Syed Hussein Alatas and decolonising social theory: From the lazy native to the captive mind

Abstract

This article reconstructs Syed Hussein Alatas’s critique of the “lazy native” myth and the concept of the captive mind as an integrated metatheoretical programme for building autonomous yet globally dialogical sociology from the Global South. Drawing on an interpretive review of Alatas’s primary texts and key secondary debates in decolonial and global sociology, the article brings Alatas into a historically sensitive comparative dialogue with Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Aníbal Quijano, and dependency/epistemic-justice traditions. The comparison is organised around two issues: (1) the disciplinary project (what it means to “decolonise” sociological theory rather than only critique colonial discourse) and (2) the strategy of epistemic emancipation (rupture/delinking, indigenous epistemologies, or selective critical assimilation). The synthesis shows that Alatas’s “pragmatic route” differs from postcolonial critique of representation (Said) and psycho-affective/revolutionary praxis (Fanon) by centring institutional pathways of sociological concept formation, curriculum, and research agendas. It also differs from modernity/coloniality approaches (Quijano/Mignolo) by criticising imperialism and academic dependency without equating modernity with coloniality or prescribing wholesale epistemic detachment. Alatas advances a selective, problem-oriented concept-work as a concrete route to cognitive justice and a genuinely global sociology. The article concludes with implications for curriculum reform, citation practices, and knowledge-production infrastructures in Global South contexts.