On W.E.B. Du Bois, Double Consciousness, and Racialized Modernity. An Interview with José Itzigsohn

Itzigsohn, José; Baghiu, Ștefan; Pojoga, Vlad

doi:10.51391/trva.2021.02.01

Cited by 8 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In this section, I lay out the most important and relevant aspects of Du Bois' view of the system and show how we can use them to better understand how climate crisis unfolds. Du Bois did not use the term racial and colonial capitalism himself, but he articulated various dimensions of it (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020). I first outline the concept of racial and colonial capitalism and show how it applies to the dynamics of the climate crisis.…”

Section: Du Bois' Racial and Colonial Capitalism And Climate Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the outset, Du Bois took the perspective of the subaltern, and in particular the perspective of the enslaved Black plantation worker to develop his ideas of racial and colonial capitalism (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020). While there are limitations to this that I will return to in the final section, the point is that his notion of capitalism is not limited to that of the free worker in Europe, as Marx's conception is, or to the Protestant merchant class, as Weber's conception of capitalism is.…”

Section: Racial and Colonial Capitalism: Taking The Subaltern Perspec...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Du Bois did not include settler colonialism, or the dispossession of land from Indigenous peoples and attendant genocide, as an important component of his theory (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020). Settler colonialism is often theorized as a distinct form of colonialism, where territoriality is defined.…”

Section: Conclusion: Advancing a Contemporary Du Boisian Approach To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, I seek to build on Itzigsohn and Brown's (2020) exposition of the work of a long-marginalized sociologist: W.E.B. Du Bois.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Scholarship Needs Du Bois: Climate Crisis through the Lens of Racial and Colonial Capitalism*

Ramanujam

2022

Sociological Inquiry

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A large literature is proliferating on capitalism's role in driving climate breakdown. In this literature, capitalism is seen as the endless pursuit of growth, under which nature and its finite resources are exploited for profit. The climate crisis is the result of these processes. However, capitalism alone cannot explain the racial inequities produced by climate disruption, nor can it account for the disproportionately large contributions of Global North countries toward this crisis. In this article, I develop a Du Boisian approach to the climate crisis, showing how his conception of racial and colonial capitalism can develop our understanding of the causes, dimensions, and effects of the climate crisis. I explain how a Du Boisian approach furthers our understanding of racial and global inequalities in the development and impacts of global warming and in the production of fossil fuels, as well as how racism can shape climate inaction. Finally, I name some limitations of Du Bois' theory and elaborate on how a contemporary, decolonizing approach to the climate crisis might address these.

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Section: Du Bois' Racial and Colonial Capitalism And Climate Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Racial and Colonial Capitalism: Taking The Subaltern Perspec...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion: Advancing a Contemporary Du Boisian Approach To ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, I seek to build on Itzigsohn and Brown's (2020) exposition of the work of a long-marginalized sociologist: W.E.B. Du Bois.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate Scholarship Needs Du Bois: Climate Crisis through the Lens of Racial and Colonial Capitalism*

Ramanujam

2022

Sociological Inquiry

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“…W.E.B. Du Bois was the first major social thinker to appreciate the reality of capitalism as a global social formation based on colonial relations and the exploitation of racialized labor (Itzigsohn and Brown, 2020). He noted that the Atlantic slave trade and coerced labor in the plantation complex provided a sizeable source of revenue needed for the establishment of the English factory system.…”

Section: Antecedents To Racial Capitalism: Web Du Bois the "Color Lin...mentioning

confidence: 99%

True colorsof global economy: In the shadows of racialized capitalism

Prasad

2021

Organization

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This paper unpacks the notion of racial capitalism and highlights its salience for Management and Organization Studies. Racial capitalism is a process of systematically deriving socio-economic value from non-white racial identity groups, and has shaped the contours and trajectories of capitalism for over 500 years. Drawing on the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois, Bourdieu, and a number of labor historians, we argue that whiteness operates as symbolic capital and status property in market conditions, and is therefore responsible for perpetuating economic inequalities along color lines all over the world. We demonstrate how the extra value placed on whiteness can create a shadowland of split labor markets, colorism, and transnational patterns of expropriation that systematically disadvantage populations of color.

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“Unusual returns”: Transnational whiteness and the dividends of empire

Dahl

2022

Constellations

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struction in America, has received canonical status in contemporary theories of racial capitalism. 1 These "wages of whiteness," in David Roediger's (2007) incisive phrase, generated forms of psycho-affective compensation that positioned white laborers above black labor yet helped industrial capitalists artificially suppress wages, amplifying the extraction of surplus value from the working classes. As Nikhil Pal Singh puts it, the concept of racial capitalism is not simply an assertion about the racial origins of capitalism, but pertains to how "racial differentiation is intrinsic to productive processes of capitalist value creation and financial speculation" (Singh, 2016, 30-31; Douglas, 2019, 10-12;Robinson, 2000). Through the psychological wage, Du Bois captured how the production of racial difference enabled the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States by dividing the white and black working classes, with capital value production hinging on racial value production (i.e., the production of racial difference). In connecting the production of racial and economic value, he refused "the idea of a 'pure' capitalism external to, or extrinsic from, the racial formation of collectivities and populations" (Lowe, 2015, 150;Knox, 2016). Racial differentiation is not a separate process from capital accumulation, but a primary mode by which the commodity form of value is produced and ongoing relations of production are reproduced.Following but also departing from recent calls to move "beyond the psychological wage" (Myers, 2019), this essay explores how Du Bois used distinctive metaphors of value production derived from discourses of financial capitalism such as dividends, shares, and returns on investment to illustrate the economic, affective, and political benefits that accrue to white workers from their position in the racialized division of labor marking global capitalism. To capture the homology between racial value production and capital value production, he referred to the "income-bearing value of

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On W.E.B. Du Bois, Double Consciousness, and Racialized Modernity. An Interview with José Itzigsohn

Cited by 8 publications

References 15 publications

Climate Scholarship Needs Du Bois: Climate Crisis through the Lens of Racial and Colonial Capitalism*

Climate Scholarship Needs Du Bois: Climate Crisis through the Lens of Racial and Colonial Capitalism*

True colorsof global economy: In the shadows of racialized capitalism

“Unusual returns”: Transnational whiteness and the dividends of empire

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