Calculating the Incalculable: W.E.B. Du Bois and Racialized Modernity

For W.E.B. Du Bois sociology is the study of human agency, how to “calculate the incalculable,” and how racialized structures of power affect agency. Students of sociology are typically taught three different approaches to the analysis of modernity: Weberian rationalization, Marxist commodification of labor, and Durkheimian division of labor. For Du Bois, the defining feature of modernity was the process through which people and groups were assigned social status based on physical characteristics—in other words, racialization. In this class, we explore Du Bois’s critique of racialized modernity and apply it to the study of contemporary social problems.