The article departs from the problem of academic dependency and how does it affect social sciences globally. Farid Alatas suggests that scholars cannot do much at the structural or material level of academic dependency as they are neither in charge of institutions nor the state. However, there is more that can be done at the intellectual or theoretical level. The article presents the concept of alternative discourses as source for a creative and autonomous social science. These are discourses that present themselves as alternatives to what they regard as the Orientalist or Eurocentric social sciences of the North on which the Southern social sciences are dependent. Examples of what may be considered as alternative discourses are provided, taking into account other types of narrative and imagination of social life.
alternative discourses; social theory; Eurocentrism