Against Epistemic Apartheid

Although the life and work of W.E.B. Du Bois have in recent years begun to receive the attention they are due, Du Bois's radical sociology remains largely unrecognized. Du Bois was not only a founder of the field and a radical practitioner; he was also a thunderous critic of sociology. He saw that the field's complacency in the face of human suffering, its collusion with oppression and its indifference to genocide, deeply undermined sociology's quest to understand social relationships and social structures. Against Epistemic Apartheid vindicates Du Bois as a theorist of an alternative sociology, a field oriented to the darker peoples of the earth, to women, to the urban slum and rural poverty, to the prison and the school. In the spirit of Du Bois, Rabaka questions the integrity of sociology. He understands Du Bois as an engaged scholar who, seeing the ways of power from outside, from the South and the East so to speak, developed an alternative sociology that we very much need today. -- Howard Winant, director, Center for New Racial Studies, University of California Santa Barbara; author, The World Is A Ghetto: Race and Democracy Since World War II
This is a powerful book! Professor Rabaka not only shows how DuBois produced against all odds an alternative epistemology to challenge the social scientific discourse of his period. And since the 'epistemic apartheid' remains firmly in place, we all would be well-served by understanding the DuBoisian episteme. -- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University; author of Racism Without Racists
We, sociologists in particular, have long been waiting for deep scholarship on Du Bois. This book may well be the first of a new wave in that much-needed project—one that does more than make clever allusion to Du Bois' two-souls poetry. Against Epistemic Apartheid seriously examines the critical traditions from Du Bois to Fanon and Foucault that expose the disciplinary decadence of sociology and other of the human sciences. -- Charles Lemert, Andrus Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University
Reiland Rabaka offers a much-needed critique of sociological technique and practice, and he proposes a corrective to the long-standing malicious negation of Du Bois’s prophetic and progressive sociological perspective.... As we come to the end of this book, we are left satisfied, convinced, and enlightened by the author’s characterization of Du Bois as a 'transdisciplinary human scientist and critical social theorist.' ... Finally, this volume is necessary reading for the newly reinvigorated interest in Du Bois’s contribution to sociology, history, philosophy, political science, economics, education, criminology, and religion. * American Journal of Sociology *
This book is well written and draws heavily from primary sources. Recognizing that Du Bois’ interdisciplinary approach to the study of society was first introduced at a time when sociology’s academic boundaries were being established and canonized, Rabaka argues that Du Bois’ social studies are transdisciplinary.... Providing a comprehensive overview of Du Bois’ extensive social discourse, Rabaka’s Against Epistemic Apartheid makes a significant contribution to the history of sociology, critical race theory, and Africana studies. * Contemporary Sociology *