Social Theory, Extroversion and Autonomy: Dilemmas of Contemporary (Semi) Peripheral Sociology

This article analyses the production of peripheral social theory in different geopolitical eras and stages of modernity, with a special focus on contemporary (semi)peripheral sociology. It is argued that a step forward must be taken beyond destituting thought, as a reference to those intellectual strands which focus on the critique of Eurocentrism and the destitution of its epistemological foundations. Therefore, we seek to analyse some of the main dilemmas of (semi)peripheral sociology in order to advance in the construction of an instituting intellectual movement. Two possible directions are proposed: on the one hand, to recover the centrality of autonomous fields and aggregator circuits that may overcome intellectual extroversion; on the other hand, to advance the possibilities concerning the construction of theory in the periphery as one of the keys to more permanently dislodge the hegemony of theories from central countries and their rote use outside the soil where they originated.