!!

This validates the idea that the construction of the canon was done in a way that evades sociologies origins in colonialism.

Stadial development

This is similar to anthropology. Elsewhere I've seen noted that anthropology has had to reckon more with its role in colonialism as compared to sociology (which could imply that the construction of a canon could in part be an evasion of this as well as a way to differentiate the field from other social sciences, although this is just my own conjecture).

The Fictions of Modern Social Theory Fiction about rise of West divorced from colonialism and its relationship to the rise of modern social theory. At best, colonialism thought of as stage on way from feudalism to capitalism. Argument here is a renewal of sociological theory with colonialism at core. Five lessons learned from engaging with modern theorists. 1. State of Nature and stadial development - First developed by Hobbes and Lockes, used to justify inequality and differential treatment. Depends on construction of state of nature and state of society (Europe), stages of societal development, and hierarchies of societies with types of social relationships. Colonialism directly connected to emergence of modern society but comes to be attributed to late stage of feudal society with people at earlier stages of development. Taking of people seen as not just profit-making, but as civilizing. Need to move to understanding how colonial connections structure ideas of difference and domination. 2. Modern subjectivity - Modern society understood to inaugurate a distinctive type of rational individual capable of property contrasted to those incapable of or indifferent to private property. Modern reason about development of autonomy and freedom and subjecting institutions like religion to reason. Also creates possibility of self-criticism, like in Frankfurt School's critical theory. Idea of unfinished project of modernity involves idea of modernity itself as project of civilization where all premodern societies viewed as beset by traditional authority and inadequate selves and not as societies we can learn from. 3. Nation state - in development of idea of modern individual, two forms of sovereignty outlined--one individualist, other political authority that guarantees authority of individuals. Early on, associated with commonwealth and extension of colonial territory. However, political authority comes to be associated with European nation states, understood to have sole monopoly on violence due to responsibility to citizens, but not all citizens regarded as equals. All European nation states and settler offshoots either empires or supported construction of empires by movement of people. Subjects of empire are denied inclusion in community to whom patrimony of empire is distributed and after decolonization denied citizenship. Immigrants seen as threats to solidarity of nation and its social contract which excludes them. 4. Class and formally free labor - Marx recognized society developing as class-divided society, associated with system of private property. On basis of development of class division, proletarianization would lead to socialism. Class division depends on centrality of formally free labor, however, this is called into question once we understand colonial nature of modernity. Commodified labor power doesn't develop as central form of capitalism, and capitalist states able to divide their populations between national citizens and colonial subjects. Du Bois noted this provides possibilities of decommodification of labor power within metropole using colonial patrimonies in provision of welfare denied to those in larger empire. At same time, colonial subjects denied status of free labor and subordinated with forms of indenture. Enslavement represents commodification of laborer and emancipation leads to new forms of indenture (e.g., migrant labor and seasonal visa arrangements). Both are enduring features of modernity. 5. Sociological reason - Dominant forms of sociological methods present sociological reason as ahistorical preconditions for inquiry. Sociology aligns itself with a critical project which continues project of Enlightenment. However, this project is not self-critical project it claims--in arguing this, not proposing relativism but transformation of own perspective from learning about others' experiences. First thing is recognizing limitation of one own's understanding. Colonialism structures European thought and then represents a necessity and opportunity to practice sociology differently.

