Centralizing the South in the Global Context: 

Troubling What’s Known & Re-imagining What’s Unknown

The Global South, for sociologists like Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and Lester Frank Ward, is a social, cultural, and political concept that denotes a global divide drawing broad distinctions between advanced and primitive institutions and societies (Dados & Connell, 2012). The phrase Global South refers to the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. As a re-colonial discourse in social and sociological theory that defines geopolitical power relations, Global South is one of a family of terms, including “Periphery”, which implies regions outside Europe and North America, mostly (though not all) low-income and often politically or culturally marginalized.

This symposium theme asks the Global South Studies community to transcend normalized Eurocentric knowledge framed by Global North philosophies, theories, and praxes to discover unfamiliar perspectives and knowledges. We invite scholars and students, particularly those from the Global South, to submit research using interdisciplinary lenses and approaches in the arts, humanities, and social sciences to challenge Western-centric knowledge and knowledge systems to imagine boldly, creatively, and critically new ways of knowing and being. We encourage researchers to engage in global interdisciplinary dialogues and push traditional modes of inquiry and knowledge mobilization to advance research and serve the public good.

The international symposium will be co-organized by Thai Binh Duong University (TBD) and the Vietnamese Humanities & Social Sciences Association (VHSSA) in Nha Trang, with an online participation option.