Abstract
This article contributes to a movement to interrogate the history and foundation of sociology. The current hegemonic narrative credits a few European men for establishing sociology as a mechanism for using science to understand social conditions amid the rise of industrialization and modern capitalism. This hegemonic story defines positivism as a central concern in the foundation of the discipline, justifying its continued dominance in U.S. sociology and using binary logic to position non-positivist approaches as subordinate and unscientific. In this article, we explore the ways early Black sociologists integrated positivist and non-positivist approaches in their work to arrive at truth and discuss ways that transcending binary distinctions facilitated rich developments in their understanding of social relations and institutions. We draw on existing scholarship to argue that privileging binary logic helped justify these scholars’ marginalization in the sociological canon and conclude with recommendations to move the discipline beyond the positivism/non-positivism binary as an important mechanism for transformation. In so doing, we contribute to the growing body of scholarship aimed at correcting the history of sociology and reimagining the foundational works and epistemological approaches to foster liberation within the discipline.
There is a social current to interrogate the sociological “canon” and reassess the discipline’s history as part of a broader reckoning with racism, sexism, and colonialism within sociology. This project involves correcting the hegemonic foundation story, which credits sociology’s development to a few European men who sought to create an academic discipline to understand their changing conditions amid the rise of industrialization and modern capitalism (Connell 1997; Magubane 2016; McDonald 2019). The hegemonic foundation story creates a revisionist history that erases the segregated development of white and Black U.S. sociologies and the “pro-slavery imperialism” (Magubane 2016) of early white U.S. sociologists by situating the history of sociology in Europe (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Ladner 1973; Magubane 2016; Phelan 1989; Wright 2002, 2020). It also establishes the dominant philosophical and methodological perspectives and debates within the field (Connell 1997; Go 2020). This hegemonic foundation story, as presented in mainstream sociological theory textbooks (e.g., Cuff et al. 2016; Ritzer and Stepnisky 2018; Turner 2013), positions positivism as a dominant epistemological approach to knowledge creation that was central to the emergence and legitimation of the discipline. This privileging of positivism in sociological thought creates a dichotomy between positivism and non-positivism and positions other epistemological approaches to knowledge production as subordinate, subjective, and unscientific (Collins 2000; Go 2020; Harris 2021; Rawls 2018).
Although there is debate over the definition of positivism and correspondingly, whose work is represented by the term (Gartrell and Gartrell 2002; Halfpenny 1982), the hegemonic foundation story presents positivism as a philosophical approach to knowledge production that utilizes scientific methods to discover objective truths about the world (Turner 2013). These truths are understood as having objective reality, existing independent of human awareness of them, and being discernable through empirical observation. This philosophical approach corresponds with research methodologies that seek to unveil objective facts about the social world, favoring quantitative analyses that prioritize observable patterns and trends over people’s subjective perspectives and interpretations (Cuff et al. 2016; Gartrell and Gartrell 2002). Thus, positivism is relevant in the hegemonic foundation story not only for its philosophical orientation in defining what constitutes knowledge but for its corresponding methodological implications. This foundation story promotes “epistemic exclusion” (Go 2020) by excluding the content of marginalized scholars’ work and the epistemological and methodological approaches they created and employed (Collins 2000; Go 2020; Morris 2015; Wright 2002, 2020; Young and Deskins 2001). It situates positivism as the predominant mode of thought throughout the history of sociology, thereby perpetuating both the continued dominance of a white logic that prioritizes quantitative research methods and the binary between positivist and non-positivist approaches (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Carter et al. 2022; Harris 2021; Rawls 2018; Steinmetz 2005a, 2005b; Zuberi 2001; Zuberi and Bonilla-Silva 2008).
In this article, we interrogate the positivism/non-positivism binary as central to the hegemonic foundation story and the segregation of white and Black sociologies. We provide an overview of current scholarship aiming to correct the hegemonic foundation story to show how positivism came to be championed as the dominant epistemology in early sociological thinking. We highlight the corresponding methodological implications of this construction and examine the logical contradictions in dichotomizing epistemological, methodological, and racial distinctions in sociology’s foundation story. We then provide an overview of positivist thought as it is envisioned in current classical theory textbooks, focusing on the works of Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, and discuss how their work is contrasted with that of Max Weber, which is described as non-positivist. We then explore selected works of early Black sociologists to examine how their epistemological and methodological approaches inadvertently undermined the binary distinction between positivist and non-positivist approaches in their quest for truth. We contend that privileging positivist approaches justifies these scholars’ continued marginalization in the sociological canon and conclude with recommendations to move the discipline beyond the positivism/non-positivism binary as an important mechanism for inclusivity. In doing so, we contribute to growing scholarship aimed at correcting sociology’s history and reimagining the foundational works and epistemological and methodological approaches to foster transformation and liberation within the discipline (Aldridge 2009; Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Collins 2000; Connell 1997, 2007, 2018; Feagin and Vera 2020; Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021; Go 2020; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998; McDonald 2019; Morris 2015; Reed 2006; Wright 2002, 2020; Young and Deskins 2001).
