at this mention of ‘civilizing process’, especially given the fact that Elias

I thought this part of the reading was interesting and I hadn't realized that Du Bois' theories had many similarities to Marx. Are there other theories that are similar to Du Bois' idea of looking at Marxism through a Southern standpoint?

I found this part of the reading because I have not learned or thought about the global impact of our country's enslavement and labor when relating to India and other countries in the East. Because of the cheap labor we produced the profits made when sold to England were always huge even when sold at a bargain. Then England could easily buy and manufacture the cotton if a large up-charge to other developing countries.

However, as per the ethos of this chapter, Du Bois thought both with and against Marx, in a way that therefore expanded the scope of Marxist theory through a Southern standpoint. In particular, Du Bois reconfigured Marxist theory to account for the wider presence of coloniality, paying specific attention to the relations between different national iterations of capitalism across the world.”

By the way, my reading #12 reflection is actually on this part of the book because I forgot what pages we were reading and that one is better.

Anyway! I feel similarly about Marx as W.E.B. Du Bois, in that there are parts of him I appreciate and parts I don't. Except Du Bois had specific things he agreed and disagreed with, whereas I mostly disagree with name but I do love his name. I think the idea Meghji explores of exploring theories of eurocentric origin through a "Southern standpoint." Of course, it is more important that the theories we hold to the highest importance come from sociologists of all backgrounds. That being said, I think with the theories that are so ingrained in academic society there is no hope to remove them, creating a different narrative around that idea is essential to its development.

In this quote Meghji is pointing out the similarities between Dubois and Marx and how their theories were covering the same topics, the exploitation of people. It is the dominant culture that is fueling the racial exploitation and discrimination of people, just like the classism presented in Marx's theories. Often times race and being, as Marx put it, the "worker" class are intertwined, as institutions make it so. It is an intentionally making people of races different from their own the "worker" class of society.

This is so finance bro. I think that once you make it far enough in the finance field to not have to worry about money, you forget that others actually have problems and you lose sense of the real world for your own gain. idk though im just a little socialist :/

Mehgji argues that traditional Marxism only includes the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He provides an alternative definition of Marxism and introduces white people as intermediaries. He proves that no systems operate the same in all societies. Reducing Marxism to a power struggle between teh working class and their employers oversimplifies the issue. White people use this mainstream Marxism to shield people from the root cuases of inequalities and to wield power. This from of Marxism continues to be propagated today, especially in the media. For example, in Washington, politicians continually complain about working condition and wages. They provide their own policy prescriptions while refusing to recognize decades of systemic racism.

Dubois emphasizes the intersectionality that has been omitted from Marx’s theory in that one cannot separate economics from race and establishes further complexity within the system, ranging not just from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat but incorporating the various castes that exist within the intersection of race and economics. Furthermore, the application of intersectionality into our society today has been a concept that has been at the forefront of my mind recently. Specifically, in American society we have been conditioned to view injustice extremely one-dimensionally, perceiving it through the standardized image of the suppressed and neglecting the extensive layers of overlap each form of oppression contains. In fact, I see the perpetuation of this narrative as a tactic by those at the top of the social ladder to establish a lens of “us vs. them” that distracts from the overall damage being done to society by the oppressor and promotes quarrels between social groups that allow bigotry to reign supreme. One of the most prevalent ways this is shown is through the college admissions process where white supremacists have pinned black people and Asian people against each other, cultivating disputes that ultimately bring down all people of color, like the overturning of Affirmative action yet the continuation of the legacy program. Thus, perpetuating white supremacy and advantaging white people over people of color further in American society. Sadly, this is just yet another example of how the narratives in our society are being subtly manipulated to perpetuate systemic oppression and uphold the status quo. 

Reading this reminded me a lot of what people like Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr., and Maya Angelou believed. That until we are all free, no one can truly be free. Both DuBois and these activists write about how when even a single group or person is oppressed, it affects the whole world's freedom. That no one can exist in our societies without recognizing that we are living in a world where oppression exists, where colonization and discrimination are some of the largest factors in our country's beginnings. And because we are living in that world, individual equality is unachievable. There are always people who are being oppressed, and until everybody is free, in mind and body, the rest of the world will continue to be affected, and never truly be free.

