American Sociology: History and Racially Gendered Classed Knowledge Reproduction

• Published in: Journal of historical sociology Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 49 - 74
• Main Author: Padilla Wyse, Jennifer
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-03-2014
• Subjects: American history; Collective Memory; Gender studies; Heuristics; Historical analysis; History of Sociology; Imagination; Knowledge; Marx, Karl; Race; Sociological Research; Sociological Theory; Sociology; World System Theory
• ISSN: 0952-1909; 2832-5796; 1467-6443; 2832-580X
• DOI: 10.1111/johs.12032

The purpose of this paper is to explore how racially gendered classed power‐relations structure history, knowledge and American Sociology's historical memory and disciplinary knowledge production. In order to do so, this paper will 1) utilize Cabral's (1970) theory of history to center humanity as historically developed into a racially gendered classed capitalist world‐system, 2) employ intersectionality as a heuristic device to see how knowledge is manipulated to normalize dehumanization as well as to perpetuate exploitation and privilege by denying “Othered' ” knowledges, and lastly 3) sociologically imagine this racially gendered classed process in the “institutional‐structure” of American Sociology by exploring the ancestry of the concept of “intersectionality.” In all this paper argues 1) American Sociology under theorizes history, a central aspect of the sociological imagination and production of new sociological knowledge, 2) American Sociology reproduces a dehumanized theory of history per Marx's “historical materialism” and 3) the structure of American Sociology's knowledge is racially gendered classed, as illustrated in the collective memory of the concept of “intersectionality.”