Colonialism and Modern Social Theory

Citation

Bhambra, G. K., & Holmwood, J. (2021). Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. Polity.

Chapter Summary

The book is short (about 270 pages) and argumentative. The publisher's description sets out its thesis: modern society and modern social theory both emerged in the context of European colonialism and empire, yet colonialism is missing from the concepts used to explain modernity, which are organised around the nation state and the capitalist economy. The authors read five founding figures against that omission, and a published review essay summarises how each chapter proceeds.

Introduction: Colonialism, Historiography, and Modern Social Theory

Going by the publisher's description, the introduction sets out the problem: the absence of colonialism and empire from sociology's accounts of modern society. The published contents list the title only, with no sections.

Chapter 1: Hobbes to Hegel: Europe and its Others

The first chapter places the later thinkers in a wider history of European political thought. According to the review essay, the authors argue that Hobbes and Locke profited directly from colonial activity and that liberalism rests on a "foundational exclusion of indigenous peoples". They also read the eighteenth-century stadial theories of Montesquieu, Hume and Adam Smith as presenting colonial encounters as meetings between peoples at different stages of development.

Chapter 2: Tocqueville: From the United States to Algeria

The chapter reads Democracy in America and The Ancien Régime and the Revolution on race and on the American and French revolutions. The authors argue that Tocqueville criticised the treatment of Native Americans and enslaved Africans yet supported French colonial expansion, and conclude with reference to Uday Singh Mehta that liberalism and imperialism are mutually constituted.

Chapter 3: Marx: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Class

Here Marx's treatment of colonialism as part of the "primitive accumulation" that precedes capitalism is questioned. The authors argue that this placed colonialism inside a stadial, Eurocentric history, hid the persistence of unfree labour and of a racialised division of labour, and makes Marx's concept of class hard to reconcile with a postcolonial sociology.

Chapter 4: Weber: Religion, Nation, and Empire

The chapter challenges the image of Weber as a value-free analyst by setting him in the politics of his time. It finds internal colonialism (the settlement of Germany's eastern border against Poles and Jews) and external colonialism (German expansion into Africa and the Pacific) behind his work, and argues that his ideal type of European modernity carried a normative claim about European progress that later "multiple modernities" work inherits.

Chapter 5: Durkheim: Modernity and Community

Colonialism is again largely absent, but the authors find resources in Durkheim: mechanical and organic solidarity read as forms found in varied combinations rather than as stages, and a view of religion as expressing positive forms of belonging within a secular state, with a plurality of religious solidarities. They conclude that Durkheim answered the "Jewish question" in France but not the "Muslim question".

Chapter 6: Du Bois: Addressing the Colour Line

The last thinker is the one most recently admitted to the canon. The authors present Du Bois's engagement with a society organised around racialised difference and argue that the local colour line in the United States was a consequence of a global colour line deriving from colonialism.

Conclusion: The Fictions of Modern Social Theory

The closing chapter draws the argument together as "five fictions": the idea of stages of society; liberty tied to the ownership of property; methodological nationalism; class defined by formally free labour; and sociology as universal, objective knowledge without reflection on its own historical context. The review essay stresses that the aim is reconstruction, not abandonment, of sociology.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapter 1

• Colonialism and empire as context: the claim that modern society and social theory cannot be understood apart from them.
• Stadial theory: the eighteenth-century idea that societies pass through stages of development, used here as a target of critique.
• Foundational exclusion: the argument that liberal ideas of liberty depended on excluding indigenous peoples.

Chapters 2 to 5

• Liberalism and imperialism: treated in the Tocqueville chapter as mutually constituted.
• Primitive accumulation and unfree labour: the Marx chapter's focus on colonialism's role in capitalism and on forms of labour that are not formally free.
• Internal and external colonialism: the Weber chapter's pair of terms for Germany's eastern border and its overseas expansion.
• Mechanical and organic solidarity: in the Durkheim chapter read as co-existing forms of solidarity.

Chapter 6 and Conclusion

• The colour line: Du Bois's term, here a global rather than a national structure.
• The five fictions: the Conclusion's summary of the assumptions the authors want sociology to revise.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A sustained single argument. The publisher describes a book that reads the canon for what it neglects and where it acknowledges colonialism "albeit inadequately". Each chapter takes one thinker, which makes the case traceable.
• Wider canon. Alongside Marx, Weber and Durkheim the authors add Tocqueville and Du Bois, and they begin with the earlier tradition from Hobbes to Hegel, as the contents show.
• Constructive aim. The Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences review essay (Ivarsson and Rud, 2022) emphasises that the book offers a starting point for reconstructing, not discarding, sociology's concepts. The reviews quoted by the publisher, from the Journal of Classical Sociology, Thesis Eleven and Soziopolis, call it a powerful, stimulating and elegant argument.

Limitations

• A selective canon. Six thinkers or groups are covered. Simmel, Mead, Parsons and other figures of the standard classical curriculum do not appear in the contents, so this book is not a survey.
• A thesis, not a neutral introduction. The book argues for a reconstruction of social theory, and its chapter-by-thinker plan assumes that readers already know the standard accounts of Marx, Weber and Durkheim against which it argues.
• Rereading rather than adding. The review essay contrasts the method with works such as Raewyn Connell's Southern Theory that bring non-European thinkers into the canon; this book works by reinterpreting the existing canon, so readers who want those other voices need further reading.

Where It Fits in the Course

The book belongs after a first encounter with the classical thinkers and works as a critical companion to them. Robert J. C. Young's Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction is a briefer way into postcolonial thought and Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks is a primary text on the psychology of colonial racism; neither is organised around the sociological canon. Gurminder Bhambra's own Rethinking Modernity develops the connected-histories argument on which this book builds, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies extends decolonial critique to research practice. Faye Harrison's anthology and Folúkẹ́ Adébísí's book on law apply decolonial critique to anthropology and legal knowledge.

Within the wider reading list, it pairs naturally with the classical reader on this list, Classical Sociological Theory, or with Durkheim's and Weber's single works, which can be read alongside Chapters 4 and 5.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates in social theory, postcolonial or decolonial sociology and the history of sociological thought, as well as readers in politics, history and development studies who follow debates about decolonising the curriculum. The chapter-by-thinker structure works best for readers who have already met Marx, Weber and Durkheim.

A practical reading plan:

• Start with the Introduction and the Conclusion to see the thesis and the "five fictions".
• Core: Chapters 2 to 5, each read soon after the thinker's own text (Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim), so that the authors' readings can be checked against the sources they cite.
• Then: Chapter 6 on Du Bois, and Chapter 1 as the wider intellectual history of political thought from Hobbes to Hegel.

Keep a running list of the claims about each thinker and ask what evidence from the original text supports or complicates them. The Kasetsart review essay is a short, open-access summary to read after the book, and its account of Bhambra's earlier work on connected sociologies explains the method behind the chapters.