The Du Boisian Challenge

Sociology is living through an epistemological and ethical reckoning. At the center of this intellectual uprising is William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Although long silenced by the discipline’s racist and colonial logics, generations of Black and other critical scholars have ushered a return to, and recovery of, Du Bois’s sociological thought and work. Rather than focusing on his empirical and theoretical contributions to sociology, The Du Boisian Challenge instead grapples with Du Boisian questions of methodology and methods—the intellectual frameworks and normative orientations that guide the questions we pursue, the way we organize and conduct our research, and how we conceive the relationship between theory and data, scholarship and society. Drawing inspiration from Du Bois’s evolving research program, this volume enlists Du Boisian sociologists to reflect on the methodological sensibilities, practices, and commitments that have informed their diverse analyses of racialized modernity and colonial capitalism. These contributors offer indispensable insights to the ongoing conversation about the methodological foundations and potential of contemporary Du Boisian sociology.