The sociological canon reconfigured: Empire, colonial critique, and contemporary sociology

Abstract

The essay reviews three books that were published consecutively in the last three years, and argues that they represent an important shift in sociology that could potentially reconfigure the discipline and the discipline’s theoretical canon. This is because these books make the modern experience of European empires, colonialism, and, in many instances, incomplete decolonization central to sociology. They also question the discipline’s origin narratives and these narratives’ implications in colonial modernity. Thus, the books hold up a mirror reflecting back onto the discipline of sociology its own implication in European empires and colonization and demonstrate how sociology’s imperial episteme continues to shape the discipline today. This article reviews these books and focuses on how they engage in the double task of the deconstruction of sociology’s complicity in empire and the construction of a colonial critique-centered sociology. This is a sociology, the essay argues, which is invested in analyzing structural relations of power in view of the legacies of empire and colonialism. It is also one that asks questions relevant to contemporary realities for the purposes of effecting political change in the world. © The Author(s) 2018.