Specifying Race: A Set Theoretic Analytical Framework for a Post Colonial Historical Sociology of Race

Luna Vincent, Northwestern University

Prominent sociological theorists of race have been arguing over whether to consider race through primarily materialist conceptual lenses or symbolic conceptual lenses for the last 30 plus years. These fault lines reflect analytical preferences of historical materialism associated with Marx and the symbolic interactionism of Weber. The symbolic interactionists critique the materialist analytic vantage point for essentializing race. This paper shows how the symbolic interactionist race concepts also deeply essentialize race, arguing that prioritizing either the material or the discursive dimension of race at the expense of the other deeply limits the capacity for race scholarship. This paper draws from the postcolonial sociological tradition and uses a set theoretic foundation to build an analytic framework for race that captures the symbolic and material dimensions of race rooting out the essentialism of prominent sociological race theorizing by focusing on race as a historical construction.

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 Presented in Session 121. Racial Echoes of Settler Colonialism