José Itzigsohn

Professor
203 Maxcy Hall
401-863-2528
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University

Research Interests

Du Boisian Sociology, Decolonizing Sociological Theory, Racialized Modernity, Racial and Colonial Capitalism, Alternative and Solidarity Economies

Biography

The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois. Book launch event:

I am a Du Boisian sociologist, that is, a sociologist that aims to rethink the discipline along the lines proposed by W. E. B. Du Bois. The way I understand this—as Karida Brown and I wrote in The Sociology of W. E. B Du Bois—is a discipline that is rooted in a historical understanding of the present, that is global and relational, and takes racialized modernity as the object of its work. Within this broad approach to the discipline my specific interests are threefold. 

First, I am interested in social theory. In this field, I have been working to develop an antiracist and anticolonial Du Boisian sociology. In addition, I aim to recover the Sociological thought of Anna Julia Cooper and develop a critique of the racial and colonial structures of knowledge in the discipline. 

Second, I am interested in the global intersection of class and race in racial and colonial capitalism. At this point, I am  looking specifically at the intersection of class and race in the US, and how this intersection affects the structural position and identity formation of different racialized groups. 

Finally, I work on alternative forms of economic organization, specifically how the marginalized of racial and colonial capitalism build informal and solidarity economies. My goal is to analyze different forms of organizing economic activities that can prefigure alternatives to the current socioeconomic order.