Social Thought from the Global South: A Comparative-Historical View from Xi’s China and Modi’s India

It has been argued that social thought is Western-centric or Euro-centric. This essay argues that there are alternatives that have been put forward from the Global South, though they have been overlooked. Examples can be found in the different schools of thought about development that have emerged in India and China. Non-Western social thought in these two countries borrows from – but also departs from – that in the West, and includes versions of socialism, liberalism, and conservatism. These schools of thought also blur, as do Western ones, academic theories, political ideologies, and models of societal development. This essay will briefly present these schools, but the aim is not to detail them but rather to spell out their implications. These implications include that they do not map easily onto the Western left-right divide. Further, these schools illuminate how forms of inclusion and exclusion have been shaped by the state’s responses to distinctive pressures “from below.” In the conclusion, the essay discusses how these schools offer models for other parts of the Global South and hold a mirror up to the West.