universities
(Butler, 2009) and are not simply converted into a single modern sociological ontology.
They are able to live multiple lives.
In this set of propositions, the search is for ontologies left behind by the current scope
of the modern social sciences but which are active in creating the contemporary exis-
tence in certain parts of the South. However, the main obstacle facing this third proposi-
tion can be found in the very notion of what sociology is. Sociology has gradually
become a form of knowledge for and by the modern and, as a consequence, has relied
on a very specific relationship between ontology and agency. To change them, we should
also be able to change the definition of what constitutes the subjects of the discipline,
especially when claiming specificities from the South. I would like to suggest this as the
point where the methodological challenges posed by some versions of the ANT reflect
and also strengthen the Southern claims.

ANT and the sociology of the South: common concerns

As stated in the introduction, a series of authors have noted similarities between the post-
colonial, the decolonial and – I would add now – the sociologies of the South with the
actor-network theory. Although some criticize certain ANT works (especially those lim-
ited to the study of laboratories) for not examining broader structures and historical pro-
cesses, I found an amplified engagement with a geopolitical dimension of their research
that I hope to demonstrate in the selected works that will be presented here. In this regard,
it is important to note, as described in the introduction, that I am not approaching the ANT
as a ‘package’ but as a tool to initiate the dialogue with some of the Southern theories.
John Law, published a book in 2004 in which he argues how the notion that he refers
to as the ‘Euro-American method’ is too limited to allow the social sciences to expand. In
this book and in Law and Lin (2011), he argues that the hegemony of the Western tradi-
tions of knowledge rests on three pillars: (1) the metaphysics (which distinguishes a

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Rosa 9

world from its knowledge); (2) the institutions (forms by which knowledge circulates,
such as academia); and (3) the subjectivities (that reproduce and incorporate representa-
tional metaphysics and the institutional structures). According to this view, these three
dimensions serve as the supports for another formal characteristic of Western modernity:
the obsession with a single way of organizing the world (Law, 1994). The basis for this
organization method would be an ordering method that seeks homogeneity and thus
tends to hide or disqualify heterogeneity as ‘a distraction, technical failure or as
deviance’ (Law, 1994: 7). Thinking in the terms of the sociologies of the South, Law
tends to reject the path that merely adds new beings to the sociological repertoire by attri-
buting a story, an identity or a policy (rejected in the most radical versions of methodo-
logical colonialism) to them, because this does nothing more than homogenize them and
create dualisms based on the notion of ‘other’. Verran (1998) came to the same conclu-
sion when studying notions of land ownership in Australia and when analysing the teach-
ing of science in Yoruba (Verran, 2002). A similar argument can be found in Latour’s
reflections (2013: 3–4) on his time living on the Ivory Coast. In this case, Latour is more
decisive and gives an explicit political corpus to his critique of the indiscriminate use of
the notion of modernity in the 1980s.
As we know from the research results of this group, their objective is not limited to
offering insights into the social studies of science and technology or to critiquing
modernity in and of itself. Their desired contribution, like that of the sociologies of
the South, consists of proposing to renew the way social sciences are done today –
a way that remains predominantly Euro-American (Law, 2004). According to these
authors, in full agreement with the southern perspectives, Euro-American narratives
violently used their metaphysics, institutions and subjectivities to present certain phe-
nomena as evident and unquestionable while holding steadfastly to what we under-
stand as social.
Latour (2005: 1) notes that the main challenge of the ANT project is the search to
redefine the notions of ‘social’ and of ‘society’. In his words, ‘it is possible to remain
faithful to the original intuitions of the social sciences by redefining sociology not as the
‘‘science of the social’’, but as the tracing of associations’ (2005: 5). In this regard, the
social is no longer a homogenous substance – as Durkheim, for example, would describe
it – nor is it something that hovers over our heads. Instead, ‘the social’ is now considered
a constant movement of association among heterogeneous elements (between human and
non-human, mainly, though it could also be between colonizers and colonized). If there
is one thing ‘the social’ can never be, it’s a safe port, a familiar and domesticated entity
that serves to explain certain phenomena. Instead, the social must be reconstructed in
each and every investigation we carry out, investigations that must always be both the-
oretical and empirical. In this regard, the social (as association) is the result of research
and not its source or its explanation.
This redefinition points to a problem that is central in the criticism of what is identi-
fied as ‘from the South’: the imposition by a sociological theory of the North (even when
practised in the South) of a stabilized notion of social that can be used for everything
anywhere on the globe. This definition of social has already established which of the
beings or entities could, for example, be granted agency and also which agencies would
be most important from a sociological standpoint. The limit of social theory would

