Introduction : Intellectual Decolonization: Contexts, Critiques and Alternatives

The papers of this special issue, “Intellectual Decolonization: Contexts, Critiques and Alternatives”, deal with the broad issue of intellectual decolonization or the decolonization of knowledge in the social sciences. Together, the six articles provide contextual, critical and alternative views of what intellectual decolonization means and entails. Indeed, intellectual decolonization, is a very broad orientation that encompasses, if not embraces, a great variety of theoretical approaches and schools of thought, which are by no means limited to post-colonial theory and decolonial thought. Furthermore, it can no longer be said that the primary theorists of the various approaches to intellectual decolonization are mainly affiliated with the social science centers of knowledge creation in North America and Western Europe.