Du Bois: Addressing the Colour Line * W.E.B. Du Bois was freeborn in 1869 in MA, five years after the Emancipation Proclamation and contemporary with Weber and Durkheim. As a teenager, he saw Jim Crow laws undoing the gains from Reconstruction. * So far, theories in this series have discussed universal claims confounded by racialized difference. Du Bois work, instead, moves from deeply embodied engagement with racist US society to a universal claim about how the global "color line" is constructed in colonialism. * Alongside Du Bois' scholarly work, he was also one of the founders of the NAACP and was very politically active. Delegate to UN, involved in pan-African caucuses, and was an anti-war activate. Ambivalent towards US involvement in WWI, Du Bois saw African American participation as a way to move towards equal citizenship. * In The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois pointed to social causes of poverty among Black people living in Philly. First empirical sociological study of a specific population within US (usually this title given to work of a white sociologist 20 years later). Sociology in US started in universities of Philadelphia in Atlanta in 1890s, not at University of Chicago in 1920s. * As Du Bois became more active politically, he saw importance of linking Black struggles in US to global struggles. * Du Bois work on reconstruction challenged notion that it had failed because suffrage had been extended too quickly and Southern institutions had been unjustly dismantled (Dunning school--thought it a tyrannical overreach into white society). This understand was fundamental to Jim Crow laws. Du Bois clear that it was not a failer, but had been opposed and subverted. Three key benefits: brought about democratic govt, established free public schools, and address poverty across the color line. Black Reconstruction in America represented a narrative shift, and argued strongly for contributions made by African Americans and wrote emancipated enslaved people back into the narrative. This points to the gap in the dominant history, and as Du Bois said "to regard the truth as more important than the defence of the white race". * Broader aim of Du Bois work was focused on social theory and its narratives. Du Bois wished reconstruction and enslavement to be an upheaval of humanity, e.g. as Weber would have said, a world-historical event. * Wrote about the color line in The Souls of Black Folk and later in The World and Africa: Color and Democracy wrote that colonialism was the issue most needing to be addressed. For a long time, he argued for the need for solidarity and to address the disenfranchisement of Black people in the US, the colonization of India, and the partition of Africa as linked issues. * Du Bois prescient about links between colonized populations inside and outside of colonizing countries. Democracy in America and Europe impedes democracy in Asia and Africa. Until these issues addressed across the board, democracy cannot develop satisfactorily. * Du Bois argued for race to be understood as a product of racism.

To read

to read

Durkheim: Modernity and Community * Often argued that Durkheim is most conservative of theorists. He came from a Jewish family and was born in France, in a part that was occupied between German troops between 1870 and 1873. * Less direct engagement with colonialism. Karen Fields (who wrote Racecraft together with her sister, Barbara Fields) sees parallels between Durkheim and DuBois as outsider sociologists. (At some point it would be interesting to read more of her work on DuBois.) * Durkheim's mechanic and organic solidarity--in traditional view, Durkheim is seeking to understand nature of individualism in society within a stadial framework. This interpretation is reinforced by his ideas about key aspects of religion. However, Fields argues that Durkheim is trying to identify a core substance common across all religions (and he is trying to claim at our core we are the same). Fields also argues that he is not arguing for a linear replacement, but that in modern society both kinds of solidarity exist. * Durkheim also regarded as a positivist, and thought that society must not be understood as the sum of actions of individuals (the system has its own characteristics--mechanical and organic solidarity are two facets of one reality). * Main problem in Durkheim's view was class conflict, with unequal power between workers and employers which required regulation by the political authorities, itself justified by regulatory mechanisms. The state is the ultimate guardian of regulatory frameworks, legitimized by individual rights it ensures. * Durkheim looked beyond France and thinking about the annexation of Alsace Lorraine thought that states need not find their destiny in expansion. In Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, argued "Societies can take their pride, not in being the greatest or the wealthiest, but in being the most just, the best organized and in possessing the best moral constitution." In this way national patriotism could become a fragment of world patriotism. Here, Durkheim fails to address false division of labor between French administrative territories and forced labor in its colonies. He also fails to discuss the colonial and imperial form of the modern state, although he does raise the rights of the individual above the rights of the state (despite the fact of colonized peoples' rights being upheld). Yet, in his discussion of the Dreyfus question, he addresses it differently from other theorists. Weber addressed from standpoint of assimilation, Marx addressed it as human emancipation (establishing a secular state), and Durkheim imagines a pluralist state of religious solidarity within a secular republic with interfaith dialogue. These views are interesting in the light of current widespread Islamophobia among white supremacist states.