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10 European Journal of Social Theory

also be the limit of what it does or does not consider worthy of research. Here we can
find not only a relation but also helpful insight that can be connected to the second and
third critiques emerging from the sociologies of the South: there is a need to debate the
ontological dimensions of the discipline.
This limit can be overcome, according to Latour (2005: 165), by ‘keeping the social
flat’ in our descriptions, giving the same space and coherence to all the objects (under-
stood as effects) that have become tangible in our limited observations. For the author,
the real social world is not flat; instead, it is permeated by hierarchies and power rela-
tions, by beings big and small, as Boltanski (2012) would say, beings whose worth
should appear as the result of research but not as its pretext. The problem of contempo-
rary sociology lies in the fact that we have agreed almost without question that our work
will be based on a given topographic and cartographic framework (e.g. centre vs. periph-
ery). When we do this, in a sort of intellectual contraband, we arrange our own objects
the way the dominant theories would have it, be these theories of class, gender, collective
actions, etc. We do so without asking (or proving to) ourselves whether or not these are
relevant to the context we are describing.
The proposal of the authors associated with the ANT also moves towards redefining
the notion of agency and consequently, as we will later see, of ontology as applied in the
social sciences. In actor-network theory, the capacity for agency is always a given a pos-
teriori that must be considered part of the results. No actant, therefore, should be privi-
leged or excluded, regardless of the context. With regards to the classic meaning of the
term, the capacity for agency would not be given by the conceptual definition of sociol-
ogy that determines which beings have ‘the capacity for reflection’, but instead by their
grounded effect. We can compare this idea of Latour to the argument for the need of a
grounded theory made by both Connell and the Comaroffs. In the framework of the
French author, we must bear in mind that if all objects have the potential for agency
when research/descriptions begin, we are then obliged to distinguish between the med-
iators (which ‘transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements they
are supposed to carry’, Latour, 2005: 39) and the intermediaries (which ‘transport mean-
ing or force without transformation’, Latour, 2005: 39). From this point of view, not
everything that is a mediator (i.e. that is considered to have a capacity for transformation)
in classic theory would in fact have an effect in certain situations or places. In spite of the
fact that the ideas associated with modernity have reached all corners of the world, its
effects are not the only ones to be considered. Similarly, the sociologies of Asia, Africa
and Latin America are not obliged to use the peasantry, the indigenous populations, tra-
ditional knowledge or poverty to describe the world simply because they happen to be
located in the South.
By rejecting the standard procedure that defines in advance which beings will be ana-
lysed in a reasonably familiar and stabilized social, these authors are also changing the
place that sociological methods occupy. For Law (2004: 143):

[Method] is not a more or less successful set of procedures for reporting on a given reality.
Rather it is performative. It helps to produce realities . . . Method unavoidably produces not
only truths and non-truths, realities and non-realities, presences and absences, but also
arrangements with political implications. (my italics)

