Abstract
This article derives from my 2021 ASA presidential address. I examine how sociologists including Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and white American sociologists have omitted key determinants of modernity in their accounts of this pivotal development in world history. Those determinants are white supremacy, western empires, racial hierarchies, colonization, slavery, Jim Crow, patriarchy, and resistance movements. This article demonstrates that any accounts omitting these determinants will only produce an anemic and misleading analysis of modernity. The central argument maintains that the sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois developed a superior analysis of modernity by analytically centering these determinants. I conclude by making a case for the development of an emancipatory sociology in the tradition of Du Boisian critical sociological thought.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-16 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | American Sociological Review |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2022 |
Funding
Precious colleagues and friends contributed greatly to this endeavor by engaging me in critical dialogue pertaining to the ideas expressed in this article. Some read earlier drafts of this article and provided valuable feedback that enhanced the quality of the final article. I especially thank Professors Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Michael Schwartz, Ruby Mendenhall, George Danns, and Walter Allen for the critical input they rendered in preparation for this article. I thank Sharif El Shishtawy Hassan for his valuable research on ASA presidential addresses for this article. I also thank many scholars, too numerous to mention here, for their ideas that always bolster clarity in my scholarship.
Keywords
- Du Bois
- Jim Crow
- colonization
- emancipatory sociology
- modernity
- patriarchy
- racial hierarchies
- resistance movements
- slavery
- western empires
- white supremacy
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science