Weber: Religion, Nation, and Empire * Weber was upper middle class, born right after unification, lived through German empire and died in 1920 just as Weimar Republic was being established. Work done in context of empire but rarely discussed. His work was influential on many areas, including Marxism and rise of capitalism. * Work formed in context of imperialism and German national interests. Weber encouraged internal colonialism via peasant smallholder farming, for example, at same time as concerns about Germanifying non-"German" populations including Jewish people--this is part of the context for Protestant Ethic. For Weber, capitalism depends on favorable material conditions as well as "spirit of capitalism" (which for Weber, needed to not be greed, needed to be Protestantism--interested in the wording here as this makes it seem like this was intentional). * Consequences of Protestant Ethic: capitalism has European personality and is also a spirit of freedom, "spirit of capitalism" can be exported (I.e., multiple modernity theory). Form of capitalism Weber treated was very colonial internally (against ethnic Poles and Jews) and externally (e.g., in Africa). Capitalism associated with settler colonialism in US, for example, via Ben Franklin. Weber thought that Confucianism prohibited growth of capitalism in China (was forcibly opened for trade via Opium Wars). * Weber's definition of the state (monopoly on violence) is commonly accepted in social sciences, but period that establishes modern state is period of expansion and external domination--this is not theorized as a characteristic of the state by Weber. Imperialism is a constitutive aspect of the modern nation state, and requires division between domestic and foreign populations. Justification for imperialism is economic dividends for nation. * Is colonialism an explanatory issue? Or only a question of values? If there are explanatory issues, we need to revisit how they shift our understandings of Weber's and others' theories.

Overall argument seems to be that often people assert that Marx failed to allow for the growth of the middle class, but Harris is arguing that this is because people take Marx's simple theory of class struggle as put forward in political writings like the Communist Manifesto without qualifications. In reality, Marx was analyzing capitalism by abstracting it into what he called pure capitalism, which was characterized by conflict between the capitalist and working classes to which the middle classes were incidental because its tendency is to become absorbed by either class (and it is unclear whether he thought that the middle class would actually disappear--again, he was analyzing through the lens of an abstraction). Marx also argued that because of this vacillation, the middle class was inconsequential to the ultimate fate of capitalism. What he did not foresee was the important political role the middle class has currently (my first thought here was thinking about common left analyses of the petite bourgeois as the base of fascism, but reminding myself that it is a mistake to use a solely material analysis to understand fascism, I would like to read more current analysis on the role of the middle class within capitalism). Another question left unanswered by this is how accurate Marx's analysis is here (note: read more on hollowing out of middle class).

Here are papers that have cited Harris' paper or stem from those papers. It looks like more recent research (e.g., from the 1980s onwards) has focused on understanding and measuring bipolarization. Some of the more widely cited recent(er) papers include: * Atkinson and Brandolini (2011) who argue for measures beyond just income to measure class. * Pressman (2010) who argues that the middle class serves as a buffer in class warfare and that Marx missed this, and is key to democracy (Tocqueville would agree). Argues that US middle class has fluctuated but on average decreased due to income polarization, and that declines in middle class are lowest in social democratic states. Worth spending more time with this paper. * Esteban and Ray (1994) focus on measures of social polarization. * Foster and Wolfson (1992) find polarization rising in the US using curved rather than ranged estimates of polarization.

At some point would like to read more literature on polarization.