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Rosa 11

We must note that Law does not study indigenous groups, non-scientific knowledge or
alternative modernities (objects that appear in the main contribution to the sociology of
the South) and that his only incursion into objects outside the North is the article he
recently published with Lin on Taiwan (Law and Lin, 2011). Nonetheless, he is con-
cerned with the way in which the Euro-American metanarratives not only exclude
‘beings’ of the South but a series of others that are also part of life in the North. These
are beings which, in accordance with the epistemologies or popular ethnographies of
Nyamnjoh (2012) and Borges (2009), produce effects and change the teleology of the
established narratives. Although they do not fall within the limited range available for
the general theories, these entities are negatively viewed as exotic, as representations
or as imaginary.13
The main critique fashioned by Law and his group of collaborators is aimed at the
problem that sociological narratives have when it comes to dealing with a heterogeneous
social world (Latour, 2015; Law, 2004; Verran, 2002). This is another point that I con-
sider common to the style of narratives that emerge from the sociologies of the South. As
described in the first section of this article, for the authors we are discussing here, the
colonial effect has produced classifications of the ‘beings’ of the South in racialized,
gendered terms (Quijano, 2000). These beings are also described in traditional and other
terms that do not consider the complexity of the places and things that are both modern
and traditional at the same time (using here the unsatisfactory language of dualisms).
Considering the definition of method as enactment, as a form of making entities act,
in the social sciences (or any other science), we must create methodologies which, by
mapping the effects that have yet to be catalogued, allow for the existence of heteroge-
neous ‘beings’ that do not yet have a form, e.g. the second argument presented above.14
In contrast to sociology as an inventory of the legacy of established narratives (e.g. the
exemplary search for modernity and its alternatives in all places), Law proposes an idea
of sociology as the producer/creator of new actants to populate this world that can be
modern but is not only modern (as emphasized by several of the authors that I include
under the label of ‘sociologies of the South’).
This debate on the production of ‘beings’ is connected to the production of ‘agencies’
and it is expanded in the proposal made both by Law (2004) and by Mol (1999) of ‘onto-
logical politics’ at the core of the social sciences.15 According to Mol:

Ontological politics is a composite term. It talks of ontology—which in standard philoso-

phical parlance defines what belongs to the real, the conditions of possibility we live with.
If the term ‘ontology’ is combined with that of ‘politics’ then this suggests that the condi-
tions of possibility are not given. That reality does not precede the mundane practices in
which we interact with it, but is rather shaped within these practices. So the term politics
works to underline this active mode, this process of shaping, and the fact that is character
is both open and contested. (Mol, 1999: 75)

By proposing a connection between ontology and politics, Mol (1999) underlines the fact
that the production of theory and research in the social sciences cannot be limited to the
current terms of the debate. If there are ontologies that we know and stabilize (capita-
lism, modernity), these cannot and should not be seen as the only possible ones, nor

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12 European Journal of Social Theory

should they be treated as unquestionable. In following this line of thought, the task of
sociology, in addition to affirming the existence of things that do not appear (those which
are on the fringes, on the other side of the border), is about producing in our texts the
effects that these beings have on the world that we study. It is thus about consciously
acknowledging that this is a political-methodological task. ‘In an ontological politics
we might hope, instead, to interfere, to make some realities realer, others less so. The
good of making a difference will live alongside – and sometimes displace – that of enact-
ing truth’ (Law, 2004: 67).

Ontological politics and ontoforms

In keeping with Law and Mol and their demand for ‘ontological politics’, we can now
return to Connell’s notion of ontoformativity as briefly mentioned above. In Connell’s
perspective, gender relations and colonial encounters are sites where new ontologies are
empirically formed and observed (2011, 2012). If I am correct in my assessment of this
notion in her works, it is limited to understanding these new forms of existence which
become part of the social through the practical actions grounded in each and every
reality.
Probably because her understanding of sociological work is far from Mol’s, Connell
pays little attention to the fact that the ontoforms that arise in the analysis of colonial
relations are not just empirical phenomena (new corpuses, new genders, new masculi-
nities, race). They are categories, concepts that become real and relevant by the meth-
odologies of sociology itself; through these categories the social world is not observed
but forged in terms of ontology and agency (though not always on the same scale).
Even considering the specificity and the limits of Connell’s construction, I would pro-
pose extending it to the third kind of argument that I have considered above: ontologies
that fall outside the scope of agencies we already have and which were not formed or
observed in the encounter. To make them a sociological subject, i.e. to give them aca-
demic meaning, we need to understand that sociologies are also ontoformative.
In following with this reasoning, the sociology of the South would take an ontoforma-
tive identity in opposition to an exemplary Euro-American sociology that normally
searches for a restricted group of ontologies. Its task would consist of building relevance
for new categories that compete for a place in the global pantheon of sociology. In
approaching sociology as a political dispute – for Mol (1999), it is not a dispute over
hegemony – we would be forced to also admit that its objects could be contested not only
by multiple views or perspectives but principally, by multiple existences (coevalness).
Reinforcing the logical argument of the article, if there is a need for a sociology of the
South, its properties should differ from those of the North even in terms of what it con-
siders a subject. In doing so, the South must be continually produced with the discipline.
With the ontoformative quest, as used by Connell for the colonial encounter but now
extended to deal with coevalness, we reiterate the claim for heterogeneity associated
with the geopolitics of knowledge. This claim is supported within several branches of
the sociology of the South and in a range of works associated with the actor-network the-
ory. At the same time, we suggest a broader programme within sociology to bring some
of these ontoforms to the centre of our analysis when pertinent.

