Muslim-Mancunian Women: Racial-Colonial Literacy, Counter-Knowledge and Epistemological Justice

Epistemological justice, which exposes the role of colonialism in conceptualising contemporary society, particularly racial inequalities, has gained prominence within sociology. Yet, sociologists often ignore that the material conditions of professional sociology inhibit racial justice-oriented knowledge making. This article argues, to realise epistemological justice, sociology must travel to the margins, wherein certain sociological publics offer opportunities for reverse tutelage that can redirect the discipline towards racial-colonial literacy. This participatory qualitative study spotlights Muslim women as one such public whose lives and imagined future emancipation depend on critiquing intolerable social conditions and conceptualising alternatives. Through their enhanced racial-colonial literacy, they generate historically and geopolitically aware theories on intersectionality, dialectic self-identities and refusal as joy. We pinpoint reverse tutelage opportunities from their theorising that can re-orient professional sociology towards meaningful epistemological justice that can serve scholars and communities of resistance, anti-colonialism and anti-racism everywhere.