The Emergence of Positivism as the Dominant Epistemological Approach in the Hegemonic Foundation Story
The hegemonic foundation story is the history of sociology as it is taught in college classrooms and presented in mainstream classical theory textbooks. Despite current efforts to acknowledge the contributions of Black and women scholars to the history of the discipline, mainstream classical theory books continue to present the origin of sociology as an accomplishment of a few European men. For example, E. C. Cuff et al.’s (2016) Perspectives in Sociology and Jonathan H. Turner’s (2013) Theoretical Sociology do not include any women or Black scholars in their classical theory sections. Turner acknowledges the omission, stating that contemporary efforts at inclusion reflect “political correctness.” He continues, . . . others, like W.E.B. DuBois, were very solid and important sociological voices, but they were not major theorists who charted or changed the direction of theorizing. The impulse to resurrect individuals to atone for the discrimination of the past is certainly understandable, but we should not rewrite the history of sociology by making particular categories of individuals in sociology’s past into seminally important theorists when, in fact, they were not. (Turner 2013:293)
Others, such as George Ritzer and Jeffrey Stepnisky’s (2018) Classical Sociological Theory include a chapter on DuBois and a chapter on women sociologists, containing a combined section on Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
Part of the challenge with incorporating Black, women, and other minority classical scholars into the sociological canon is that they were excluded from prominent sociological spaces during the foundational period. Julian Go (2020) traces the origin of U.S. sociology to the first International Congress of Arts and Sciences in St. Louis in 1904, at which invited speakers and attendees were nearly exclusively white men of European descent; Black scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois, women, and scholars from the Global South, were excluded. Despite exclusion from prominent sociological spaces, scholars working to correct the hegemonic foundation story posit that the early days of the discipline were characterized by diverse scholars in multiple geographic regions developing and utilizing a wide array of methodological and epistemological tools to create and disseminate sociological knowledge. In an analysis of the development of sociology’s classical canon, R. W. Connell (1997) describes early contributors as “encyclopedic, rather than canonical” (p. 1514) to illustrate the range of scholars identified as contributing to the discipline in the early days, often including Durkheim but rarely including Marx or Weber. Scholars working to rewrite the discipline’s history have centered on the contributions of marginalized women and Black sociologists illustrating significant empirical and theoretical contributions of both individual Black scholars working in and beyond academia (Aldridge 2009; Collins 2000; Duster 2021; Go 2020; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998) and early sociology departments that were established and led by Black scholars (Morris 2015; Wright 2002, 2020). This work collectively paints a different picture of the origin of sociology as something that dozens of scholars contributed to, who were diverse in gender and race, rather than a product of the work of a handful of European men.
Analyses of the topics and epistemological approaches used in sociology in these early years reveal a much broader scope than is portrayed in the hegemonic foundation story. In the hegemonic story, white European men developed sociology to understand broader social changes related to economics, urbanization, and industrialization. They were perhaps shortsighted in their preoccupation with social class stratification and concomitant lack of attention to issues of race, gender, and sexuality, but their works provide insight into the broader workings of societies, nevertheless. However, Raewyn W. Connell (1997) shows that gender and especially race were vital to these early sociologists’ concept of social progress—a topic that was central to their work—which focused far more on societies they considered “less developed” than on modernization and industrialization. Issues of gender and race as organizing features of societies were also central to the early scholarship of women and Black sociologists working both inside and outside of academia (Collins 2000; Duster 2021; Go 2020; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998; Morris 2015; Wright 2002, 2020; Young and Deskins 2001).
In the United States, institutional racial segregation led to the development of two separate major schools—The Chicago School and the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (Morris 2015; Wright 2002, 2020)—fostering separate “white” and “Black” sociologies (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Staples 1976). Black sociology, characterized as a “science of liberation” (Staples 1976), used multiple methodological tools and epistemological approaches to provide solutions to structural and institutional barriers that inhibited the advancement of African Americans. Black sociologists were critical of white sociologists’ use of statistics to “identify all sorts of pathological elements in the Black group—from unwed mothers to dope addicts” (Staples 1976:19), arguing that statistics may be useful for identifying racial differences in social treatment (e.g., jail sentencing) if combined with participant observation and oral stories (Staples 1976). The dichotomy between white and Black sociology emerged as a distinction between the pursuit for justice and pursuit for truth and is embedded within the positivism/non-positivism binary. In the sociological canon, the “science of liberation” enacted within Black sociology is framed as “applied sociology” or “social work,” and portrayed as distinct from “sociology” (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021). The socially constructed dichotomies used to interpret sociology’s history situate Black scholars in opposition to white objectivist sociological inquiry and support the positivism/non-positivism binary. Notions that justice and truth are dichotomized in the racialized sociological canon contradict early Black scholars’ work who used objectivist and subjectivist approaches to obtain justice through the truth.
Analyses of early white U.S. male sociologists’ work reveal a focus on race, gender, and sexuality, often in ways that advocated continued oppression (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Connell 1997; Magubane 2016; Phelan 1989). Thomas James Phelan’s (1989) analysis of articles published in the American Journal of Sociology (1895–1935) identified broad topics, ranging from warnings against masturbation, and overtly sexist and feminist publications, to blatantly racist ideologies. Several articles advocated for eugenics as a mechanism for societal advancement, claiming white superiority based on measured criteria such as brain size or wealth, and defending slavery as providing moral and intellectual advancement to African Americans and fulfilling their physical and spiritual needs (Phelan 1989). Zine Magubane (2016) aptly characterizes early white sociology as “pro-slavery imperialism” based on the magnitude of publications and position statements glorifying slavery. This pro-slavery approach, along with preoccupation among early white male sociologists with sustaining race and gender oppression, are omitted from the hegemonic foundation story.
