Locating the history of sociology: Inequality, exclusion, and diversity

Abstract

The history of sociology, until recently, has been the history of sociology in a few countries - France, Germany, Great Britain, the USA, and perhaps Italy. A review of a local library selection of history of sociology books illustrates this statement. Recent efforts have started to discuss why this is so. These deconstruct the self-sufficient narrative of sociology as being a reflection of an exclusive and self-contained European modernity characterized by moments such as the Enlightenment, the French or Industrial Revolutions. The argument is put forth that the discipline has remained strongly divided into centers and peripheries of knowledge production and circulation; that North Atlantic hegemony has been fostered by the introduction of bibliometric indicators based on ISI Web of Science; and that teaching and the socialization of new generations of sociologists into the discipline have a decisive role in perpetuating unequal perceptions of knowledge. Thorough critiques of the limited scope of the history of sociology have been accompanied by attempts to highlight counterhegemonic potentials and to diversify its legacy. Academic knowledge aspires to certain degrees of generality, even in the social sciences. This chapter deals with the fact that despite the epistemic pretension to produce generally valid bodies of knowledge, the places of production and circulation of knowledge as well as unequal relationships between those places have shaped the history of sociology. Furthermore, location has an impact on the way this history is written, as well as the way in which this history is perceived by scholars. This chapter outlines the extent to which and how the mechanisms of place have shaped the history of sociology, the epistemic effects they have produced, and the resistances which have emerged against the established perception of the discipline and the writing of its history.