Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Bereich Historische Soziologie (Prof. Petzke)
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Bereich Historische Soziologie (Prof. Petzke)
Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Bereich Historische Soziologie (Prof. Petzke)
Projektleiter im Teilprojekt F07: Analogien zwischen Vergleichen als Mechanismen der „Entpartikularisierung“? Zur Konstruktion von Resonanzen zwischen kolonialen und metropolitanen Vergleichsformationen in nationalen „Gründungsdebatten“ im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871-1918).
Sprecher AB 1 (SoSe 24, WiSe 24-25)
Education
Dr. phil., Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 2020
Diploma Sociology, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, 2010
Academic Positions
October 2021 –
Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University
October 2014 – September 2021
Lecturer (Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben), Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University
February 2011 – March 2014
Stipendiary Doctoral Researcher, Research Training Group: "World Society,” Bielefeld University
Ralf Rapior is committed to decolonising sociology and promoting a decolonial public sociology. In his research project “The Imperialism of Cultural Comparison,” he examines the colonial origins and enduring coloniality of comparing cultures. He investigates how knowledge and power in world society have been intertwined through cultural comparison, in that cultural comparison has become one of the most important methods of ‘northern social science’, the results, narratives and theories of which also serve to legitimise the dominance of Western states and culture in world society (e.g. through the narrative of a linear human history that culminates in “Western modernity”). In a research project on the possibilities of anti-colonial thought, Ralf is, for example, reading Césaire, Fanon and Cabral as alternative classics of sociology to decolonise sociology’s curriculum and research practice and to develop a decolonial public sociology for the present. In his publications, he invites globalisation and world society researchers in the global North to engage with the imperial origins and coloniality of the modern world and their own discipline. In this regard, see Rapior (2020): Bringing the Empire (Back) In: Zur Überwindung des Eurozentrismus in der Weltgesellschaftsforschung [Overcoming Eurocentrism in World Society Studies], in: Bennani, Hannah, Martin Bühler, Sophia Cramer and Andrea Glauser (eds.). Global beobachten und vergleichen. Soziologische Analysen zur Weltgesellschaft, Frankfurt a.M.: Campus: 35-77, and Rapior (forthcoming 2025): Imperien: Zur Soziologie einer vergessenen Vergesellschaftungsform, Frankfurt a.M.: Campus