I feel like as an isolated little American boy, I lack the cultural perspective to understand fully what Meghji was talking about here. We think of racism as an American issue. Slavery, the KKK, the American civil rights movement, etc. however in recent years I’ve gained a sort of understanding about how racism functions overseas. In Great Britain for example, there’s a sort of ethnocentric racism (it’s like, disdainful almost?) that puts English natives at the top of a list, followed by Albanians, west Asians, then middle easterners and North Africans, then Somalians, then south/west Africans. The gradient there really follows skin color. Like I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a Brit and an Albanian by looking at them. It’s a foreign concept to me because America sees basically three races, maybe 4 if you count indigenous peoples who most people just think of as being “brown”.

I feel like this also begs the question of whether racism in countries beyond Western Europe was propagated by the behavior of colonists. East asian cultures now value pale skin, hair beauty standards all over west Africa call for straight hair, etc. I’m sure there’s a real answer to that and I’m sure it’s not pleasant.

This quote is interesting because it shows how interconnected the different theories, are and even if your view is different from another, they still build off of each other to show context and provoke thought. More often than direct contrast though is overlap that shows the shifts in perception that can lead to very different opinions, despite being somewhat similar at their core.

While Meghji spends a lot of time showing the supposed connection between Bourdieu's seminal ideas of "habitus" and "field" and his work in the French colonies, we can't actually judge whether we agree with his assertion or not because he never provides a comprehensible definition of the two. He kind of skirts around it for "field" and quotes some of Bourdieu's own indecipherable jargon to "explain" "habitus."

Conclusion: I'm very confused.

huh.

- back to its foundation in the empirical realities of colonialism."

Had a stroke reading this one.

This quote is especially confusing because it looks like it should make sense and yet it doesnt. I don’t think that the word ‘therefore’ has any place in this sentence. Why is it trying so hard to be fancy. This made me upset.

My tired mind can't process this one rn

1) Write 3 things that you have learned from this lesson or from this text(s).

2) Write 2 questions you still have.

3) Write 1 thing you still want to learn more about.

• He was a political prisoner

• He was a neo-Marxist!

• The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare

2 questions I have:

• what the absolute h-e-double hockey sticks is methodological criterion?

• Why does Gramsci use so many big words and sentences that make no sense?

  
  

1 Thing I still want to learn:

• I need someone to paraphrase this entire text so that I actually understand it.

Graham was neo-Marxist (this is cool because Marx)

Lol he died of a cerebral hemorrhage rip

When subaltern groups rise up and rebel, they are still controlled by the ideologies of the former ruling groups through their fear of being ruled again (think Israel bombing the hell out of Gaza and then claiming victimhood)

Here's 2 questions I have:

DAWG WTF IS HEGEMONY. EVERY TIME I THINK I UNDERSTAND IT SOMEBODY USES IT IN A CONTEXT I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Is it possible to disrupt the tragic cycle of subalterns are ruling classes rising and falling through bloodshed and oppression, or is societal dominance just a part of human nature?

Here's something I wanna learn more about:

Who are the subalterns of modern day society and how do they compare globally, as well as how do they compare to the past?

• Children's psychology is active and creative, and their ability to learn aligns with this.

• "The discovery that the relations between the social and natural orders are mediated by work, by man's theoretical and practical activity, creates the first elements of an intuition of the world free from all magic and superstition." I think this is a very interesting idea!

• Gramsci believes that perchance "the superstructures of civil society are like the trench-systems of modern warfare." I think the juxtaposition of civility and war, and how those two concepts coalesce is a thoughtful perspective.

2 questions I have-

• What does vocational mean in this context?

• "The little old woman who has inherited the lore of the witches" Was Gramsci talking about me?

1 thing I want to learn more about-

• What led Gramsci to conceive the concept of cultural hegemony? How did he develop this idea?

