Sociologists in the Field of Sociology: The Imperial Entanglements of Sociology in Germany, France, Britain and the United States since the 19th century

This talk explores the relations between knowledge and empire, with a focus on the discipline of sociology. Since the discipline’s intellectual beginnings, sociologists have related to empires as analysts, critics, and advisors. The recent period has seen a boom in colonial and postcolonial sociology as well as efforts to involve sociologists in current imperial missions by the United States. This talk focuses on sociologists in France, Germany, and the United States, the countries in which sociology first emerged as an academic discipline, and on Great Britain, which had the largest global empire at the moment when disciplinary sociology arose. The talk asks the following questions: What accounts for cross-national variations and the historical waxing and waning of interest in empire among sociologists? Why was the topic of empire monopolized by anthropology in 20th-century Britain but shared with sociology in France, and why did interest in imperialism increase among sociologists in Weimar Germany after that country had lost its overseas colonies? Why has a historical sociology of colonialism emerged recently in the United States? And finally, why have some social scientists been able to retain a degree of autonomy from their imperial objects of investigation while others have become heteronomous imperial scientists?  

George Steinmetz is a Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and the Department of Germanic Language and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is also a Corresponding Member of the Centre de Sociologie européenne, Paris. His research interests include: Historical Sociology, Political Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Modern Colonialism, Modern Europe, Social Theory. His work focuses on Germany and its former colonies (Namibia, Samoa, and Qingdao, China), on the sociology of German, French, and American sociology since the 19th century, on visual historical sociology, and on a modern city in the U.S. (Detroit). His latest book is The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa,and Southwest Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Forthcoming in 2010 is  Sociology and Empire, edited by George Steinmetz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. His documentary road movie about Detroit and the Automobile Industry “Detroit; Ruin of a City” co-directed with Michael Chanan is available at www.intellectbooks.co.uk/ppbooks.php?isbn=9781841509679.