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online
2. November 2020

Understanding the Modern World…

…through the segragated sociologies of Weber and DuBois. A Conversation with Gurminder Bhambra.

Du Bois was an African American ‘pioneer of sociology’ and yet has rarely been regarded as such within standard accounts of the history of the discipline. Weber’s position, on the other hand, has always been secure. Alongside his contributions to the debates around the emergence of capitalism, Weber’s work on the state, especially his arguments about the legitimation of the state, are central to sociology and our understanding of the modern world. Du Bois argued that the period of reconstruction that followed formal emancipation in the United States ought to be understood as being on a par with the Reformation and the French Revolution. That is, that Reconstruction was a similarly world historical event. In this conversation, we address questions of the canon, the place of Du Bois and Weber within it, and their contributions to sociology and to the understanding of the modern world. Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex and is a Fellow of the British Academy. She is author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination, Connected Sociologies, and is co-editor of Decolonising the University.

You will find the link to the online event on the website of the Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen shortly before the event.