1. The social character and how each class has its own school of thought

2. Democracy and how the state governs the people

3. Hegemony and how its regime is a combination of force and consent

2 questions I have:

1. What is the subaltern?

2. What is Gramsci's ideal society?

   1 thing I want to learn

   1. I want to learn about what is the subaltern

1. How did being in prison affect his views on society?

2. "Knowing thy self" How well does he know himself?

   1. More about his positionality and how it effected his writings

1. Antonio Gramsci was an activist before and during Mussolini's fascist government which is what got him arrested

2. I don't know if this counts, but the phrase "ruling or controlling those who rule" as a purpose of school is super interesting

3. Ways in which societal consent is manufactured by faking public opinion by using newspapers, associations, etc, that are meant to express public opinion.

2 questions I have:

1. How did Gramsci get the notebooks? Did he still have communist friends on the outside?

2. What's superstructure?

1 thing I want to learn more about

1. Gramsci's ideas on school and/or government

1. Did he consider himself a sociologist?

2. Hegemony?

1. I want to learn about his trial

• A calibre is likewise a complex of abstractions, but without calibration it is not possible to produce real objects-real objects which are social relations, and which implicitly embody ideas

• Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel and rise up: only "permanent" victory breaks their subordination, and that not immediately.

• The 'normal' exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent.

2 questions I have:

• Is it better to "think", without having a critical awareness, in a disjointed and episodic way?

• is it better to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external environment, i.e. by one of the many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the moment of his entry into the conscious world (and this can be one's village or province; it can have its origins in the parish and the "intellectual activity" of the local priest or aging patriarch whose wisdom is law, or in the little old woman who has inherited the lore of the witches or the minor intellectual soured by his own stupidity and inability to act)?

1 thing I want to learn more about:

• The lower classes, historically on the defensive, can only achieve self-awareness via a series of negations, via their consciousness of the identity and class limits of their enemy; but it is precisely this process which has not yet come to the surface, at least not nationally.

• In his trial, the head prosecutor said that "We must prevent [Gramsci's] brain from functioning for twenty years"

• He was a neo-Marxist

• In 1924 he became a parliamentary member, representing the PCI.

  
  

2 questions I have:

• "The multiplication of types of vocational school thus tends to perpetuate traditional social differences; but since, within these differences, it tends to encourage internal diversification" What does this mean?

• " In other words, is it better to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by the external environment [...] Or, on the other hand, is it better to work out consciously and critically one's own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labors of one's own brain" Which does he believe is the correct way?

1 thing I want to learn more about:

• I found the part where he talked about the best way to perceive/think about things particularly interesting and I would be interested in studying that further.

1. that Gramsci is very much in favor of education as the ultimate tool of social elevation.

2. that Gramsci saw the restructuring of society as an active endeavor akin to warfare, and that the battle was actively being fought.

3. that Gramsci was a far more significant political influence than I had thought in order to pose a significant threat to Mussolini.

I wonder...

1. what innovations Gramsci made in the use of the term "hegemony."

2. what Gramsci would think of how his works have been used since his death. He seemed to be of the opinion that the bulk of the sociological canon only feeds the status quo, and so I wonder what he would think of his own addition to it.

I would like to learn more about...

1. how Gramsci would define himself. I doubt that he would call himself a "neo-Marxist philosopher and activist," but I wonder if he would have even opted to put himself in a category.

Sorry to focus so heavily on the opening to this section of the reading, but the next paragraph shows how sociological standpoints outside of the dominant Eurocentric one have the feature of also looking inwardly at sociology and criticizing it through the same methods sociology criticizes others, which I think necessarily leads to the field being more critical and is a really neat way of looking at different forms of sociology.

The climate change portion of this reading provides a really good argument for why localizing sociology would help not only the field, but the world. This is because a sociology dominated by one perspective, socially and geographically, can ignore and does ignore problems, even problems that are global, if they don't apparently effect them or are not convenient to dignify.

I also learned about the social context at the time of Gramsci’s arrest. Mussolini began expanding the Italian military and centralizing power. Gramsci posed a considerable threat to his regimen. It reminded me about the steps other dictators take to establish power. For example, Hitler and Stalin began by eliminating intellectuals, opposing political parties, and civil rights. 

