Towards a Theory of Peripheral Effects: History of Sociology and Collective Subjectivities

Abstract

How does one explain the processes of intellectual creativity in peripheral contexts? This paper outlines an answer to this question by exploring the concept of “peripheral effects”, which describes the different dimensions that intellectual creativity may assume in scenarios shaped by strong structural asymmetries in the production of scientific knowledge. It follows three theoretical steps to achieve this goal: a) a discussion of the concept of “periphery” according to recent debates in the field of the geopolitics of knowledge; b) an empirical illustration of three different dimensions of peripheral effects, drawing on the subfield of the history of sociology; and c) a demonstration of how creative practices can become routinized by employing the concept of collective subjectivities.

Keywords
social theory; social thought; history of sociology; geopolitics of knowledge production; periphery