Epistemological approaches in the tradition of e.g. constructivism, relativism, postmodernism or postcolonialism stress that empirical findings are strongly influenced both by the researcher’s social position and positioning in the world system and by the social organization of doing science. Sociology of science has provided strong empirical evidence for this position. This means that, if researchers find (dis)similarities between different social contexts, it is not clear at all, if these (dis)similarities result from actual substantial differences or rather e.g. from diverging theoretical perspectives, research styles, ways of doing methods or different reactions of the field to social science research. At the same time, approaches in the tradition of e.g. positivism or critical radicalism stress that it is important that science upholds the ideals of searching for truth, intersubjectivity and empirical evidence and that relativism itself is also a fallacy because – if you take this serious – what is the difference between “fake news” and “alternative facts” and scientific knowledge? Moreover, many research questions in the social sciences require to be sure about (dis)similarities between contexts, e.g. in social inequality research. So far, suggestions to overcome these contrasting demands on social science methodology have mostly focussed on methods, e.g. by mixing methods or applying cross-cultural survey methods. In contrast, the session aims at addressing the underlying deeper epistemological and methodological issues which remain mainly unresolved: Papers should ask how to overcome the divide between positivism and constructivism and to truly decolonize social science methodology.