Sociologist, ethnographer

Daniel Bultmann

As a sociologist, currently based at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, I have been working on theories of inequality and violence, on a postcolonial critique in peace and conflict studies, on a political sociology of power elites, on digital ethnographies, and on ontologies of the body in torture practices. I believe that a globalizing sociology questions Eurocentric sociological theory both through epistemologies and ontologies from the global South. This allows knowledge and ontological visions of a postcolonial order to become spatially, temporally, and collectively situated. It also lets a better understanding of society emerge thanks to the constant negotiation of theoretical models, empirical truths, and methodological tools. Globalizing social ontologies interrogates our understanding of what society is, how it functions, what is part of it, and what (or who) is not.
The network on globalizing sociology provides a platform to advance this interrogation of the tradition I was raised in and to develop a post/decolonial approach that I can incorporate into my research on social fields and conflicts in the South.