Decolonizing the Civil Sphere: The Politics of Difference, Imperial Erasures, and Theorizing from History

Abstract

This article rethinks sociological approaches to difference and inclusion. It argues that civil sphere theory replicates colonial dynamics through abstracting civil codes from their role in colonial governance. Through a case study of French colonial Algeria, the article illuminates the historical co-constitution of the French Republic and the colonial subject. This imperial history explains how civil codes came about through the same social process as the domination of the colonial other. Given these entangled histories, building solidarity requires we move beyond a process of civil repair that rests on incorporation to one of civil construction, which takes account of historical wrongs and the colonial layer of meaning embedded in categories of civil discourse. Theorizing from suppressed histories allows us to question the content of the civil sphere’s classificatory system and turn our attention to a resignification of the core group in the wake of colonial histories.

Postscript: Four Ways Race and Capitalism Can Advance Urban Sociology

“…The legacies of colonialism for present-day conditions of cities and the countryside have been long studied seemingly in every region of the world except the United States (Acemoglu and Robinson 2013;Go 2008;Hammer 2020;Rodney 2018;Steinmetz 2007). This fact makes the omission of colonialism from mainstream research on racial and economic inequality in urban sociology all the more glaring.…”

“…Mahoney’s (2010) research on urban development in Latin America also serves as a useful model to engage, as his historical analysis illuminated the importance of pre-colonial law for the different forms of postcolonial urban development that took place in Latin American cities. The legacies of colonialism for present-day conditions of cities and the countryside have been long studied seemingly in every region of the world except the United States (Acemoglu and Robinson 2013; Go 2008; Hammer 2020; Rodney 2018; Steinmetz 2007). This fact makes the omission of colonialism from mainstream research on racial and economic inequality in urban sociology all the more glaring.…”

Colonial Modernity in Historical Sociology

“…In fact, in addition to silencing these voices as theorists of modernity, the experiences of the colonized and racialized often became the objects of study for social scientists. Conversely, European writers positioned themselves as observers of the modern world and attempted to analyze their environment without acknowledging or understanding their own fundamental predicament (Go 2016(Go , 2020: that they themselves were the product of colonial modernity and that their own theories of the world was shaped by a particular position in the global, imperial order (Connell 1997;Hammer 2020;Itzigsohn and Brown 2020;Magubane 2017).…”

“…For example, citizenship does not mean the same everywhere, neither does democracy. And citizenship and democracy have been historically racialized, and to understand these entanglements, we need to understand seemingly abstract language in its colonial context (Hammer 2020).…”

The Civil Sphere and Social Class

“…Itzigsohn and Brown, 2015: 245-246; Morris, 2007), colonialism (e.g. Hammer, 2020), ethnic incorporation (Goldberg, 2015; Turner, 2008), and power-realism vs. democratic idealism (e.g. Antonio, 2007; Gartman, 2007; McLennan, 2004; Morris, 2007).…”