The First World War and the Prospects of General Social Theory
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
2:15 – 3:15 PM
Buchanan Tower, Room 997, 1873 East Mall, UBC Vancouver
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Sociology as a distinctly generative science of society began to carve out a place for itself within academia in Europe and the United States from the 1880s onward. During its “founding years” (1870-1920), most prominent sociologists on either side of the Atlantic were actively concerned with formulating general social theories, often including imperial and global perspectives. This talk traces the sharp decline in the development of general social theory, in the context of the United States and in contrast to Europe, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Noting the lack of attention to the impact of World War I on the prospect of general social theory, I explore how influential sociologists and leading social science institutes in the United States were preoccupied with the ‘European War’ and its ramifications, in both direct and indirect relation with their neighbouring disciplines as well as their European counterparts, in ways that decisively shaped the prospects for a general social theory in American sociology.
Speaker Bio:
Babak Amini is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies (UBC). His research examines the impact of the First World War on the foundations of social sciences. He is the author of The Making of Council Democracy: State Transformation and Radical Possibilities (Routledge, 2024), “Gramsci’s dissidence beneath and beyond the First World War” (Journal of Classical Sociology, 24(4)), and “The French Edition of Capital in Germany, France, Anglophone Countries, and Japan” (Routledge, 2022), and co-editor of the special issue, “Social Theorists and the First World War” (with T. Kemple, Journal of Classical Sociology, 24(4)), and of Routledge Handbook of Marx’s Capital: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception (with M. Musto, Routledge, 2025).