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Research Journal of the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka- Rohana 12, 2020

society by the time the new sciences made ‘society’ an object of systematic study’
(Connell 2007: x). Unequal academic hierarchies and privilege are produced by such

a system.

According to Selvadurai et al, ‘social science discourse and knowledge in
developing societies appear to be dominated by Western knowledge of a particular

kind i.e., Anglo-Saxon tradition. Selvadurai et al investigate the general
development of social science discourses in the West and response from the

developing societies, particularly on the impasse in social science as it relates to

domination of Eurocentric knowledge and the marginalization of local knowledge’
(Selvadurai et al 2013).

Patel (2006) explains how sociology taught in the USA came to dominate the world

of sociological knowledge even though after the Second World War sociology was

institutionalised both in Europe and USA. According to her, ‘The study of
sociology came to be coterminous with the Parsonian school, which elaborated

generalized concepts, gave little respect for the study of social change and instead
emphasized integration and consensus’ (Patel 2006: 387). This new sociological

language was diffused to other parts of the world along with its perspectives,
theories, concepts, and methods. Some states gave priority to economics rather than

sociology. Patel argues that ‘the binaries put into practice during the colonial period

were refashioned in the context of tradition-modernity thesis’ (2006: 387).
Modernization theory created earlier binaries in new ways with a presumption that

there was a common path for all nations, peoples’ and areas. Thus, orientalist
binaries were reframed to ‘legitimize the colonial project of modernity that divided

the peoples of the world into two groups, the traditional and the modern’ (Patel
2006: 388). Sociologists tried to fit the data from the ex-colonies with such

perspectives without much reflection on their applicability.

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