People understand the world by making generalizations about the world around them to avoid being overwhelmed. People use heuristics to be efficient in processing stimuli, but by doing so, they make assumptions that contribute to hegemony. 

Is there a way to prevent the cycle of hegemony? 

How did Mussolini use hegemony to establish his empire? 

I want to learn more about the sociological causes of the first World War, if there are any. 

wrote about how the logic of colonialism (i.e. the field of colonialism)

produced new forms of sociability, thus creating a group of people whose

culture is not fully indigenous or assimilated into the French ideal, but exists

as a hybrid mixture of the two. Bourdieu (1961 [1958]: 144) argues that this

causes ‘a sort of double inner life’ which ‘is a prey to frustration and inner

conflict’.

Ali Meghji alludes to the idea of double consciousness, a term coined by Dubois to describe the experiences of people of color in America. Mehgji points out that many colonized people are not fully integrated into the dominant culture and retain their culture. However, the colonists had a stranglehold on the colonized, making it impossible for the colonized to be free. People must therefore adopt a viewpoint that values the colonial narrative over their well-being. Double consciousness has several similar ideas to Mehgji’’s point. As Dubois explained in his work, people living under a colonial power face the constant fear of stepping outside the colonial norm. They must put on a theatrical charade to appease their oppressors. This frame of mind has severe psychological consequences for the person being oppressed: the constant shifting between two identities causes a person to be ashamed of their identity and heritage. These people find themselves trapped between seeing the world through their lens and the oppressor’s.

• Gramsci argues that those at the bottom of the social hierarchy will always be subject to the hegemony of those at the top of the social hierarchy. He says that said marginalized individuals will never be free unless they rebel in a way that gives them permanent liberation from the oppressor. 

• Says that the Supremacy of the social group arises from “domination” and “intellectual and moral leadership.” He says that social groups can become dominant over other groups by the use of military force, this allows them to become leaders without assuming the role of government or a representative. 

• Gramsci says the lower class can only truly understand their own identity and those at the top of the social hierarchy. 

2 Questions

• How did Gramsci view Karl Marx, he agreed with his idea of civil rights only being attainable through economic equity, how does he feel about his other theories? 

• What is Gramsci’s proposed solution to the exploitation of workers in capitalism? 

The thing I want to learn more about

• I want to learn more about how Gramsci how Gramsci views capitalism and the solutions he proposes. 

I've had this thought for a while now that ties into what Meghji is getting at here. Thinking back a little bit, the book touched on the idea of over and underdeveloped worlds (as opposed to the classic developed and underdeveloped worlds). The basic idea was that if a theoretical civilization grew in isolation it would always be "developed," but because the various civilizations of the world did not grow up in isolation (i.e. the various European empires focused on developing warfare tactics and technologies overall else and then leeched away the more practical discoveries and resources of pretty much everyone else), a dynamic has manifested itself wherein certain regions tend to be far above our theoretical "developed" benchmark, while others struggle to catch up. So, to summarize, the overdeveloped countries have "borrowed" (I know the language is problematic but hear me out) from the now underdeveloped countries in order to build up a production base and get ahead. Now the overdeveloped world has lost track of the whole affair and is unwilling to pay back the debts they've accrued. Well, in a way, the same thing has happened with the planet. If humanity had progressed by only taking what resources they could without substantially harming the planet (if knowledge of such practices had been widespread before the Industrial Revolution), then all of humanity would have progressed at a certain benchmark rate. Instead, we have "borrowed" from the planet in order to build our production base and are now far ahead of where we might have been. This would be fine if only we'd now start using the "dividends" our "investment" (in case you haven't already noticed this whole metaphor is based around the idea of growing a business) have now paid to "repay the debts" (i.e. adopt more climate-friendly policies and technologies), except that the time scale has been so large that we've now lost perspective of what life could have been like without the extra help we've gotten and are effectively hooked on our creature comforts.

