This dissertation comprises three chapters that foreground, reconceptualize, and empirically examine the uneven global landscape of social science. Chapter 1 begins with a cross-disciplinary literature review and proposes a sociology of global academic inequalities as a research program. I characterize current scholarship as a “fruitful chaos”—rich in insights into multifaceted global knowledge production disparities but fragmented and marginal within mainstream academic discourses. I argue for sociology as an ideal disciplinary anchor for this research topic, given other disciplines’ reliance on sociological literatures, this research area’s connection to core sociological concerns, its potential to illuminate disciplinary differences, and the importance of reflexive sociology for credible knowledge making. Building on and expanding Chapter 1, Chapter 2 aims at a theoretical overhaul regarding global academic hierarchies. Distinct from the traditional focus on top-down exclusions from Anglo-American countries and static Global North-South disparities, I advance a relational and dynamic approach. This perspective underscores the agential roles of all countries—particularly peripheral ones—in shaping these hierarchies and the evolving status of a country’s rank as it fulfills conditions for intellectual ascendancy. Historical accounts of American sociology from 1860 to 1950 show its initial stagnation, post-1910s indigenous growth and eventual post-WWII global preeminence. Statistical analyses of texts published in flagship Chinese-medium sociology journals between 1980 and 2021 reveal higher valuations of Anglo-American versus local scholarship, well as a flattening of English-language advantages overtime. Chapter 3 uses mixed methods and Chinese-English bilingual sources to scrutinize two parallel strands pertaining to non-Western sociology: postcolonial sociology led by First World-based Anglophone scholars and national sociological development primarily authored by Global South-based sociologists. The analyses uncover an “exclusion paradox”: postcolonial sociology not only overshadows local traditions in mainstream visibility; it also contrasts with the latter regarding moral and epistemic standpoints. While postcolonialism centers on anti-Eurocentrism critiques and grievance, local scholars often acknowledge their “backward” status and emphasize “self-improvement” through Western learning, precisely shaped by their past encounters with Western imperialism and colonialism. This chapter highlights how perspectives from the Global South expand sociological imagination and pave pathways for an integrative future that bridges Western and non-Western sociologies.