Contrasting the hegemonic foundation story, recent scholarship demonstrates positivist approaches were not dominant among sociologists in the United States or Europe in the early years of the discipline (Phelan 1989; Rawls 2018; Steinmetz 2005a, 2005b). Early sociologists used diverse methodological approaches, inspiring productive debate but without a strong valuation of one approach over another (Rawls 2018). Qualitative methodologies were respected, evidenced by their use by prominent early scholars at the Chicago School, and works by Robert Park and Talcott Parsons in the late 1930s advocating approaches that combined qualitative and quantitative methods (Rawls 2018). In addition, articles published in American Journal of Sociology were more expressions of viewpoints than systematic studies (Phelan 1989). Indeed, Earl Wright (2020) shows that Black sociologists at the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory were the first to regularly include research methods sections in their articles. Thus, even among white male sociologists, positivist approaches and strong adherence to scientific methods were not overwhelmingly characteristic of their work in the early decades of the discipline.
Around the 1930s and 1940s an exclusionary story about sociology’s origins began to develop in U.S. sociology, particularly by Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills, which rewrote the discipline’s history, canonized works of a few European men, and positioned the positivism/non-positivism binary as a central tension in the discipline (Connell 1997; Rawls 2018; Steinmetz 2005a, 2005b). Contributing to efforts to legitimize sociology, the creation of a sociological canon erased the contributions of women, racial minorities, and colonized people whose work contributed to the development of the discipline (Connell 1997; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998). In so doing, it established analyses of modernization and industrialization that ignored race and gender as central concerns of early sociology, erasing both the pro-slavery and cultural imperialist works inherent in early white sociology and approaches to studying modernization and industrialization that centered race, gender, and sexuality that were inherent in diverse scholars’ early sociological work (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Connell 1997; Go 2020; Magubane 2016; Padilla Wyse 2014). It established sociology as a theory-based discipline distinct from applied sociology or social work, further marginalizing women and Black scholars, whose work advocated for social change (Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998). Creating this hegemonic foundation story also entailed defining central tensions in the foundation of the discipline, such as presenting opposition between consensus and conflict (Connell 1997), and positivist and non-positivist approaches.
During World War II (WWII), leaders of U.S. sociology, particularly presidents of the American Sociological Society (now the American Sociological Association), emphasized the need for sociologists to use positivist and statistical approaches and direct their work to support the war efforts to legitimize the discipline and demonstrate its value to society (Rawls 2018). These presidents blamed qualitative research for prioritizing values and social justice, thereby damaging the scientific reputation of the discipline and advocated the development and use of scientific, quantitative methods (Rawls 2018). By the end of WWII, quantitative approaches were established as scientific and objective, whereas qualitative approaches were “stigmatized as subjective and unscientific” (Rawls 2018:527).
This emphasis on positivism as the dominant epistemological approach and distinguishing feature of sociology coupled with an emphasis on modernization and economics and concomitant exclusion of race, gender, and sexuality as central topics contributes to the continued marginalization of Black scholars from the hegemonic foundation story (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Go 2020; Harris 2021; Magubane 2016; Padilla Wyse 2014). Julian Go (2020) argues that it contributes to the ongoing epistemic exclusion by positioning qualitative and mixed-methods approaches as unscientific and Black sociologists’ research as “me-search,” a quest to understand one’s own subjective experiences and a corresponding inability to contribute to a broader understanding of society. Go concludes that these classifications rely on a binary system of thought that characterizes Black sociology as “particular” and white sociology as “universal.” The continued supremacy of a positivist orientation in sociology and corresponding subordination of non-positivist approaches, evidenced by the continued dominance in quantitative publications by scholars in the highest ranked programs and in the highest ranked journals (Steinmetz 2005b), persists as a barrier to Black scholars’ advancement today (Harris 2021).
The Positivist/Non-Positivist Binary in the Hegemonic Foundation Story
In the hegemonic foundation story, the positivist approach is said to have emerged during the Enlightenment period (1715–1789), as Western societies moved away from a theological system into scientific and human-based knowledge (Comte 1854). Positivism is described as a philosophical approach to knowledge production that situates empirical observation as a method of discovering objective, universal truths about the world (Turner 2013). Although French thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Pierre-Simon Laplace are acknowledged as earlier positivist thinkers who were influential during the Enlightenment period, Auguste Comte is often recognized as the founder of positivism (Reed 2006; Turner 2013; Ward 1898). Comte is credited as the first to coin the term “Sociology” in 1838, 1 visualizing the field as a positive science, mirroring the natural sciences, to study human interaction and social change (Comte 1854; Turner 2013). Comte’s approach is described as positing that sociology must be scientifically based and objective when examining the social world. In this approach, sociologists seek to identify universal laws that govern human behavior within the social world, like the laws of physics. Empirical observation and theory complement each other when uncovering the laws of society, which guide societies’ functioning (Turner 2013). This approach rejects the introspective and intuitive knowledge believed to come from fields such as theology and metaphysics, because empirical evidence cannot be confirmed by human experiences (Reed 2006). Therefore, positivism is described as asserting that true knowledge is discovered through scientific evidence that is accompanied by theory, observation, and quantitative analysis to understand the social world (Reed 2006; Turner 2013).