In this quote Ali Meghji is trying to explain that decolonizing sociology is not only to make the colonizers feel guilty about what they have done but more as an active tool in making sociology and society more just and inclusive.

I found this part of the reading to be making a really good point. People who are being affected by the climate crisis are 1. not the main cause of it, 2. the ones most who are affected, and 3. therefore the best ones to write about it. The Global North is ignoring the problems they are causing and silencing the voices of those being affected by these disasters. The Global South is the one facing these issues to the largest degree and therefore has the most and most accurate thoughts and solutions.

I dont know what "this" is but it sounds cool because we are deoolonizing sociolofyg. YAY. It is important that we remember to always move forwadrf when thinking about deolonization bc some poeple cough cough thikn we should move backward. I dotn know why people are racist lowjey like get a life.

Sorry long quote guys!! Wow, usually I can't understand a word this man says, but this was actually a super interesting observation. I think, in America at least, there is absolutely a common thread of capitalism in nearly everything we encounter in our day-to-day lives. Movements especially, like the climate crisis Meghji focuses on, are twisted by our capitalist society into something that constantly requires spending. There are so many ways to be environmentally friendly, yet what's "trending" or cool essentially is what most people are drawn to in their personal activism. Unfortunately, corporations have taken it upon themselves capitalize on this activism, whether it is performative or not. Specifically when I read this I thought about Hailey Bieber's (the supermodel) smoothie collaboration with well-known clean food company Erewhon. Erewhon, and this smoothie specifically, has been glamorized into this eco-conscious, Los Angeles girl experience, something people post online to look cute and self-aware For context, the smoothie costs 22 dollars.

Good gravy I had to go with this immidiately. It’s so stupid that poor meghji even had to clarify this. Even the concept of a “sociological guilt trip” surpasses stupidity, I think it does nothing more than tell you exactly how fragile the one who’s experiencing the guilt is. Assuming one’s own guilt implies that they have done something wrong. It should be easy to have discussions about the missteps of the past and how they could be adjusted without touching any nerves. Folks that are set off so quickly by even the idea that they or their history might be part of the problem are usually a problem themselves.

Meghji alludes to the Anthropocene when human activity caused immense environmental damage. The use of fossil fuels and making toher specis go extinct are two examples of the Antrhopocene. Meghji points out that these habits priamrily developed in teh West. Aftter the Enlgightenment, the West's fixation on indsutrialization required a labor force. Colonists turned to the original residents of their conquered lands- idigenous people and Africans. The colonists took advantage of the vulnerable people and exploited them fro profit. Through cultural hegemony, the colonial bourgeoisie maintained a chokehold on the working class. This power, combined with the success of industrialization, made employes dependent on chemicals like fossil fuels. Fossil fuels become ubiquitous in Western economies, and western hegemony spread these dangerous practice to the rest of the world.

I think that this point is interesting because up until this point the main points agains modernity and coloniality are how destructive they are to cultures. We already know that they tear apart and erase/destroy large pieces of history in a bid for progress, and it is interesting to acknowledge the other affects.

This quote asserts to me the irony of capitalism in the context of the climate crisis in that the West has become so power-hungry and established so much hegemony over the world that their capitalist ideologies are leading to their eventual end when they have continuously exploited and destroyed other nations through capitalistic practices. This irony is furthered when Medji suggests that Europeans must depend on indigenous ideologies to combat the climate crisis when they have consistently belittled them completely mutilated their people and destroyed their societies and cultures. This concept reminds me of Dubois’ idea of double consciousness, that the oppressed see themselves through the lens of both others and themselves and thus can understand society better. In this context, Indigenous societies have developed a unique environmental consciousness of seeing the climate crisis through how it affects them but also how capitalism and greed have aggravated the situation. Therefore,  they have achieved a level of understanding that those who perpetuate capitalism will never comprehend and thus Western societies should mimic their practices.

