The sociology of gender in Southern perspective

In its founding generations, sociology was greatly concerned with gender, as part of its theorizing of the world of colonialism and empire. Sociology then focused on the global metropole, so its analysis of gender in the decades since the Women’s Liberation movement has been developed in a Northern container. This can now change, if the extraversion of sociology around the global South can be overcome. The thematics of gender analyses in the periphery highlight historical processes of the formation and disruption of gender orders, dealing with issues of violence and land. The work of a number of gender theorists and researchers from the South is discussed. The material conditions of knowledge formation in developing countries have to be recognized, as well as the differing ways intellectuals in the South handle influences from the metropole. New issues have emerged in the sociology of gender as a neoliberal world order has taken shape, producing new patterns of masculinized power as well as pathways of change for women.