Sociologist

Michael Augustus Akagbor

I am a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Ghana. I am also a sociology tutor with the Department of Distance Education of the University of Ghana, where I support the teaching of the following undergraduate courses: Foundations of Social Thought and Perspectives in Social Theory. My research interests intersect human rights and democratization, gender and identity politics, religion and culture, security and surveillance and indigenizing African knowledge systems. My doctoral thesis was an excursus into religious and socio-cultural discourses on homosexuality and LGBT+ rights in Ghana. A Foucauldian at heart, I have applied the theory of governmentality to explore ‘majoritarian’ democracy and the conundrums of LGBT+ in Ghana. Currently, I am researching authoritarian surveillance assemblages and emerging authoritarianism in Ghana.
Doing global sociology for me means contesting indigenous knowledge within the academy’s established knowledge production structures. It is an opportunity to advance alternate knowledge systems that practicalizes theory in ways that reflect the realities of ‘others’ within the global system.