Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 48

© 2015 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.

According to Morris, Du Bois has not been given the credit he deserves in establishing scientific sociology in the United States. In fact, Morris argues that the work of Du Bois was intentionally ignored by the white founders of American sociology, such as Albion Small, who defended social Darwinism, or the idea that society is guided by natural laws. Instead of trying to empirically prove that these natural laws existed, these early sociologists developed speculative grand theories. Their belief in the existence of natural laws also led them to minimize the role of human agency in society and prevented them from developing a comparative perspective. Du Bois attempted to challenge social Darwinism by using empirical methodology to demonstrate that racial inferiority was not a result of biology or natural law but a product of society. Two decades before the Chicago School of sociology started using scientific methodology to investigate urban ethnic and immigrant communities, Du Bois conducted an empirical study of the black community in Philadelphia. His findings were published in his book The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), which Morris hails as “the first major empirical sociological study” (2015, 45). However, the early Chicago School sociologists failed to acknowledge Du Bois’s contributions in their work.

Even though Du Bois received his doctorate from Harvard, he was denied an academic position at a prestigious American university because of his race. He pursued his scholarly career at Atlanta University, a historically black college, where he established a sociology department with a strong empirical research program. Even though most American sociologists ignored Du Bois’s work, he gained a famous advocate in Germany—Max Weber. Weber invited Du Bois to write an article on caste relations for his journal (Archiv für Sozialwissensachaft und Sozialpolitik) and tried to have a translation of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk published in Germany. Weber shared Du Bois’s position that race was a social construct shaped by socioeconomic conditions, not biology. Like Du Bois, Weber was interested in the intersections between class and race relations and agreed that the color line was a critical problem of their era. Morris suggests that Weber’s theory of caste and status groups, as well as his embrace of cultural pluralism later in his career, was influenced by the work of Du Bois. ●

Visit edge.sagepub.com/ritzeressentials4e to

 Listen to Morris’s lecture on the relevance of Du Bois in science, the civil rights movement, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

 Read an article about Morris and his book The Scholar Denied that appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

Another of Du Bois’s important ideas is double consciousness. By this he meant that black Americans have a sense of “two-ness,” of being American and of being African American. Black Americans want to tear down the barriers that confront them but do not want to give up their identity, traditions, knowledge, and experience. That is, black Americans, including former President Barack Obama (Terrill 2015), are both inside and outside dominant, white American society.

Ask Yourself

How many “consciousnesses” do you have? What are they? In what ways are they sources of satisfaction for you? In what ways do they stress you?