Race, Empire, and Epistemic Exclusion: Or the Structures of Sociological Thought

Abstract

This essay analyzes racialized exclusions in sociology through a focus on sociology’s deep epistemic structures. These structures dictate what counts as social scientific knowledge and who can produce it. A historical analysis of their emergence and persistence reveals their connections to empire. Due to sociology’s initial emergence within the culture of American imperialism, early sociological thought embedded the culture of empire’s exclusionary logics. Sociology’s epistemic structures were inextricably racialized, contributing to exclusionary modes of thought and practice along the lines of race, ethnicity, and social geography that persist into the present. Overcoming this racialized inequality requires problematizing and unsettling these epistemic structures by (1) provincializing the canon to create a transformative epistemic pluralism and (2) reconsidering common conceptions of what counts as “theory” in the first place.

W.E.B. Du Bois and interdisciplinarity: A comprehensive picture of the scholar’s approach to natural science

“…In all, Du Bois offers a useful, if hitherto ignored, classical grounding for interdisciplinary endeavours, as his scholarship managed to draw upon and, when appropriate, usefully synthesize the work of natural and social scientists across a range of fields, bringing them to bear on essential questions regarding race and biology, neighbourhoods and public health, ecological imperialism, environmental degradation and social inequities, and many others (Clark et al, 2018; Clark and Foster, 2003; Go, 2020; Pellow, 2016, 2018). His epistemology was inclusive of natural science, even if the manner in which it was inclusive changed over time, guided by ever-changing scientific debates, new knowledge, relationships, historical contexts and politics.…”

“…Du Bois (1905) directly reflected upon this interdisciplinary approach in an essay that remained unpublished until the first year of the twenty-first century (Du Bois, 2000; also see Go, 2020) entitled ‘Sociology Hesitant’, which provides a window into how he fit his cautiously realist picture of science within his own sociological practice. Its title refers to a contemporary identity crisis in sociology, one derived from open questions regarding what sociology is per se , what sociologists should actually be doing, and how sociology should relate to other, more established, disciplines.…”

Theory on the other Side of the Veil: Reckoning with Legacies of Anti-Blackness and Teaching in Social Theory

“…It is because of the central role Classic Theory plays in defining the discipline that it has become the topic of debate as scholars challenge how our history is presented, whose narratives are centered, and whose are omitted (Deegan, 1988;Morris, 2015;Wright, 2012;Itzigsohn & Brown, 2020;Magubane, 2016;Go, 2013aGo, , 2016Go, , 2017. We join this conversation with those calling for a more radical approach to revamp Classic Theory (Connell, 2007;Cuatro, 2013;Go, 2013aGo, , 2016Go, , 2020. More specifically, we argue for the need to redefine how we name and teach theory to redress the history of anti-blackness and sexism that marginalized BIPOC scholars and women in the academy.…”

Colonial Modernity in Historical Sociology

“…In fact, in addition to silencing these voices as theorists of modernity, the experiences of the colonized and racialized often became the objects of study for social scientists. Conversely, European writers positioned themselves as observers of the modern world and attempted to analyze their environment without acknowledging or understanding their own fundamental predicament (Go 2016(Go , 2020: that they themselves were the product of colonial modernity and that their own theories of the world was shaped by a particular position in the global, imperial order (Connell 1997;Hammer 2020;Itzigsohn and Brown 2020;Magubane 2017).…”

“…At the same time, colonizers constructed the colonial other as barbaric, mad, uncivilized, non-modern, and hence as incapable for reason. The European standpoint emerged as the only legitimate basis for knowledge, while the colonized were seen as irrational, and-more recently-as only ever subjective, biased, and unable to abstract beyond their lived experiences (Go 2020). Dipesh Chakrabarty's (2009) has pointed out how this legacy of universalisation shaped the social sciences.…”