Decolonization as World Counterculture captures the underlying conditions of the rise of post- and decolonial theories by asking how we arrived at this moment when decolonial arguments seem to be everywhere and yet not enough. While efforts to decolonize knowledge and disciplines continue to expand, this book takes a different approach of reflection. It examines instead how decolonization itself has become a global although unequally addressed phenomenon. Bringing together world culture research with postcolonial studies in the field of social work, the book analyzes social work curricula from Germany, Mexico, and Ecuador to explore how (de)coloniality is embedded in diverging horizons of meanings but shaped by strikingly similar institutions in the educational setting. To this end, book offers a knowledge sociological view on how decolonization itself is globalized. It considers the implications – promises and limitations – of taking seriously the theoretical premises of decolonization by mobilizing the neo-institutional approach of world culture and describing the decolonial imperative as “world counterculture,” an integrative frame of various social justice agendas. Assembling these distinct pieces of a puzzle spanning different fields, this book is a testimony to the most successful and thriving theoretical views of the last decades in the human and social sciences. It is sure to challenge, fascinate, and inspire readers across the specialist fields of postcolonial studies, sociology of knowledge, global social theory, and international social work.