I think this quote shows how different issues affect people depending on their situations. When people in power are doing what they see as best to help a worldwide problem, there are a lot of cases where it ends up negatively affecting others or not truly solving the issue at all. Using Ali Meghji's example, when someone buys an electric car to try to help the climate crisis, are they considering that in the process of making that car, carbon emissions are most likely released from the factories? Or how the environment could be harmed in the process? Although these are issues that affect everyone, some people are hit harder than others, which as Meghji talks about, "is why thinkers such as Wynter (2003) see the climate crisis as a key example of the dominance of 'man' (defined as supra-humans - those seen to belong in the white, Western world)".

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to showcase individualism. Considering that those form the West have had their thoughts and feelings showcased, why not give credit where credit is deserved for those from the East?

I know Meghji was proposing it as a practice that should be adopted in the future, but it feels a little odd to read pages and pages about how there needs to be a transition away from tying sociologists themselves to their theories, just to have every successive example be a laundry list of sociological name-drops. This is one of a few times when it feels like Meghji is falling victim to the very pitfalls he decries.

Meghji makes an excellent point here; after so much time has been spent trying to get rid of the sociological canons that affect our view of the world, adding a 'decolonial canon' isn't going to change the situation at all. From what I have gathered from this book, Ali Meghji's idea of a decolonized sociology involves every view and opinion being valued, and no one place being seen as superior. But if instead of trying to make things more equal, you create another canon, that then is just replicating what already exists and what is causing so many problems in sociology today, instead of creating something new.

There are many arguments stating why the canons created in decolonial sociology are bad and create similar problems as before. However, I think that this is an excellent point about how canons can be useful and are used in many academic fields. Thinking back to what was brought up before in this book I think an idea would be separate canons for different places because as stated before it should not remain with the global north being centered for both the global south and north.

I thought it was interesting how Meghji didn't want to erase the current sociological cannon but instead broaden and redefine the cannon by creating groups of thinkers with similar ideas.

The ideas Meghji explores in this quote feel very relevant in today's society in that there is a sort of blame and/or responsibility we attempt to place on an individual person, when really it is the product of many. I think society as a whole recognizing its flaws and normativities is essential to decolonization, as much as it is eliminating people who are primary sources of the issue from the limelight.

Even within decolonized sociology, Eurocentrism persists. Mehgji argues that current forms of sociology fail to center indigenous perspectives and other marginalized groups. Indigenous groups remain outside of the canon, and the focus remains on European sociologists. Even "progressive forms of sociology contain Eurocentric ideas that further marginalize certain groups. Decolonizing sociology ensures that Indigenous people get the attention they deserve. The obvious solution seems to be designing a new field of sociology. However, many of the people who create more "progressive" sociologies continue pushing Eurocentric narratives. Therefore, indigenous people must have complete authority in making decolonized sociology. That is the only way to eliminate Eurocentric ideas from sociology and give marginalized people a platform to teach their histories.

This is interesting to me because it incorporates ideas that we have been talking about in class on what we are centering when we talk about sociology. I think that it is interesting to put this at the end of the book rather than the beginning, because this almost reads as a disclaimer for what the main content is about. 

I like this quote because it highlights the issue of what happens next. Meghji is wondering if we fully decolonize sociology will we see the change that we want. As we move towards a more decolonial society and sociology what issues will still be recurring? Are the problems imposed by our Eurocentric society solved by a more decolonial view of the world or are they already baked into society?

Here Collins raises the point that diversity doesn’t equate to a decolonized form of sociology and says that in order to decolonize we must incorporate not just those who “coined” or “colonized” a topic but also the other individuals who contributed to the concept that are less known. Collins’ point was extremely interesting to me as I usually perceive the word colonize as relating to white people’s colonization of sociology but she suggests that colonization is an exclusionary practice that anyone one can partake in. This idea is so prevalent in our society today as individuals are constantly having their work discredited by famous individuals who popularized it. For instance, many of the dances that have gone viral on social media and have been created by black people or many of the colloquialism we attribute to certain starts in the media are just stolen from black communities. This shows the cultural colonization of our society as the general population sits complacent as those at the top of the social hierarchy consistently exploit the oppressed to obtain higher social status. Thus, Collin’s point is very relevant not only in the decolonization of sociology but also in American Society as a whole.