Disciplinary Futures

Reimagines how race, ethnicity, imperialism, and colonialism can be central to social science research
and methods

There is a growing consensus that the discipline of sociology and the social sciences broadly need to engage more thoroughly with the legacy and the present day of colonialism, Indigenous/settler colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism in the United States and globally. In Disciplinary Futures, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies.

With original essays from scholars such as Yến Lê Espiritu, Sunaina Maira, Hōkūlani K. Aikau, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Ben Carrington, Yvonne Sherwood, and Gilda L. Ochoa, among others, Disciplinary Futures offers concrete pathways for how the social sciences can expand from the limiting frameworks they traditionally use to study race and racism, namely: the black-white binary, the privileging of the nation-state, the fixation on the US mainland, the underappreciation of post- and settler-colonial studies, the liberal assumptions, and the limited conception of what constitutes data. In turn, the contributors reveal that sociology has many useful questions, methodologies, and approaches to offer scholars of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies. Disciplinary Futuresis an important work, one which renders these disciplines more intellectually expansive and thus better able to tackle urgent issues of injustice.

Nadia Y. Kim is Professor of Asian & American Studies, and by courtesy, Sociology, at Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA and Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA, both multi-award-winning.Dhingra Pawan :

Pawan Dhingra is Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies at Amherst College. He is a multiple award-winning author whose books include Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough.Nadia Y. Kim (Editor)
Nadia Y. Kim is Professor of Asian & American Studies, and by courtesy, Sociology, at Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA and Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA, both multi-award-winning.

Pawan Dhingra (Editor)
Pawan Dhingra is Associate Provost and Associate Dean of the Faculty and the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies at Amherst College. He is a multiple award-winning author whose books include Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough.

The important essays in this exciting interdisciplinary volume bring valuable insights from studies of race and immigration, disability, gender and sexuality, and Indigeneity to bear upon research and methods in sociology and the social sciences.”

This is a powerful collection that challenges sociologists to confront the epistemic violence that undergirds their discipline. It challenges race-neutral and nation-bound analysis of the experiences of people of color as it calls for a critical sociology that acknowledges the injuries of racism, settler-colonialism, and imperialism in everyday experiences. This is a must-read for anyone committed to dismantling inequality.

Much lip service is paid to the significance of engaging in inter- and multidisciplinary research, but surprisingly little or no attention is given to why it is important and how to do it. These issues are central to this volume. A diverse and stellar group of scholars illustrate how the discipline of sociology can be rethought, enriched, and expanded through a deep engagement with other disciplines. Their scholarship reveals the necessity for sociology to revitalize and reinvent itself in order to fully comprehend the positionality, experiences, and voices of racialized and marginalized groups.

The margins of sociology are at once its cutting edge. There we find innovative scholarship remaking the discipline through critical engagements with American, cultural, ethnic, gender and women's, Indigenous, postcolonial, and queer studies. A stocktaking and agenda-setting book, Disciplinary Futures brings empire, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, queer of color critique, white supremacy, and intersectionality from the periphery to the core of our concern. May sociology take heed.