Another early sociologist often credited as a key contributor to positivist approaches in sociology is Emile Durkheim (Cuff et al. 2016; Ritzer and Stepnisky 2018). Emile Durkheim (1895) argued that sociology should be built through the empirical study of social facts. He defined social facts as “things” that exist in society, entities that are separate from individuals, that constrain individual behavior. In The Rules of the Sociological Method, Durkheim (1895) wrote, Social phenomena must . . . be considered in themselves, detached from the conscious beings who form their own mental representations of them. They must be studied from the outside, as external things, because it is in this guise that they present themselves to us. (P. 93)
In this conceptualization, social facts are external products of collective social behavior that exist apart from individual consciousness, allowing for analysis using scientific methods. To illustrate, Emile Durkheim (1897) conducted what is heralded as one of the first scientific studies using statistical analysis to examine social phenomena in his book Suicide. Durkheim’s quantitative approach in this facilitated examination of the causes and effects of suicide among a cross-section of the population. The causes and effects of suicide, in this case, are framed as external social facts that influenced social behaviors. This study influenced the use of statistics as a positivist methodological approach to answer questions about society by using large data samples with the goal of creating generalizable theories of human behavior grounded in scientific evidence. However, several contemporary scholars challenge the association of Durkheim’s work with positivism. Susan Stedman Jones (1996) argues that Durkheim’s proposition that social facts be treated as “things” was simply a mechanism to facilitate research rather than an overarching view of social reality and that Durkheim’s affiliation with positivism in the hegemonic narrative has resulted in widespread misinterpretation of his work.
Within the hegemonic narrative, the positivist approaches associated with Comte and Durkheim are portrayed in contrast to the approach developed by Max Weber who is described as having a different vision for sociology as an academic discipline. Based on his roots in Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, Max Weber ([1949] 2017) is described as acknowledging fundamental differences between human behavior and physical nature, whereby physical nature exists in the realm of causality and humans exist partly in the realm of causality and partly in the realm of freedom (Cuff et al. 2016). Rather than being guided solely by mechanical determinism, as in the natural world, humans are also guided by morals and spirituality. Based on this fundamental difference, the intellectual tools required to understand the social world must be different than those used to understand the physical world (Cuff et al. 2016). While the natural sciences aimed to discern objective, generalizable patterns, social sciences could also investigate individual historical cases that differ from the generality and seek to understand human subjectivity (Cuff et al. 2016; Turner 2013). Turner (2013) writes, “Weber’s goal was to show that objective research was possible in those academic disciplines dealing with subjectively meaningful phenomena” (p. 118). Thus, Weber’s approach is portrayed as one that advocates for a distinctly social scientific approach that uses objective research methods to understand subjective phenomena. This approach is juxtaposed with positivist approaches that aim to ascertain an objective reality that exists separate from human consciousness. Cuff et al. (2016) write, “Durkheim was explicitly opposed to individualism (in contrast to Weber, and, perhaps, Marx), and took a positivist approach to sociological study” (p. 54, emphasis in original). This juxtaposition in the hegemonic foundation story creates a binary distinction between positivist and non-positivist epistemological approaches and corresponding methodologies and establishes this as a central tension among early sociologists.
This tension between positivist and non-positivist approaches in sociology created in the hegemonic foundation story continues as a theme in portrayals of contemporary sociological theories and research methods. Non-positivist approaches, which include symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and social constructionism, aim to understand people’s subjective experiences and interpretations within societies. These approaches emphasize group experiences and perspectives to provide multiple coexisting reflections of reality. Compared with positivist approaches, non-positivist perspectives widen the possibilities for what can be considered social “truths” by allowing for analysis of lived experiences. Instead of transforming subjectivities into quantities to be analyzed by the detached scientist, non-positivist approaches call for letting research subjects speak for themselves, through qualitative forms of data collection such as in-depth interviews, life histories, and ethnography. These perspectives posit that aiming to understand subjectivity through the research process provides social scientists with a more nuanced picture of “truth.” The subjects of non-positivist research can express the ways in which they are “both/and” in their own lives—Black and female, oppressed and resisting—as opposed to having to choose between supposedly representative boxes on a survey (Collins 2000). These expressions allow for differences in subjective “truths” to emerge, contradicting the universal framing of a singular “Truth” found in the positivist perspective (Collins 2000; Evans-Winters 2019).
While positivism is often framed as driving the genesis of sociological inquiry, marginalized scholars in early sociology were using multiple epistemological approaches to focus on issues of social justice to affect social change. For example, Wright (2020) outlines how early sociologists at historically Black colleges and universities were conducting rigorous social research to promote Black social mobilization while being underfunded and ignored by scholars at white colleges and universities. Similarly, Black women intellectuals like Anna Julia Cooper (1892) provided the foundations to theorize about intersecting axes of oppression that uphold social hierarchies in the United States. Our analysis of the early scholarship of Black sociologists illustrates the integration of positivist and non-positivist approaches to investigating social truths. We examine the works of select early Black sociologists to show how these scholars’ work transcended the positivist/non-positivist binary by integrating objective and subjective knowledge.
