George Steinmetz - The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire

THE COLONIAL ORIGINS OF MODERN SOCIAL THOUGHT

Princeton Modern Knowledge

MICHAEL D. GORDIN,
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, SERIES EDITOR

For a list of titles in the series, go to https://press.princeton.edu/series/princeton-modern-knowledge.

The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought

FRENCH SOCIOLOGY AND THE OVERSEAS EMPIRE

George Steinmetz

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

Copyright 2023 by Princeton University Press

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Steinmetz, George, 1957 author.

Title: The colonial origins of modern social thought : French sociology and the overseas empire / George Steinmetz.

Description: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2023] | Series: Princeton modern knowledge | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022042601 (print) | LCCN 2022042602 (ebook) | ISBN 9780691237428 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691237435 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: SociologyFranceHistory20th century. | FranceColonies.

Classification: LCC HM477.F8 S74 2023 (print) | LCC HM477.F8 (ebook) | DDC 301.0944dc23/eng/20221018

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042601

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042602

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British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

Editorial: Eric Crahan and Barbara Shi

Production Editorial: Nathan Carr

Jacket/Cover Design: Hunter Finch

Production: Danielle Amatucci

Publicity: William Pagdatoon

Copyeditor: Karen Verde

To Julia, and to the memory of my father

1. xi
2. xv

HAVING WRITTEN ABOUT EMPIRES and states, and the history of sociology, I decided more recently to combine these themes. This led me back to some of the places where I was first initiated into archival research while writing my masters thesis on social movements of unemployed workers in Paris during the 1860s and 1870s, and to some of the historians whose work I first read at that time. Among other things, this led me back to Pierre Bourdieu, who had sent me a copy of his book Algeria 1960 and a kind note in response to my sending him a paper based on my masters thesis. I abandoned French history (though not Bourdieu) for a long time, before returning to it in this book.

I have worked for so many years on the present book that I have accumulated many debts. For critique and stimulation, I am enduringly thankful to colleagues in North America, especially Julia Adams, Margaret Buckner, Craig Calhoun, Chas Camic, Joshua Cole, Alice Conklin, Frederick Cooper, Mathieu Desan, Geoff Eley, Didier Fassin, Marcel Fournier, Julian Go, Phil Gorski, Zine Magubane, Michael Mann, Suzanne Marchand, Ann Orloff, Orlando Patterson, William Sewell, Jr., the late Tyler Stovall, Helen Tilley, Xiaohong Xu, Loc Wacquant, Jonathan Wyrtzen, the late Immanuel Wallerstein, all of the contributors to the volume Sociology and Empire, and the many participants in our Empire dinners at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association. In France, I received invaluable advice from the late Georges Balandier and from Remy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Christophe Bonneuil, Jrme Bourdieu, Christophe Charle, Alain Chenu, Jean Copans, Yves Dezalay, Julien Duval, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Olivier Godechot, Johan Heilbron, Choukri Hmed, Paul Lagneau-Ymonet, Christine Laurire, Jacques Lautman, Thomas Le Bianic, Brigitte Mazon, Franine Muel-Dreyfus, Amn Prez, Catherine Perls, Ioana Popa, Franck Poupeau, Anne Rocha Perazzo, Gisle Sapiro, Christian Topalov, Batrice Touchelay, Roland Waast, and Tassadit Yacine. In Germany and Austria, I am grateful to Manuela Boatc (Freiburg), Sebastian Conrad (Berlin), Andreas Eckert (Berlin), Wolfgang Knbl (Hamburg), Anne Kwaschik (Konstanz), Klaus Lichtblau (Frankfurt am Main), Klaus Schlichte (Bremen), and Steffan Stetter (Munich), and to Christian Day, Christian Fleck, and Stephan Moebius of the Karl-Franzens-Universitt Graz. During my lecture visit to Australia, I received generous hospitality and intellectual stimulation from Robert Aldrich and Raewyn Connell in Sydney, and Peter Beilharz, Ghassan Hage, Trevor Hogan, and Sian Supski in Melbourne. During my research trips to Britain, I have greatly appreciated visits with George Lawson, Monika Krause, and Tarak Barkawi at the London School of Economics, and the late Michael Banton. Other interlocutors for me during this project include Kristoffer Kropp (Roskilde, Denmark), Alexander M. Semyonov (St. Petersburg), and Miguel Bandeira Jernimo (Lisbon).

I received feedback on my book-in-progress from audiences at a number of institutions: Bielefeld University (Germany); University of CaliforniaBerkeley; University of Chicago; Central European University (Budapest, now Vienna); Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin); Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach); cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales (Paris); Gttingen University (Germany); Harvard University; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton); LaTrobe University (Melbourne); University of Lisbon, Institute of Social Sciences; National Research University Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg); New School for Social Research; Northwestern University; University of ParisDauphine; Princeton University; University of Minnesota; University of Sydney; University of Toronto; University of WisconsinMadison; and Yale University. I presented material from this book at the meetings of the American, British, and German Sociological Associations, the American Historical Association, and the Social Science History Association, and at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research during my lectures in January 2020 for the Siegfried Landshut Prize. I wish to thank my hosts and audiences at all of these events.

I received generous financial support for researching and writing this book. I was able to develop the idea for the book during three visiting professorships at the cole des hautes tudes en sciences sociales in Paris in 2007, 2012, and 2014. I received funding from the Letters, Arts, and Sciences Division of the University of Michigan and the American Sociological Association/National Science Foundation Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach. A visiting professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies provided an ideal setting to begin writing the book, in 20172018, during which time I enjoyed the hospitality of Didier Fassin, Joan Scott, and Michael Walzer and the comradeship of all of the Members. My research leave at the American Academy in Berlin in 2020 allowed me to complete the first draft of the book. I am grateful to the staff of the American Academy for making our stay there so productive and enjoyable, and for being so accommodating when the global pandemic forced us to interrupt our visit and return precipitously to the United States.