ABSTRACT
The paper aims to reconstruct the history and international reception of the African debates on the “indigenous sociologies” lead by Akinsola Akiwowo in the International Sociological Association congresses and publications. The reconstitution of its reception in the debates framed under the association of theory and geopolitics demonstrate a polarization between: a) a critical appraisal of the limits of a supposed ideographic conceptual construction; b) a geopolitical defense of initiative since it was assembled outside de Euro-Americas. Both perspectives though tend to consider Akiwowo’s project as a failure for different reasons. The conclusion offers an alternative interpretation of the contribution based on the reading of the project as a theoretical-methodological expansion of the available ontological universe of the hegemonic sociological thought.
Keywords:
Social theory; Indigenous sociologies; Southern Theories, Sociologies of the South; African sociology; Yoruba