Reconsidering Positivism as a Dominant Approach in Early Sociology
Sociologists today are trained to be critical of how discourses and representations are utilized to enact dominance. There is a need to turn this lens on sociology itself, specifically regarding how central concerns of the discipline are socially constructed to reproduce power relations. Non-positivist perspectives can be mechanisms to address the epistemological fallacies that uphold power relations within fields. Kimberle Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectional examination of Black women seeking remedy for workplace discrimination uncovered how relations of power constrain the lives of groups who inhabit sites of multiple oppressions within the legal system in distinct ways. On the surface, discrimination laws are enacted purely to provide marginalized groups recourse after centuries of exclusion. Upon further examination, Crenshaw (1989) exposed how the epistemological framing of which groups are “valid” under the law is through the eyes of dominance. The law is then a site of reproducing power relations under the guise of “inclusionary” practices. The practice of sociological inquiry must be examined through the same critical lens (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Collins 2000; Go 2020).
Sociology’s hegemonic foundation story positions positivist and non-positivist approaches as oppositional and hierarchical, which discredits non-positivist approaches and leads to the invalidation of subjective experiences that contradict dominant narratives. Go (2020) argues that the equal contextualization and validation of all works is a step toward liberating the discipline from its exclusionary roots. This expansion of what is considered “valid” rejects the positivism/non-positivism binary and creates space for inclusionary understandings of the social world. This expansion is consistent with Patricia Hill Collins’ (2000) call in her seminal book, Black Feminist Thought to advance a both/and approach to sociology grounded in Black women’s scholarship throughout the history of the discipline. Through the eyes of those who occupy positions of race, class, and gender privilege, sociological thought is divided along this positivist/non-positivist binary. Binary thinking in sociology provides a false conception of positivism and non-positivism, Blacks and whites, and males and females as mutually exclusive opposites. From the perspective of Black feminist scholars, though, Collins argues that contradictions in categorization are natural because real-world experiences cannot be fit into the neat boxes that the dominant sociological epistemology purports to operate on. Collins (2000) notes that as a Black woman sociologist, she is caught in a paradox: “. . . I was invited to objectify myself in order to develop the objectivity that would allow me to participate in objectification” (p. 142). In the sciences, real-world knowledge from the experiences of subordinated groups is replaced with dominant thought and dominant modes of thinking, “because they realize that gaining control over this dimension of subordinate groups’ lives simplifies control” (Collins 2000:286). In this framing, subjugated knowledge emerges as a threat to dominance. The positivism/non-positivism binary then exists in the sciences as a tool of social control.
Black feminists have long taken both/and approaches to knowledge production because their experiences demanded it (Collins 2000; Cooper 1892; Crenshaw 1989). We draw on Collins’ both/and perspective to analyze the epistemological approaches of selected works of a sample of early Black sociologists, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, and Charles S. Johnson. We expand upon the conversation in sociology about where DuBois fits into the canon by including less recognized Black scholars in our critique to show that sociology must move beyond tokenizing and toward actual inclusion. Over the last few decades, DuBois’ contributions have become more recognized within sociology; therefore, it is important to acknowledge other Black sociologists who also made important contributions to the field. We assess these theorists’ use of positivist and non-positivist approaches to identify how they identify “truth” in their work. We then consider broader shifts that need to occur to rewrite the discipline’s history and refocus its central concerns.
Early Black Sociologists
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) was a Black woman journalist who researched poverty, residential segregation, domestic violence, and lynching in Black communities throughout the Jim Crow era. As a Black woman outside of academia in the late 1800s, her acceptance into the mainstream social scientific community was next to impossible (Duster 2021). Regardless, Wells-Barnett systematically unveiled the structure of systemic racism that blocked African Americans from gaining social equity in the era of Jim Crow laws. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1895) provided rigorous statistical accounts of lynching to inform the public audience, particularly white Americans, on how racism, discrimination, false accusations, and social injustice affected the lives of African Americans in the United States. Wells-Barnett’s sociological thought and research can be described as using both positivist and non-positivist approaches due to her utilization of statistical analysis in conjunction with interpretations from interview data in her seminal works.
Wells-Barnett wrote extensively for the newspaper The Memphis Free Speech, where she discussed social conditions and events impacting African American communities (Young and Deskin 2001). This work led her to conduct sociological analyses to unveil the truth of lynching and the structure of systemic racism that blocked African Americans from receiving social equity and justice in the Jim Crow era. Wells-Barnett was inspired to fight for African American social justice after the tragic lynching of her close friend, Thomas Moss, and his two associates. Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1892) later wrote in the Free Speech and Headlight, that African Americans should save their money and leave town because their lives will never be protected when accused by white Americans. In 1893, Wells-Barnett delivered a speech entitled Lynch Law in All Its Phases, where she stated, “those who commit murders write the reports . . . and the reports are so written as to make it appear that the helpless creatures deserved the fate which overtook them.” This led Wells-Barnett to investigate the lynchings using both positivist and non-positivist approaches.