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Rosa 13

Conclusion
How can we use the notion of South in a way that remains relevant within sociology
without falling into the snares of Orientalism (Patel, 2014) that a regional term obviously
evokes? How can we recognize these epistemologies, creativities, imaginaries, knowl-
edge and at the same time transform the discipline which has a very specific Euro-
American form?
Following the argument that I have made here, the authors who call for ‘the South’ (in
epistemological, sociological or theoretical arguments) mainly seek to expand the limits
of current social theory, extending and democratizing its scope of qualified agents/
beings. The expansion, from a political economy approach, could happen smoothly by
including theories forged in such parts of the word. These theories, however, are some-
times based on forms of existences and agencies (ontoforms) that are outside the scope of
the mainstream Euro-American narratives. How can we deal with this heterogeneity
without resorting to dualities? How can we approach non-modern dimensions without
treating them as tradition, stability and backwardness? Even though such beings are
almost always in touch with modernity/coloniality/science/capitalism, why should this
be the only side or effect to be considered even among the most thought-provoking
authors?
The alternative, which I propose in the final section of this article, is simply the first
attempt in the search for a satisfactory step forward. In accordance with this response, the
main thing that sociologies of the South require is a specific subject that combines a geo-
political claim with regards to the production of social theory, with the elements over-
looked by traditional Euro-American sociology.
In this regard, I propose a dialogue with the definitions of the social and agency pro-
posed by the actor-network theory. Although it is true that the ANT authors have
emerged to defend a notion of agency that is not related to the ‘human’ or to ‘reason’,
it appears evident that within the sociology criticized by the theories of the South there
are still human subjects without agency (including many social scientists whose theore-
tical efforts are ignored). This dilemma cannot be resolved simply by universalizing the
current models of agency (reflexive and rational) and applying them to alternative mod-
ernities, because that would reiterate the hegemonic position of the centre (Euro-
America).
By seriously considering the reasonable proposal that an actant is only acknowledged
after it has acted in the world (in a material, symbolic, objective or subjective form) and
that its action is the effect (and not the meaning attributed by the subject), we would be
freeing ourselves from the anticipated and limited (by the colonizing theoretical model)
selection of certain obligatory ontologies. Beyond simply mentioning other forms of
existence expressed in land, poetry, religion, genders, cosmologies, it would be neces-
sary to specify their actual and differential effects on the world. Debating these effects
for a renewed sociology is critical for those who claim that the South is a site for
transformation.
This manner of proceeding would open up the possibility of a dispute over the social,
acknowledging its limited and precarious nature. Most importantly, it would recognize
that this social, which we speak so much of and even abuse, is intrinsically dependent

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14 European Journal of Social Theory

on our theoretical and methodological options (Chakrabarty, 2000). This stance would
contribute to an ‘ontological politics’ in which the condition for entry would be produc-
tion by social scientists that can legitimately exist in theoretical scenarios, production
whose validation criteria would be a convincing argument based on a solid description.
By adding the problems ‘of the South’ to the methodological proposals of certain
authors connected to the actor-network theory and taking these as knowledge policies
in our area, we are possibly opening a platform for future theoretical redefinition of
sociological work. This new sociology would distance itself from exemplary forms
trapped within a narrow notion of modernity. As a result, I suggest that the sociologies
of the South could advance significantly by assuming an ontoformative identity, increas-
ing the beings relevant to our analysis and contributing to the transformation of the topo-
graphy of the social as it is known today.

