Emancipatory Sociology, Redefined
Note: Continuing the Miami Institute’s sociology forum, Elizabeth Adetiba argues that “Black feminist scholarship has long been treated as the exception in a discipline underpinned by whiteness, when it should actually be the rule.”
Coming to Sociology from undergraduate study in Political Science, my initial perception of the discipline was of a less-bounded and more powerful approach to understanding a wider array of sociopolitical issues. As I had experienced in political science, I no longer felt that I would need to struggle relating my research ideas about power and the multi-pronged systems of oppression to the four subfields of political theory, American politics, International Relations, and Comparative politics. Sociology, at that time, had wooed me over with the works of Dorothy Roberts, Patricia Hill Collins, and Ida B. Wells—the latter who, without formal sociological training, left an indelible mark on both the budding discipline and social science writ large. And so I embarked on my work within the discipline of Sociology with as much excitement and wide-eyed enthusiasm as a first-year graduate student could have.
Within a matter of weeks, however, my newfound fervor had come to an intense halt, only to be replaced within full-on disillusionment. The mainstream forefathers of the discipline (not including W.E.B. DuBois who, despite his prolific and dynamic scholarship, is often denied his rightful place as the founder of American sociology) openly espoused anti-Black and misogynistic rhetoric ideas, yet were still highly lauded due to theories and interventions that deepened understandings of society—so long as one removed race, gender, and sexuality from one’s perception of society, of course. I was taught to “look past” the violence of systematic exclusion and dehumanizing quotes for the purposes of capturing the ‘brilliance’ of their groundbreaking contributions. But how brilliant can a theory be if it can only explain large-scale societal phenomena by excluding dozens of marginalized groups? How could I consider Marx, Durkheim, and Weber the most impressive theorists of my field when little of what they posited during their lifetimes can explain the everyday conditions of oppression and violence that I, and many others like me, experience in my deeply-hued body?
I hit a crucial breaking point one day as I was standing in front of a whiteboard, marker in hand, teaching a group of bright-eyed, yet deeply perplexed undergraduates of the reasons why Durkheim’s approach to sociology is deemed “emancipatory”. Clearly, their idea of emancipation was far removed from that which Durkheim is hailed for.
“Emancipation, in this instance, refers to the shift away from philosophy and abstraction, and towards rationalized, objective knowledge. Unfortunately as it’s used here, this term doesn’t refer to freedom from oppressive institutions, such as slavery,” I explained, only to be met with more confusion and irritation. Many of my students occupied marginalized social identities, and were disappointed to learn that emancipatory sociology was really anything but. Yet, questions of freedom and unfreedom, liberation and oppression, and violence and resistance are still so relevant to our social world, that it is absolutely worth rescuing the concept of emancipatory sociology from the confines of whiteness, maleness, and European social thought. True emancipatory sociology, in my own opinion, can only be achieved through the reimagining of the aims of the discipline, the questions we choose to explore, and the methods by which we do so.
Sociology has long existed as a field of study that seeks to explain certain aspects of social life, but only those that spark the interest of dominant social groups. And much like the academy in general, only the ideas that do not challenge the dominance of those social groups are allowed to advance. It is my humble opinion that the current state of sociology is deeply antithetical to ideas of liberation. The status quo is damning—this is a discipline led by the elite, for the benefit of the elite. We are trained to study life or death social issues for the purposes of enlightening those who are high up within the ivory tower and far removed from the conditions of marginalization, and never for the explicit goal of ending oppression. While, to some, this may seem as an unfair characterization, one only has to look at the social identities of the top sociologists of both today and yesteryear. Whiteness, and the standards, social norms, and intellectual perspectives associated with it, pervades every inch of our discipline—even when it comes to social issues that affect non-whites. While women sociologists, in the vast majority of cases, are at the helm of new research around gender and sexuality, rarely are the frameworks invoked expansive and intersectional enough to apply to how Black women, Latina women, Asian women, and Native American women experience those same issues. This is especially true from my viewpoint as a Black woman; issues of workplace harassment, gender-based violence, and gender-related issues of economic inequality are studied and written from the white female perspective. The most “progressive” articles offer a paragraph or two (but sometimes just a sentence) to acknowledge the role racial and class identity play in the way these issues are experienced.
How remarkable, that the lived experiences of women who exist at the nexus of oppressing, marginalizing systems like misogyny, racism and white supremacy, capitalism, and queerphobia are so often whittled down to little more than a footnote.
A truly emancipatory sociology should honor the theoretical contributions of the Combahee River Collective, a group of radical Black queer feminists to whom the phrase “identity politics” can be attributed. Of all the lines of poignant analysis within their highly acclaimed (at least in Black feminist circles) 1977 statement, one stands out as particularly relevant to the project of liberation:
“If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”
As the conditions of society continue to deteriorate around the world, the discipline must commit to advancing knowledge for the purposes of liberation. White supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy, in addition to the homophobia, xenophobia and transphobia that so often stem from them, are deadly. We can no longer afford to continue viewing them as “special topics” or “hot button issues”—they are the status quo, and they lead millions to suffering and premature death. As the Combahee River Collective Statement contends, any commitment to real emancipatory sociology must stem from an approach to scholarship that prioritizes the issues of society’s most dispossessed. Those at the margins must take their rightful place in the center. This extends far beyond the confines of the West, and must include those in the global majority who are subjected to the everyday violence of neo-colonialism and imperialism as well.
Our discipline must also reject both the increasing desire to prioritize quantification over other methods of inquiry and the blind deference to data science as a means of achieving the flawed goal of “objectivity”. While codes and algorithms are hailed as “the new frontier” of social science research, sociologist Ruha Benjamin highlights in her work Race After Technology (2019), the dangers that an increased reliance on technology and big data can perpetuate for already-marginalized groups. Yes, innovation can yield many benefits, but if we are to commit to a truly emancipatory sociology, we must resist that which favors the existence of the powerful while subjecting those at the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder to more exploitation and oppression.
Furthermore, any commitment to advancing a liberatory future must also take care to be intimately familiar with the lessons of the past. As sociologist Sabrina Strings demonstrates in her groundbreaking work Fearing the Black Body (2019), so much of the complex, interconnected nature of oppression many people are faced with today cannot be resolved without dedicating more scholarship to understanding how those mechanisms were created, what conditions are necessary for their continuity across time and space, and how to effectively remedy their impact.
Ironically, the discipline of sociology already possesses that which is required to transform itself from a field that has actively contributed to the oppression of many, into a field that aligns itself more closely with liberation. Black feminist scholarship has long been treated as the exception in a discipline underpinned by whiteness, when it should actually be the rule. Benjamin, Strings, the Combahee River Collective and many others not mentioned in this piece remind us, in their own unique ways, of the importance of revisiting history and the constant need to think deeply and critically as we prepare to step into the promises of the future. They show that, as rigid and established as sociology is, when utilized for the purposes of empowering the many and not the few, the insights, methods, and theories within it have the possibility of leading us towards a better world.
-Elizabeth Adetiba
Elizabeth Adetiba is currently a 4th year doctoral student and NSF GRFP fellow in Columbia University's Department of Sociology. Her research sits at the intersection of race and ethnicity, sexuality, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the sociology of knowledge, She is an alum of the University of Chicago, where she graduated with honors. Prior to Columbia, Elizabeth was a Fulbright U.S. Grantee in New Zealand, where she conducted research on the use of alternative justice processes as responses to adjudicating incidents sexual violence. Formerly a journalist, her writing has been featured in The Nation, Slate, In These Times, SB Nation, HuffPost, The Black Youth Project, and Splinter.