Wells-Barnett published two prominent books, Southern Horrors (1892) and The Red Record (1895), that combined statistical accounts with narratives to inform the white public audience of the impact of lynching on the personal lives of African Americans in the United States. Wells-Barnett used both positivist and non-positivist approaches in her work. In her first book, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, Wells-Barnett (1892) examined the appalling rates of lynching among Black men who were accused of raping white women. Wells-Barnett employed a positivist approach by framing lynching as an objective truth impacting Black communities. She reported quantitative data collected from various white owned newspapers that reported accusations of Black men raping white women, which resulted in hundreds being lynched by white mobs in mostly southern U.S. states. Wells-Barnett concluded that the term “rape” was used to not only falsely accuse and lynch Black men, but also to eliminate Black progression. Black economic progress was viewed as a contemporary issue among white Americans, which led them to believe that Black Americans were still inferior and deserved the status of second-class citizens.
In 1895, Wells-Barnett published The Red Record, another extensive document reporting lynching in the United States in 1893 and 1894. Wells-Barnett (1895) rejected the validity of official data on lynching, as the statistics had largely been collected and reported by white owned newspapers who had a vested interest in underrepresenting the prevalence of lynching. Nevertheless, she utilized lynching reports that were included in the Chicago Tribune to avoid accusations of bias in her research due to her race. Wells-Barnett (1895) wrote that her purpose, . . . shall be to give the record which has been made, not by colored men, but that which is the compilations made by white men. . . . Out of their own mouths shall the murderers be condemned. . . . In order to be safe from the charge of exaggeration, the incidents hereinafter reported have been confined to those vouched for by the Tribune.
Wells-Barnett aimed to correct common understandings of lynching by utilizing rigorous data collection methodologies to establish a strong empirical account (Deegan 1991). She approached her research with the perspective that lynching is an objective social truth to be discovered and reported to the masses. She employed a positivist epistemological approach by using statistics to convey the objective truth about lynching. However, her reliance on white reports and counting of lynchings point to her recognition that dominant white audiences would likely question her objectivity due to her race, thereby associating objectivity with whiteness.
Wells-Barnett (1895) used a positivist approach to systematically gather and analyze statistics on lynching in a time when data about this phenomenon were sparse. The empirical data collected included statistics of the numbers of African American men who were lynched based on accusations of rape, attempted rape, attempted murder, murder, burglary, and insulting whites, along with others who were accused of no or unknown offenses. Her data came from local news articles, first-hand accounts, and existing records and were cross-referenced with the Tribune. She then weaved her data together to tell the big-picture story of lynching in the United States. In The Red Record (1895), she used a positivist approach to report the objective reality of lynching as a fact without any interpretation of what lynching means to those who were studied. This combination of an objectivist approach and an objective voice gave legitimacy to Wells-Barnett’s work, which helped her to be taken seriously among other researchers at the time. Once the objective reality of lynching was uncovered and outlined, Wells-Barnett could then shift to a non-positivist, interpretivist approach to explain how lynching was allowed to perpetuate, the myths behind the accusations against Black men, and the ideological framing of Black Americans to justify their murders. Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Jill Niebrugge-Brantley (1998:162) characterize this approach as “a critical and forensic empiricism,” whereby Wells-Barnett “challenge[s] dominants’ claims about the facts, using the dominants’ own words as evidence.”
In later chapters of The Red Record, Wells-Barnett (1895) provided a more interpretivist, non-positivist approach to the lynching phenomenon. She offered meticulous details in her analysis of the official reporting of lynching to uncover the inconsistent statements of white witnesses at trials that were taking place purportedly to ensure that justice was served for the brutal deaths of African Americans. She collected accounts of approximately 200 documented lynchings to analyze patterns in the framing of Black men and justifications for their punishment. For example, she found that there were no sentences handed down to actual murder suspects, but instead, African American men were being accused and found guilty then lynched or burned alive. There was no expectation of punishment for the lynchings because both the justice system and the white public depicted African Americans, particularly males, as less than human. In addition, Wells-Barnett used the narratives found in news articles to address the controversial issues of African American men being accused of crimes. She found that many were lynched and burned without a fair trial. Many white Americans believed that African American men deserved to be lynched to avenge alleged assaults on white women. Wells-Barnett responded by showing that white Americans assumed that any relationship between a white woman and African American man could result in rape. In reality, it was more common for white men to rape Black women and not be accused of any form of rape or sexual assault. Wells-Barnett concluded by saying that the connection between lynching and sexual violence reveals the myth of African American men’s lust for white women, which consistently led to the lynching of African American men. Without qualitative data and interpretive analysis of reports conducted by Wells-Barnett, many of these well-crafted myths would have perpetuated without question. The non-positivist approach to analyzing narratives in printed news articles exposed how the structure of power and privilege given to white Americans promoted the embedded practices of systemic racism and inequalities that had real and fatal impacts on Africans Americans.
By combining qualitative and quantitative analysis that utilized positivist and non-positivist approaches, Wells-Barnett (1895) strategically attacked the system of power that was situated as an arbiter of Truths. The inconsistencies uncovered in both the statistical counts of lynchings and their reported justifications tell an intense story of how power and control operate with fatal consequences. If she were to take only an objectivist perspective, Wells-Barnett’s study of lynching would have lacked an explanation of cultural or ideological mechanisms that contextualize justifications for violence. If she were to only take a non-positivist approach, she would not have had the tools to show the world that the United States was systematically killing a subset of their population. Mary Jo Deegan (1991) writes that Wells-Barnett’s research on lynching is sociological and her aim was reformist; however, her methodological approach is clearly empirical. Her research challenges the prevailing myths by comparing the reliable facts about lynching with beliefs and assumptions (Deegan 1991). Wells-Barnett’s works align with both positivist and non-positivist approaches to reveal that white supremacy and racial discrimination operated to stop African Americans from achieving social justice.
