Full Description
The Routledge International Handbook on the Histories of Sociology starts from a simple but powerful conviction: there is not one history of sociology, but a multitude of histories written in different parts of the world, from diverse standpoints, and through different theoretical and methodological lenses.
Bringing together 20 scholars from eleven countries, the volume challenges dominant narratives about the discipline's key figures, locations, and topics, and advances a program of feminist and postcolonial rewriting. Organized in two complementary sections, the handbook combines methodological reflection with substantive historical analysis. The first section develops theoretical and methodological strategies for writing and rewriting disciplinary histories, while the second presents original regional and transnational studies of sociology across Africa, South and East Asia, South and Central America, Russia, and beyond—alongside critical reflections on colonial entanglements, canon formation, and knowledge circulation.
Framed by a shift "from canon to connection," the volume reimagines disciplinary history as a relational and pedagogical resource rather than a fixed archive of classics, thus setting the research agenda for the years to come. Designed for researchers, instructors, and both undergraduate and graduate students, it provides historical depth, theoretical orientation, and methodological inspiration, encouraging readers to approach the histories of sociology as an open, contested, and collective endeavour.
Contents
1. From Canon to Connection: (Re)Writing Histories of Sociology Section I: Writing and Rewriting Histories of Sociology. Methodologies, Theories, and Methods. 2. Reflexive Sociology and History of Sociology: Methodology and Research Programme 3. Rewriting Histories of Sociology from a Feminist Perspective: From Recovery to Rewriting 4. Qualitative Rewriting of Disciplinary Histories. Feminist and Postcolonial Orientations 5. Quantitative Methods as Reflexive Epistemology for Rewriting Disciplinary Histories Section II: Histories of Sociology Across the Globe 6. Sociology in South Asia: Big Structures, Large Processes, and the Minutiae of Everyday Practice 7. Colonialism, Empire and European Sociology 8. Sociology in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives 9. Colonial Sciences and the History of Sociologies: A Genealogical Perspective 10. Black Women Sociology: Reclaiming Epistemologies and Rewriting Disciplinary Histories 11. Non-Western Epistemologies 12. Histories of Sociology in East Asia 13. Translation and Knowledge Circulation in the History of Sociology 14. Histories of Sociology in South and Central America 15. What is (trans-)national in the history of sociology? 16. The Matilda Effect in Action: How Herta Herzog's Contributions Were Erased from Canonical Narratives 17. Sociologists, Colonialism, and Postcolonial Critique 18. Imperialist Decolonizers, Totalitarian Liberals: The Strange History of Sociology in Russia
