Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor Emeritus of Sociology
geostein@umich.eduComparative and Historical Approaches; International Sociology; Politics and Social Change; Qualitative Approaches; Sociology of Culture; Theory, Knowledge, and Science; Sociology
Education/Degree:
Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, 1987
Highlighted Work and Publications
The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire
George Steinmetz
From the Publisher:
In this provocative and original retelling of the history of French social thought, George Steinmetz places the history and development of modern French sociology in the context of the French empire after World War II. Connecting the rise of all the social sciences with efforts by France and other imperial powers to consolidate control over their crisis-ridden colonies, Steinmetz argues that colonial research represented a crucial core of the renascent academic discipline of sociology, especially between the late 1930s and the 1960s. Sociologists, who ...
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The Social Sciences in the Looking-Glass: Studies in the Production of Knowledge
George Steinmetz, Didier Fassin (Princeton University)
From the Publisher:
In recent years, social scientists have turned their critical lens on the historical roots and contours of their disciplines, including their politics and practices, epistemologies and methods, institutionalization and professionalization, national development and colonial expansion, globalization and local contestations, and public presence and role in society. The Social Sciences in the Looking Glass offers current social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment. Examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal...
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Sociology and Empire: The Imperial Entanglements of a Discipline
George Steinmetz (ed.)
Description from Publisher: The revelation that the U.S. Department of Defense had hired anthropologists for its Human Terrain System project—assisting its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq—caused an uproar that has obscured the participation of sociologists in similar Pentagon-funded projects. As the contributors to Sociology and Empire show, such affiliations are not new. Sociologists have been active as advisers, theorists, and analysts of Western imperialism for more than a century.
The collection has a threefold agenda: to trace an intellectual history...
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The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa
George Steinmetz
Description from Publisher:
Germany’s overseas colonial empire was relatively short lived, lasting from 1884 to 1918. During this period, dramatically different policies were enacted in the colonies: in Southwest Africa, German troops carried out a brutal slaughter of the Herero people; in Samoa, authorities pursued a paternalistic defense of native culture; in Qingdao, China, policy veered between harsh racism and cultural exchange.
Why did the same colonizing power act in such differing ways? In The Devil’s Handwriting, George Steinmetz tackles this question through...
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