Epistemic Marginalization and Methodology 50 Years after The Death of White Sociology

Abstract

In its original form, the following essay was the closing keynote address of the annual meeting of the Sociology of Education Association (SEA), held in Monterey, California on February 20, 2023. That year was the 50th anniversary of both the founding of SEA and the publication of the landmark volume, The Death of White Sociology. In commemorating these events and assessing how the field of sociology has changed 50 years later, this essay juxtaposes the promise of critical quantitative and computational methods (CritQCM) with the problems of epistemic marginalization highlighted in the volume. After describing the rich theoretical diversity foregrounding the critical quantitative and computational movement, the discussion elaborates on three epistemic threats to the aim of the movement to develop and practice counter-hegemonic methodologies. These threats include (1) the qualitative-quantitative divide, (2) White norms and Black epistemic rigor, and (3) normative theory privileging. The essay concludes by contextualizing these epistemic threats with the nation’s current challenge of anomie, which has destabilized normative processes of knowledge recognition, and considers ways CritQCM might respond.