’Pagsasariling atin’: the project of an autonomous social science tradition (ASST) and the challenge of scientometrics

Abstract

The call of the Malaysian sociologist, Syed Hussein Alatas (1928–2007), for the development of ‘Autonomous Social Science Tradition(s)’ (ASST) in developing societies is a major contribution towards ‘intellectual decolonisation’. The idea has, in the meantime, received further elaboration and even richer articulations by Syed Farid Alatas. It showed much promise as a way out of intellectual dependency. However, the implementation in the past decades and on a global scale of neoliberal policies in universities has led to the widespread imposition of a ‘scientometric regime’ which privileges publication in ‘prestigious’ and ‘high-ranking’ peer-reviewed journals which are overwhelmingly published in English in the Euro-American academic sphere. Needless to say, the ASST project has faced setbacks and grave challenges because of these developments which amount to a massive reassertion of the academic hegemony of the Global North. Far from rejecting scientometry as a whole, this paper will try to absorb, redirect and retool insights taken from it towards the construction of a new type of ASST which can be provisionally called an ‘Autonomous Academic Communication Community’ (AACC).