Tocqueville: America and Algeria * Political instability in the early/mid-1800s in places like France and Algeria were motivating concerns for Tocqueville who was interested in the conditions necessary for political stability. * In Democracy in America and The Ancien Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville explores the French and American revolutions as world historical moments defining modernity in relation to equality. He argues that democracy follows from pre-existing equality in the US, and in France the claim to democracy opposed hierarchies in society. While former can be represented as pure democracy, France's democracy developed as a tyranny of the majority. Tocqueville omits colonial aspects--dispossession and forced movement. * France was consolidating colonial excursions in Africa (in Algeria) around 1830 and US was expanding westward. Tocqueville anticipated a US empire. Haiti also liberated itself from French control and enslavement during years of French revolution. * Tocqueville clearly stated in one chapter of Democracy in America (that was abridged from US versions until recently) that his writing on democracy was only about one of three races living in the US, while other two were subjugated by institutions praised as embodying democracy. * Displacement of indigenous peoples contiguous with expansion of US settler state, especially with 1830 Indian Removal Act. Tocqueville believed indigenous peoples were doomed to extinction and aware of contradiction within democratic America with genocide of indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans. However, his central idea of development is stadial with previous societies being doomed. He saw presence of enslaved Africans as endangering white democratic state and system of possession and ideas of property, and described slavery as evil. * Tocqueville fails to mention Haiti (then San Domingue) and revolution leading to abolition of slavery in all French oversea colonies. Napoleon's attempt to reinstate slavery in 1802 was then an attempt to enslave citizens. Tocqueville was aware of this but suppresses it from his narrative, possibly because of threat self-abolition of slavery posed to French colonial engagements. He did concern himself, however, with an orderly process for emancipation that involved state to compensate slave owners and then be reimbursed for expenses by tax on wages of formerly enslaved peoples working for the state for a transitionary period (reparations for enslavers not for enslaved people's loss of liberty). For Tocqueville, French values of equality compatible with colonialism which included subjection of local populations (evident in letters to Algiers) and genocide. Thought French imperialism was central to its stability--empire was Tocqueville's solution to international stability. * Tocqueville's arguments in US better understood in light of his comments on Algeria--democracy in US racialized, and Tocqueville willing to restrict functioning of democracy along racialized lines in service of French colonial interests. Unifying racial theme in Tocqueville's writing is marginalization of cultures of people of color.

Marx: Colonialism, Class and Capitalism * Marx wrote on capitalism, as well as colonialism, with limitations. Marx's dialectics used for a broad variety of social theories (e.g., standpoint theory, postcolonial theory), however his theory of capitalism also involves a stadial theory of development (e.g., modes of production--capitalism evolves in Europe out of feudal relations). * Marx described capitalism in terms of exploitative character derived from class division. A post-capitalist society would arise from these contradictions. Colonialism, for Marx, was part of transition from late colonialism to early capitalism (primitive accumulation of wealth). Capitalism has a separate logic from colonialism, and then expands through a separate logic of globalism called imperialism. As global expansion becomes complete, contradictions of capitalism become more evident. * Things that disrupt Marx's analysis--1) capital-labor relation not as central to capitalist modernity as Marx believed, 2) capitalism not as tightly coupled as he believed, and 3) colonialism and empire function to provide patrimony that allows welfare and wages to accrue to whiteness at capitalist metropolitan centers. * According to Abram-Harris, Marx sets out capital-labor relation in terms of theory of pure capitalism abstracted from historical contingencies which varied in locations. Processes understood as real processes to which different contingencies gradually become subsumed. In pure capitalism, labor free but must sell labor to capitalist for wages. Capitalist combines labor with other means of production to produce goods for sale on market. In effect, then, capitalism a structural contradiction b/t (a) market for labor power and (b) market for products of labor process. In (a) prices of wages are driven by competition down towards subsistence of worker, in (b) capitalist seeks to find advantage by investing in new machinery to increase productivity, but this only temporary as competition drives innovation, more producers go out of business, and ownership becomes increasingly concentrated. * For Marx, these are central conditions and consequences for capitalism: skilled labor reduced to unskilled labor and differences (race, gender, disability, etc.) eroded in process of proletarianization. On other side, wealth becomes more concentrated as capacity for political intervention to ameliorate circumstances is reduced and only intervention possible is transformation of capital-labor relation itself. * Marx argues that large-scale capitalism depends on formerly free labor and commodification of labor power. This is an approximation of what was happening in Europe, but poor description of European colonialism. In colonies, dispossession of indigenous peoples accompanied by enslavement and indenture including the Atlantic slave trade. In line with this theory of pure capitalism, Marx predicted replacement of slave labor by free labor--but where slavery was abolished, it was replaced by indentured labor--e.g., global phenomenon of plantation systems. * As Harris argues, variation in forms of labor and increased differentiation of division of labor undermine Marx's predictions of proletarianization. Where there is more or less advantaged forms of behavior, is discriminatory access to jobs. Colonialism creates new systems of difference not necessarily inherited from pre-modern past (although I think Cedric Robinson might argue that these systems did not arise out of nowhere). * Marx's view of a tightly coupled system also extended to possibilities of political intervention, which Marx thought only possible form was revolution following process of proletarianization and struggles to transform capitalism from within. E.g., eventually proletariat must understand that we need to overthrow capitalism and institute system oriented to need rather than profit. These arguments go back to 1840s when Marx discussed conditions of Moselle wine growers and how logic of capitalist political economy required market processes and outcomes, and wasn't possible politically to address their poverty but by the 1860s, Parliament was discussing things like progressive taxation and public utilities (which would have been excluded by doctrines of classical political economy of which Marx was a part). This was also at height of European empire and the possibility of expanded state budgets and spending on domestic projects. Possibilities of private (charity) and state action expanded within bounds of European nations. Patrimony of empires (philanthropy or taxes) made available in metropole (not to populations subject to taxation and extraction in empire). * Marx makes room for analyzing colonialism, but within it being subsumed by pure capitalism. Also centers a European proletariat, but which is in reality bound to consumption of global appropriated resources.

