Book Description

"This book is a history of the field of sociology as it existed from the interwar, wartime, and postwar periods in France and its Empire. This does not refer just to sociologists who did some work in the colonies, or occasionally thought about them in their metropolitan work, but a specific field which was constituted to understand and then govern these colonies. The author argues that the re-founding of French sociology during and after World War II - which spawned the likes of Raymond Aron, Jacques Berque, Georges Balandier, and Pierre Bourdieu - occurred within the context of the re-founding of the French empire. Though there was been much discussion of "decolonizing" sociology in the postwar period, the deep history of sociology's connection to French colonialism and empire has been ignored when, the author argues, it is central. The main driver of the expansion of sociology in this period was colonial developmentalism. Sociologists became favored partners of colonial governments, applying their expertise to an array of "social problems," such as de-tribalization, poverty, labor migration, rapid urbanization and the growth of shantytowns, and the decay of traditional families and religious beliefs, and working on "modernizing" solutions. Many sociologists whose careers began in the overseas colonies formulated concepts and theories that quickly entered metropolitan (and then global) sociology, and their origins were forgotten. Steinmetz examines the ways in colonial sociologists differed from the rest of the discipline -in many ways they represented its most dynamic cutting edge-and how their locations may have affected their intellectual agendas and scholarship. He explores the ways in which these sociologists networked and tracks their major intellectual innovations and influence as a group. He also explores the marginalization faced by both sociologists working in the colonies and those born there, while showing the ways in which they were able to overcome them. The specific challenges of colonial sociology-including some very strongly anticolonial colonial sociologists-shaped sociological theory in ways that are still dominant. The book amounts to a historical sociology of French academia all told-with an emphasis on sociology and other human sciences-as well as a collective biography of many of the major figures, many who are continually read and cited to this day"--