The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology

Keller, Alex

doi:10.1086/211507

Cited by 24 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In his 1906 AJS article, “The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology,” Keller registered this point exactly. By examining colonized societies and their peoples, sociologists can “find a rapid and, though imperfect, fairly complete evolution of social forms” (Keller 1906:418). Ward (1896:751) praised the work of the recently created U.S. Bureau of Ethnology, which collected data on Native American tribes, and pointed to its benefits for sociological knowledge: The “United States Bureau of Ethnology in the Study of the North American Indians .…”

Section: Sociology’s Founding and The Imperial Epistemementioning

confidence: 99%

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

2020

Sociological Theory

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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.

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Section: Sociology’s Founding and The Imperial Epistemementioning

confidence: 99%

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

2020

Sociological Theory

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“…Albert Keller went so far as to treat colonies as ideal sociological laboratories. In ‘The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology,’ he suggested that the colonial world provides excellent data for studying difference and development (Keller, 1906: 418). While these examples were culled from European empires, some sociologists made references to America’s colonial empire and past imperialism.…”

Section: The Global Field Of Empiresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond metrocentrism: From empire to globalism in early US sociology

2013

Journal of Classical Sociology

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Existing accounts of American sociology’s founding years during the early twentieth century assume that the discipline was ‘metrocentric.’ They assume that it was only interested in processes occurring within the United States; that American sociologists fell prey to state-centrist thought; and that, therefore, contextualizing America sociology’s emergence necessitates understanding relations, events, and processes within the confines of US territorial boundaries. By contrast, this paper shows the imperial and hence global aspects of early American sociological thought. Early American sociologists were interested in imperialism and, therefore, in cross-societal, transnational, and global processes and relations. Implicitly or explicitly they approached imperialism as a process by which social groups, not least ‘races,’ interacted and conflicted. They also saw it as a route towards new global forms. Early American sociology thus articulated a sociological imagination that looked beyond American society and to the wider world.

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“…William Graham Sumner (1911) was an ardent critic of imperialism. Albert Keller (1906, 418) at Yale argued that colonies could serve as ideal sociological laboratories. Franklin Giddings at Columbia explicitly stated that the imperial world and its associated dynamics should be an object of sociological interest.…”

Section: Interdisciplinary and Disciplinary Contextsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘New’ Sociology of Empire and Colonialism

2009

Sociology Compass

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This study reviews recent sociological scholarship on empire and colonialism. The new ‘imperial–colonial studies’ in sociology is not a fully fledged subfield but an emerging space of inquiry that examines social forms, processes, and relations associated with imperialism and colonialism. This study sketches the main features of the new scholarship. It also situates the new sociological studies within a larger history of sociological inquiry and interdisciplinary context. Finally, it suggests that the future of sociology’s new imperial–colonial studies lies not in ‘sociologizing’ the study of empire and colonialism but in deploying analyses of empire and colonialism to help critically reorient some of traditional sociology’s limiting lenses and assumptions.

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The Value of the Study of Colonies for Sociology

Cited by 24 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Beyond metrocentrism: From empire to globalism in early US sociology

The ‘New’ Sociology of Empire and Colonialism

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