IV ISA Forum of Sociology (February 23-28, 2021)

67

Race Now and then: Comparative Political Sociologies

Abstract Submissions Closed

RC05 Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity (host committee)

Language: English

Session Type: Oral

The political sociology of race has undergone a significant reconceptualization in recent years.  This is the result, most centrally, of developments in racial politics themselves, both in particular countries and on a global scale. It is also the outcome of a proliferation of new studies, both broad and deep, that allow us at least to begin the long process of centering race in the long arc of human history and the wide range of contemporary social science. In regard to the former set of determinations: racial politics have been rocked by the reactionary upsurge in recent years. Backlash to the democratic and anti-imperialist upsurge of the early post-WWII decades has achieved unanticipated gains and threatened people of color all over the world. In respect to the latter point: mainstream approaches to the political sociology of race, even those previously considered "progressive" and "inclusive," have proved incapable of sustaining themselves, much less of providing convincing accounts, in response to the various configurations of racially repressive and newly empowered racist regimes that are evident today. Therefore a new political sociology of race and racism, oriented by more radical commitments both political and intellectual, is developing as scholars committed to liberation seek to uproot the traditional political sociology of race. The papers presented here are some promising attempts to forge new understandings.