Search results for ""author christopher a. mcauley""

Despite the extensive scholarship on Max Weber (1864–1920) and W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), very little of it examines the contact between the two founding figures of Western sociology. Drawing on their correspondence from 1904 to 1906, and comparing the sociological work that they produced during this period and afterward, The Spirit vs. the Souls: Max Weber, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Politics of Scholarship examines for the first time the ideas that Weber and Du Bois shared on topics such as sociological investigation, race, empire, unfree labor, capitalism, and socialism. What emerges from this examination is that their ideas on these matters clashed far more than they converged, contrary to the tone of their letters and to the interpretations of the few scholars who have commented on the correspondence between Weber and Du Bois. Christopher McAuley provides close readings of key texts by the two scholars, including Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, to demonstrate their different views on a number of issues, including the economic benefits of unfree labor in capitalism. The book addresses the distinctly different treatment of the two figures's political sympathies in past scholarship, especially that which discredits some of Du Bois's openly antiracist academic work while failing to consider the markedly imperialist-serving content of some of Weber's. McAuley argues for the acknowledgment and demarginalization of Du Bois's contributions to the scholarly world that academics have generally accorded to Weber. This book will interest students and scholars of black studies, history, and sociology for whom Du Bois and Weber are central figures.

Read more less

Born in Trinidad in 1901, Oliver Cromwell Cox emigrated to the United States in 1919, where he remained until his death in 1974. After earning advanced degrees in economics and sociology from the University of Chicago, Cox established himself as an impressive, but controversial, sociologist. His best-known work, Caste, Class, and Race (1948), was the first of five books that Cox would publish. In spite of his numerous scholarly contributions in the areas of social theory, political economy, and historical sociology, Cox’s significance has remained relatively unacknowledged in recent decades. In this intellectual biography, Christopher A. McAuley seeks to change that. McAuley’s approach to Cox’s life and work is shaped by his belief that Cox’s Caribbean upbringing and background gave him an unorthodox perspective on race, capitalism, and social change. Part 1 of the book chronicles Cox’s life in Trinidad and the United States. Part 2 analyzes Cox’s theory and history of the development of capitalism from thirteenth-century Venice to twentieth-century America. Part 3 provides an exposition of Cox’s typology of race relations, as well as his thoughts on the anti-Asian movement in California and the differences between black and Jewish experiences in the West. The last section of the book focuses on Cox’s theory of social transformation, highlighting his rejection of ethnic nationalism in favor of evolutionary socialism. The Mind of Oliver C. Cox offers a much needed analysis of Cox’s important scholarly writings as well as insight into the life of this remarkable figure.

Read more less