On Teaching Sociology ‘Decolonially’ in Singapore: Notes on Possibilities and Challenges

Abstract

This article explores the possibilities and challenges of teaching sociology ‘decolonially’ at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. Drawing on the classroom as a site of knowledge, it highlights how students’ diverse lived experiences and epistemic positionalities facilitate the deconstruction of foundational Eurocentric categories including race, religion and modernity. However, hierarchical learning models, competitive educational structures and reductive circulations of categories such as ‘Asian values’ pose significant barriers to decolonial pedagogy. NUS classrooms accordingly offer promising ground for pluriversal dialogue and critical engagement that nonetheless necessitates unlearning and undoing various complex and entwined constraints to foster liberatory alternatives otherwise.