Acknowledgements
This article and its many versions benefited from various readers, especially Antonádia Borges,
João Marcelo Maia, the members of the Research Laboratory in Non-Exemplary Sociology, the
students of my course on Emergent Sociologies at the University of Brasilia and the two anon-
ymous reviewers, whom I thank for their patience and ideas.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: The research was funded by the CNPq, and the article is partially sup-
ported by the NRF Chair in Land Reform and Democracy in South Africa, University of Cape
Town.

Notes
1. When discussing Connell (2007), Reed (2013) argues that the book’s strength is also its weak-
ness: it does not differentiate between a discussion of power and an epistemological
discussion.
2. For a debate on the geopolitics and production of knowledge in the sphere of the International
Sociology Association, see Sztompka (2011) and Burawoy (2011).
3. For an overview of the relationship between Bruno Latour’s formulations and those of post-
colonial theories, see the essay by Watson (2011).
4. As we will later see, the expression ‘Euro-America’ is adopted by authors associated with the
actor-network theory (Law, 2004), postcolonial theories (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011) and
feminist theory (Anzaldúa and Reuman, 2000). On the one hand, we can reject the term as too
broad (in the end, there is a plethora of different things within Euro-America), but at the same
time, the term seems opportune when used strategically to point out general features of the
predominant social sciences in the West/North.
5. Connell (2007) offers a critical analysis of the canonization of these authors in sociology.

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Rosa 15

6. Chakarbarty (2000) already proposed the option of provincializing knowledge produced in

Europe as a way of balancing these relationships.
7. This form of producing objects in the social sciences is, for example, the target of a critique by
Mohanty (1984) on Western feminisms that produced the idea of third world women as
victims.
8. These are also the subjects highlighted by Quijano (2000).
9. In an attempt to define the term ‘Global South’ in a similar debate, Connell and Dados (2012:
12) establish the following criteria:
The term Global South functions as more than a metaphor for underdevelopment. It refer-
ences an entire history of colonialism, neo-imperialism, and differential economic and social
change through which large inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to
resources are maintained.

10. In her already classic piece on the subaltern voices, Spivak (1988) highlights that this produc-
tion of ‘otherness’ is sometimes more important to the West than to the Others themselves.
11. It is important to clarify that the use of the term indigenization, as stressed by Go (2013), is
strategic and not essentialist (nativism and orientalism are not equivalent terms). Neither indi-
genous nor endogenous appear as a synonym of static purity, as a simplistic rejection of the
West or as an acritical adoption of everything non-Western in either of these authors.
12. For two critiques of Akiwowo’s proposal of ‘indigenous sociology’ to renovate sociology, see
Connell (2007) and Adesina (2002).
13. This is the same argument made by Connell (2007) and by Mignolo (2011) on the intrinsic
relationship between the emergence of modernity and colonial violence.
14. In this new meaning of sociology, we must avoid at all costs the model of exemplary narratives
(modernization, colonization, secularization, for example), as these narratives tend to treat
each and every unknown ‘entity’ based on its relationship to said narratives. In other words,
in these narratives the ‘entities’ of the research are used only to reinforce the metanarrative or
at best to adapt it.
15. Nunes (2009) suggests this connection specifically with notion of the ‘epistemologies of the
South’ from Santos and Meneses (2009).

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Author biography
Marcelo C. Rosa is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Brasilia
and a researcher in the CNPq/Brazil. He has done research on landless social movements in Brazil
and South Africa and is currently developing a project called ‘Non-exemplary sociology’
(www.naoexemplar.com) seeking to develop social theories and methodologies from the experi-
ences of Southern societies. He is also one of the founding editors of Agrarian South: Journal
of Political Economy.

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