W. E. B. DuBois
W.E.B. DuBois was consistently excluded from dominant sociological spaces throughout his career (Go 2020; Morris 2015). At the time, critics argued that DuBois inherently could not be objective due to his race and therefore could not be considered a “real” social scientist (Go 2020). DuBois strategically used what the hegemonic canon frames as a positivist approach to be taken seriously in a field of researchers who argued that he could not be objective (Burawoy 2021), and a non-positivist approach to broaden sociological knowledge by liberating his methods from epistemological constraints. DuBois was not just conducting positivist inquiry, but he was often doing it with more rigor than his peers. Aldon D. Morris (2015) argues that DuBois was the first sociologist to develop a sociological laboratory at Atlanta University. Wright (2020) discusses DuBois’ legacy as instrumental to sociology’s methodological evolution. DuBois was conducting inquiry that was considered valid at the time, and he was contributing to its methods in groundbreaking ways, yet he was still excluded from the discipline, and remains absent in many classical theory texts.
DuBois was excluded from dominant academic spaces for being a Black scholar and he was criticized for engaging in “me-search” (Go 2020). Recent initiatives to add DuBois to sociology’s modern canon is a confession of sociology’s historical contradiction of dichotomizing white and Black scholars, contributing to the construction of the positivism/non-positivism binary. W. E. B. DuBois (1899) wrote that his intent in producing The Philadelphia Negro was to shift the focus of Black studies away from questions of morality and toward “heart-quality of fairness, and an earnest desire for the truth despite its possible unpleasantness” (p. 3). DuBois’ historical exclusion in sociology was framed as exclusion of subjectivism, which marginalized both Black scholars and non-positivist perspectives simultaneously. This is just one example of how the racialization of epistemological justifications dictated the landscape of sociologists by creating exclusionary boundaries around whose ideas belong in the field. The philosophical underpinnings of sociology that upheld historical racial exclusion have infused themselves into the hegemonic foundation story, shaping how sociology is taught today.
DuBois (1899) utilized what would be considered a positivist approach in The Philadelphia Negro, in which he used quantitative methods to systematically understand the conditions of Black Philadelphians as an objective truth with impacts that could be empirically observed. DuBois (1899) concluded that Black Philadelphians’ inability to assimilate into American culture was due to empirically observed structural barriers that constrained any chance of group mobility. The 15-month-long study included data collected from a massive house-to-house canvas that was supplemented by historical and observational data. Tabulations of these quantitative data were combined with historical statistics to provide a thorough picture of the life of Black Philadelphians. The combination of statistical and observational methods was strategic, as each method has its limitations that can be mediated by the other.
DuBois’ sociological legacy also includes his role in normalizing methodological rigor within the discipline through his work at the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (Wright 2012). At Atlanta University, DuBois was tasked with conducting a multi-decade longitudinal study of the condition of Black Americans through the turn of the century, a massive project for its time. Under his leadership, the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory pioneered the inclusion of study limitations into reports, and research strategies including triangulation and the use of insider researchers (Wright 2012). The methodological decisions made by DuBois should be understood in terms of their relationship to a racialized Truth. In DuBois’ perspective, the use of rigorous empiricism, which the hegemonic canon frames as positivism, was key to uncovering the facts of racial inequalities and their structural causes (Green and Driver 1976). Through this methodological framing, DuBois adhered to a positivistic approach, aiming to convey a single, objective truth. The conclusions that emerged from The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory (Wright 2012) stood in opposition to the knowledge produced by dominant frames, including those in sociology, that led researchers to focus on problems within slum districts, like crime and poverty, to eradicate these issues rather than to understand them.
What DuBois’ positivist work did not capture, though, was an analysis of the subjective experiences of Black Americans within the structures of oppression described in the book. W. E. B. DuBois (1903) took a radical non-positivist approach in The Souls of Black Folk by using his personal experiences to capture the subjective reality of being Black in America. The knowledge produced from this subjectivist approach illustrates the importance of understanding marginalized groups from the standpoint of their lived perspectives. The Souls of Black Folk included these subjective experiences to display the deep impacts of racism, which remained invisible through positivist research. DuBois’ exclusion from sociology reflects the exclusion of Black Americans from spaces and culture. It is clear from his writing that he saw subjectivism as both a valid perspective and a method of achieving liberation from the racist tendencies that permeated American life.
Sociology’s history of fitting DuBois into narrow hegemonic framings obscures his contributions to a variety of tools in sociology. As solely a “marginalized scholar,” DuBois’ contributions to rigorous empirical methodologies are overlooked. When framed by only his positivistic merit, DuBois’ work at understanding internalized oppression does not fit. To recognize DuBois for all of his contributions is to engage in an approach that appreciates the potential of a both/and epistemology.