Early Modern Social Theory: Europe and its ‘Others’ * See video description for an overview. * Origins of modern social thought are misrepresented by dominant accounts of their development. * 1600s: Hobbes and Locke concerned with identifying rights and obligations associated with private property, and with justifying colonialism with which they were directly, deeply engaged. Private property must be understood in context of capitalism, so that we properly understand capitalism as developing from colonialism. Hobbes "state of nature" described by him as a fiction, but thought it was similar to indigenous people native to places of "European discovery" which is a serious misrepresentation with the purpose of establishing need for government grounded in agreement among property holders for their mutual protection (indigenous people assigned to state of nature and placed outside this). Locke set to argue god-given right of self-determination, and how what was given to all could be taken into self-possession. His idea was that if you mix your labor with something you take from state of nature, you make it your private property (which is constrained only by what is due to others). Locke writing contemporarily with process of enclosure, and he justified this with an obligation to put land to use ("spoilage"). Tension of accumulation of wealth with concept of spoilage reconciled through the development of money, which could be put to other productive ventures and expand possession in a virtuous circle. Enslavement contradicts right to possession directly, but for Locke, Africans and other indigenous people existed in state of nature and their "warlike aggressions" placed them in breach of their natural rights and so they could become property. Later theorists filled in stages between state of nature and modern state using various combinations of subsistence methods with forms of property--hunter gatherer, pastoral herding, settled agriculture, and commercial society. * 1700s: Scottish Enlightenment authors like Hume, Smith developed typologies of society as stages of human development (not mentioned here, but also Rousseau). Colonial encounters conceptualized as encounters with people at different stages of development, and modernity presented as project of progress. Slavery conceptualized as feature of societies in earlier stages (e.g., agricultural or hunter-gatherer, and often equated with serfdom) at the same time that colonialism forced the expansion of forced labor. Hegel argued that slavery would be good for Africans and bad for European societies, and Hegel used opposition to slavery as mark of savagery and lack of humanity. European barbarity was ignored. * These ideas contribute to view that freedom is a product of European modernity which operates from an internal logic (which excludes/displaces colonialism from its proper context in social theory). European society (capitalist society, etc.) seen as proper focus for social theory and its conflicts (I.e., class, gender) become focus of sociology. Racism rendered as non-essential and deriving from colonialism. * John Holmwood is a former president of the BSA, educated at Cambridge. His work has focused on social stratification and the relationship between social science and explanation. His later work has concentrated on issues of pragmatism in public sociology. * Comments: Helpful analysis of how foundational European theorists' thought was deeply implicated in justifying colonialism. This analysis was missing from the Western Political Heritage class (POLI 202) I took from Ryan Davis my junior year at BYU (in 2016)--I wonder if I could find any of my old papers?

