This pamphlet critically examines the existing theoretical framework within which the social sciences are conducted in various universities outside the Western world. Claude Alvares argues that not just the content but even the assumptions and methodologies guiding the production of knowledge in social science disciplines have been uncritically imported from the European academic tradition. This framework is almost wholly Eurocentric - a charge made not just against European social science studies within Europe and North America, but against practically every social science studies regime in the non-Western world. Nearly all social science work outside the West may be deemed to be little more than an extension of the 'white studies' regime.
This pamphlet attempts a critique of Eurocentrism, a critique of European social science and its universals and finally seeks to install a rival set of assumptions and methodologies to guide future academic activity in non-Western universities as well. It is a call for people to live their own history, rather than someone else's; it is a call to formerly subjugated people to draw upon their own intellectual and cultural resources, and so give real meaning to the struggles that were earlier fought for political emancipation.
