Sociology & Empire
The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline
Edited by George SteinmetzDuke University Press
2013
Présentation de l'éditeur
The revelation that the U.S. Department of Defense had hired
anthropologists for its Human Terrain System project—assisting its
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—caused an uproar that has obscured
the participation of sociologists in similar Pentagon-funded projects.
As the contributors to Sociology and Empire show, such
affiliations are not new. Sociologists have been active as advisers,
theorists, and analysts of Western imperialism for more than a century.
The
collection has a threefold agenda: to trace an intellectual history of
sociology as it pertains to empire; to offer empirical studies based
around colonies and empires, both past and present; and to provide a
theoretical basis for future sociological analyses that may take empire
more fully into account. In the 1940s, the British Colonial Office began
employing sociologists in its African colonies. In Nazi Germany,
sociologists played a leading role in organizing the occupation of
Eastern Europe. In the United States, sociology contributed to
modernization theory, which served as an informal blueprint for the
postwar American empire. This comprehensive anthology critiques
sociology's disciplinary engagement with colonialism in varied settings
while also highlighting the lasting contributions that sociologists have
made to the theory and history of imperialism.
Contributors.
Albert Bergesen, Ou-Byung Chae, Andy Clarno, Raewyn Connell, Ilya
Gerasimov, Julian Go, Daniel Goh, Chandan Gowda, Krishan Kumar, Fuyuki
Kurasawa, Michael Mann, Marina Mogilner, Besnik Pula, Anne Raffin,
Emmanuelle Saada, Marco Santoro, Kim Scheppele, George Steinmetz,
Alexander Semyonov, Andrew Zimmerman
