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

Abstract

<jats:p> Throughout his life, W.E.B. Du Bois actively engaged the scientific racism infecting natural sciences and popular thought. Nevertheless, he also demonstrated a sophisticated and critical engagement with natural science. He recognized that the sciences were socially situated, but also that they addressed real questions and issues. Debate remains, however, regarding exactly how and why Du Bois incorporated such natural scientific knowledge into his own thinking. In this article, we draw on archival research and Du Bois’ own scholarship to investigate his general approach to interdisciplinarity. We address how and why he fused natural scientific knowledge and the influence of physical environs into his social science, intertwining each with his broader intellectual and political aims. This investigation will offer a fuller understanding of the scope and aims of his empirical scholarship. At the same time, it will illuminate a sociological approach to natural science that can still inform scholarship today. </jats:p>

Race, nation and empire; the forgotten sociology of Herbert Adolphus Miller

“…At the same time, while his work was (typically) represented as specific to the experiences of African Americans, it was not taken up by Chicago (or other) sociologists of race relations. Du Bois was committed to a science of social relations as the grounding of his political interventions (Besek et al, 2021; Morris, 2015), but the urgent political situation of racial inequality dictated the shape of his career. His political work became more important to him, and he left academic sociology behind for several decades, thereby reinforcing his neglect in mainstream sociology which, until recently, regarded him primarily as a political figure, where his work was referenced at all (Green and Driver, 1976).…”

Mutual Aid as a Praxis for Critical Environmental Justice: Lessons from W.E.B. Du Bois, Critical Theoretical Perspectives, and Mobilising Collective Care in Disasters

“…Such a move also offers a path to extend more recent work in the fields of sociology and anthropology engaging the radical interdisciplinarity (Besek et al. 2020; Robinson 2000), geographic historicity (Wilson 2002), and meta‐methodological insights and contributions (Hackworth 2021; Morris 2015) of what is more and more being termed a Du Boisian framework. Subsequently, we draw upon secondary accounts and primary documents, including unpublished essays, correspondence, and notes viewed between 2017 and 2022 at the Fisk University “Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt Collection, 1832–1963” archive, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst “W.E.B Du Bois Papers, 1803–1999” archive, and the collection of The Crisis that was edited by Du Bois to inform brief chronicles of emergent networks of reciprocity and care during disasters, including the 1927 Mississippi floods, Hurricane Katrina, the 2020 Nashville tornadoes, and the 2021 Texas power outages.…”

Climate Silence in Sociology? How Elite American Sociology, Environmental Sociology, and Science and Technology Studies Treat Climate Change

“…W. Connell (1997) for a critical historical analysis of the construction of the sociological canon, including how Durkheim’s Rules of Sociological Method only came to assume the status of a must-read classic in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. While Durkheim was exemplary in his attempts to stake out and purify sociology’s jurisdiction, other “canonical” figures, including Marx, Weber, and Du Bois provided other ways to approach socio-environmental interaction that contemporary environmental sociologists have developed theoretically (Besek, Greiner, and Clark 2021; Foster 1999; Foster and Holleman 2012).…”