Sociology, only about a hundred years old, is defined by its theoretical canon. This canon dates mainly from the middle decades of the twentieth century. While the canon’s origins are European, today’s sociology itself bears a heavy postwar American influence. Thus, the texts of the canon are not scripture. They were written by people who each were products of a specific time and place: an age dominated by industrializing European empires. Not all of them were sociologists. Nevertheless, the texts they produced were then canonized by scholars active during America’s postwar hegemony.
The historical, geographical, and social specificity of the canon has been the subject of disagreement since the beginning. In the past two decades or so, the debate has intensified, at least in the US, with the resurgence of identitarian politics. People have, not unreasonably, questioned the relevance of hundred-year-old texts by dead white European men. Their perspectives are narrow and contain many blind spots. Two main solutions have been proffered: dispensing with the canon altogether, or including more diverse voices within the existing canon. This course takes a cautious approach, remaining solidly rooted in the midcentury Western canon while adding W.E.B. Du Bois, a contemporary and acquaintance of Weber’s, thus “indigenizing” the canon to the United States. This should make students think about what Asian sources of social theory might be missing from the canon.