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Resumo

This article reflects on the significance and relevance of continuing discussions and debates on the 'opening up' of the social sciences. It argues that a balanced and comprehensive restructuring of the social sciences today entails a simultaneous attention to the philosophical, intellectual apparatus as well as the administrative and organizational frameworks of social science domains. The actual mechanisms and practices for reform can only be identified through attention to the structures of knowledge production in the non-West. The article connects contemporary calls for 'opening up' with earlier calls to decolonize and decentre the social sciences, by focusing on the theme of critique and its role in the restructuring exercise. The article also itemizes a variety of everyday strategies and procedures through which social scientists can begin to affect the practice of the social sciences. Thus the article stresses that, apart from the conceptual and political critique of the social sciences, absolutely crucial to the 'opening up' project are the everyday, ordinary, mundane acts that practitioners of this field can engage in in their day-to-day task of being a sociologist or anthropologist.

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