Decolonizing Modern Social Theory * Calls to decolonize the university came alongside broader movements for decolonization. Issues include institutional benefits of colonialism to Western educational systems (endowments, personnel) and legacy of colonial thought in social sciences. * Examines context of development of Western theory in relation to colonialism and the subsequent erasure of that information in Western discourse. * Colonialism displaced as well in neglect of rise of European imperialism out of colonialism, in contrast we see colonialism rising out of capitalism. Colonialism and empire are seen outside the dominant framework of modernity (something prior to modernity), despite Marx, Weber, and Durkheim writing at the height of colonialism which culminated in a global war b/t colonial powers. * European history often uses stadial account of social development (e.g., see Dawn of Everything) and represents slavery as a pre-modern phenomenon. * Colonialism has not been dealt with systematically within social theory. * Purpose is to decolonize and disrupt concepts and categories (e.g., class) that "modern" social theory has given us to open up new ways of thinking about modern social thought. * Post WWII, sociology expanded and was incorporated into many curriculums worldwide. As empires declined, sociology came to focus on nation-state. At same time, European countries challenged by decolonial movements (Algeria, India, etc.) which transformed the world order although sociology did not see these conflicts as defining social structures, rather as entanglements between nations. * Issue isn't to add colonialism to sociology's covered topics, but how the absence of colonialism has shaped sociology and how including it as central reforms sociology. * Gurminder Bhambra is President of the British Sociological Association (22-24) and her current projects are on epistemological justice and reparations and on the political economy of race and colonialism. * Comments: Appreciate the dual focus on grappling with institutional benefits of colonialism to Western institutions alongside the legacy of colonial thought. Really interested in the questions posed here and their cross-applicability to other fields (e.g., evaluation). Wasn't quite clear on whether she was arguing that the linear process in the development of colonialism was capitalism --> colonialism --> empire, or if she was arguing for another (e.g., non-linear or differently ordered) conception of this process (I.e., similar to what Cedric Robinson does in Black Marxism).

• Writing in the newsletter of the American Sociological Association's theory section in 2019, Magubane argues that the day for sociology to reckon with how its structures of knowledge (frameworks, analytical categories, methods, and data) are shaped by colonialism. She argues that the dominant sociological canon (particularly Marx, Weber, and Durkheim) serves a uniquely integrating function as a shared ritual in sociology.
• Magubane discusses Raewyn Connell's pathbreaking article "Why is Classical Theory Classical" and hostile responses. Citing Connell, Magubane highlights the disciplinary crisis that struck sociology after WWI when sociology recentered from focusing on progress to society and difference and disorder within the metropole. She argues a point that Connell does not make but that is central to understanding the implications of decolonizing sociology is that race was central to the "difference and disorder" in the metropole. Sociology was committed to understanding racism in America, but did not do so very successfully in part due to the standpoint of many sociologists within the white, male professional managerial class. The shift to focusing on race coincided with the discipline's "deep suppression of the discipline's roots in colonialism via the construction of the classical cannon" which deleted the discourse of imperialism from sociology.
• Decolonizing sociology will require a deep examination of its history and how it has dealt with racism. This includes reading the classics differently, to see how key concepts took shape because of theorists' engagement with the global majority, and restoring intellectuals who have been excluded from the canon (e.g., W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, and Charles S. Johnson) while rigorously engage them in ways that "interrogate and emphasize their intellectual disagreements" rather than lumping them under homogenizing labels.
• Zine Magubane is a scholar whose work focuses broadly on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and post-colonial studies in the United States and Southern Africa. Magubane was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Bernard Magubane, was a prominent South African scholar and one of the leading anti-apartheid activists based in the United States. Magubane received her undergraduate degree in politics at Princeton University, and obtained a masters and Ph.D degree in sociology from Harvard. She currently works at Boston College.
• Thought provoking analysis of the role of the "canon", the role of the study of racism in the re-construction of the field post-WWII, and of how to approach decolonization within the discipline. The latter provides extremely helpful insights into how to "do" social science work and engage with its theory in a decolonial way. The article focuses on the decolonization of the canon, and it would be helpful to also read discussions around disrupting colonial structures within sociology, academia, and related systems.