Book by: Julian Go

Review by:
​Timothy M. Gill,
​Tulane University

In his excellent new treatise, Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory, Julian Go places sociology in dialogue with postcolonial theory and pursues an explicit aim of reconciling the two. This no easy feat; as Go points out, “social theory was born from and for empire, post-colonial thought was born against it” (p. 1). Yet, despite sociology’s imperial origins, Go argues that the solution is not to sideline the discipline—or social science more broadly, as some postcolonial scholars have suggested. Instead, he believes individuals can repurpose the sociological enterprise by taking inspiration from postcolonial thinkers and overcoming the epistemological, methodological, and onto-logical deficits that continue to distort the field. What is more, he argues that postcolonial thought remains premised upon a sociological minimalism and can, likewise, renew itself by more directly engaging with social theory.​
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Although sociology has largely become the progressive poster-child of academia, the discipline indeed possesses imperial origins. Not only was sociology birthed during an aggressively imperial moment within Europe and the United States (the mid-to-late 1800s), but many of the discipline’s progenitors championed imperial endeavors. Franklin Giddings, for instance, received the first full sociology professorship in the United States and served as president of the American Sociological Society. Giddings believed that sociology should, in part, concern itself with “rule over alien peoples.” Other prominent sociologists of the day maintained similarly imperial visions, including Charles Horton Cooley and Lester Ward.

Reviewed by: Benjamin Lamb-Books

In his latest book, Alexander Wendt, the well-known political scientist and International Relations theorist, ventures across disciplinary borders to rethink social ontology through the counterintuitive principles of quantum physics. Wendt’s proposal is radical, with radical implications for sociology. At stake is sociology’s classically-inherited ontological commitment to Newtonianism, a commitment that manifests itself in beliefs that social causation should always be mechanical, local, and materialist.

Wendt’s quantum social ontology goes something like this: People are “walking wave-functions.” In other words, the human brain is a quantum operating system, protected by organic boundaries and highly skilled in processes of quantum computing that we more commonly call memory and feeling (Experience), information-processing (Cognition), and agency/freedom (Will). Wendt’s three quantum faculties, Experience, Cognition, and Will, are the constitutive components of his theory of “quantum mind” as highlighted in the book’s title.