Ramón Grosfoguel
Ramón Grosfoguel (born 1956, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican sociologist who belongs to the Modernity / Coloniality Group (Grupo M/C) who is a full Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Berkeley. Biography. Education. Ramon Grosfoguel was born in 1956 in Puerto Rico. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Sociology at the University of Puerto Rico in 1979. He then received his master's degree in Urban Studies at Temple University in 1986, his M.A. paper being on Puerto Rico's urbanization process from 1898-1980. He also  obtained a doctorate in Sociology at Temple University in 1992. The title of his doctoral dissertation was "Puerto Rico's Exceptionalism: Industrialization, Migration and Housing Development (1950 - 1970)." After receiving his doctorate, he attained two post-doctoral degrees, one of which was from the Fernand Braudel Center/Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, France (1993–94). Career. His teaching career began in fall 1990 at Temple University as an instructor. He began teaching courses such as Race/Ethnic Relations in America, Urban Sociology, and Introduction to Sociology. Later (1992-1993), he began teaching at Johns Hopkins University as a visiting professor  and was awarded the Oraculum Award for Excellence in teaching. He also taught at State University of New York Binghamton (1995 - 1998), Boston College (1998 - 2000), and the University of California Berkeley from 2001 to present. Thought. Ramon Grosfoguel defines his thought as belonging to the decolonial current, surpassing the postcolonial current with which it is considered related. He argues that there is a structural link between modernity and colonialism. He also argues that the effects of European colonialism did not cease with the processes of decolonization and national independence of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, persisting in culture and  ways of thinking (epistemology). It proposes a "decolonial turn" to carry out epistemological decolonization that corrects the universalist and ahistorical deformations of Eurocentrism and modernity, which it considers in a situation of "terminal crisis". It puts the accent on the critique of racism and the dividing line that colonial thought makes between the human and the non-human. It defends the idea of intersectionality of categories such as class and gender, starting from the line of distinction between the human and the non-human that colonial epistemology does.