Charles S. Johnson and Fisk University
The contributions of early Black sociologists working in Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs) have been discredited, excluded, and ignored within U.S. sociology (Wright 2010). Contemporary scholars argue that the establishment of American sociology was primarily influenced and dominated by the University of Chicago (known as the Chicago School of Sociology) through prominent sociologists’ work, such as Albion Small, William I. Thomas, Robert E. Park, and Ernest Burgess, all major figures within American sociology (Abbott 1999; Bulmer 1984; Chapoulie 2020). While early white sociologists and Predominantly White Institutions have gained global recognition within sociology, early Black sociologists, along with their work at PBIs, have been historically disregarded. Early scholars at PBIs utilized both positivist and non-positivist approaches to address issues of racism, social inequality, and injustice.
PBIs like Fisk University produced the first and second generations of influential Black sociologists including Charles S. Johnson, Bertram Doyle, Preston Valien, G. Franklin Edwards, E. Franklin Frazier, Horace R. Cayton Jr., Hebert A. Miller, and George E. Hayes, who have all contributed to the sociological literature by addressing the social conditions of Black Americans in the South (Wright 2010). Charles S. Johnson was considered a leading Black sociologist alongside W.E.B. DuBois at the turn of the Twentieth Century, becoming both chair of the Department of Sociology and the first Black president at Fisk University (Gilpin and Gasman 2003). Throughout his career at Fisk University, Johnson directed, wrote, and published numerous studies on social and economic factors oppressing Black Americans in southern states. Charles Johnson (1934) applied both a positivist and non-positivist approach in his seminal work Shadow of the Plantation. He used multiple methodologies including comparative quantitative analysis and in-depth interviews with 612 Black families in one of the poorest rural communities, Macon County, Alabama in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Johnson’s positivist approach consisted of compiling statistics on participants’ family structure, economic status, educational levels, activities, recreational lifestyles, and health status to examine the objective living conditions of Black sharecroppers working for white landlords (Saint-Arnaud and Feldstein 2009). He also conducted in-depth interviews to understand participants’ lived realities and subjective experiences. Johnson used a positivist approach to show the plantation economy was a vast system of social exploitation and that Black sharecroppers were economically and culturally dependent on their white landlords. He used an interpretivist, non-positivist approach to debunk the myth of happy Black Americans living their lives on cotton fields, and that the slavery economy was replaced by a feudal economy of cotton tenantry by illustrating racial exploitation faced by Black Americans. Johnson (1934) applied an interpretive approach using ethnographic material including data on family behaviors, religious practices, and the importance of education to eradicate cultural isolation within Black communities. Johnson acknowledged that most Black families were tenant units on farms owned by white Americans who dominated access to business resources, government, and opportunities within Macon County. He concluded that social issues such as subjugation, segregation, and exploitation were all enforced among Black families living in the shadows of antebellum plantation institutions and the legacy of slavery on plantations negatively impacted their descendants.
Johnson’s (1934) Shadow of the Plantation has been regarded as one of the most important books focusing on race relations in the United States (Robbins 1996). In the early 1940s, Johnson and his colleagues established the Race Relations Institute at Fisk University to conduct applied sociology for the purpose of public policy, centering social issues like employment, housing, labor, veterans, community committees, and race relations (Gilpin and Gasman 2003; Wright 2010). Similar to the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, the Race Relations Institute applied various research methodologies to produce findings to be used for public policy purposes (Wright and Calhoun 2006). Johnson and colleagues at the Race Relations Institute viewed sociology as a tool that can be used to objectively analyze American society, which can offer solutions for improvement (Wright 2010).
Despite these significant contributions to sociology, limited research has been conducted to advance the legacy of Fisk University, Charles S. Johnson, and other Black Fisk sociologists’ contributions to the discipline and their epistemological frameworks. From Johnson’s work, it is clear that the positivism/non-positivism binary was not a central concern of Fisk University in the early-to-mid 1900s. Instead, Johnson and other Black scholars at Fisk sought to uncover the truth of Black American experiences, which required both positivist and non-positivist approaches.
Conclusion: Repositioning Positivism in Contemporary Accounts of Early Sociology
In this article, we have illustrated the ways in which a sample of early Black sociologists integrated positivist and non-positivist approaches in their research from the perspective of the discipline’s hegemonic foundation story. Our analysis shows that, while objectivity and adherence to the scientific process were deemed important by these scholars, they were not considered the only way of discerning social truth. Instead, their approaches also valued the subjective experiences and knowledge of people who occupy unequal subject positions. This approach recognizes that people see the social world differently depending on where they are positioned within the social hierarchy. These sociologists illustrate the possibilities inherent in weaving together what sociology frames as positivist and non-positivist approaches for knowledge production by demonstrating the ways that objective social conditions produce substantially different subjective knowledge for people who are differentially positioned in a social hierarchy. These insights illustrate the integration of positivist and non-positivist approaches to unveiling sociological truths in early Black sociology. Centering these works and recognizing these scholars’ strategic integration of multiple methodological tools in a quest for the truth raises questions about the historic and continued dominance of positivism in U.S. sociology.
Integration of positivist and non-positivist approaches by early Black sociologists whose work we examined contrasts with the hegemonic foundation story of sociology. The hegemonic story positions positivist and non-positivist approaches as mutually exclusive, binary, and hierarchical, where positivist approaches are inherently superior, objective, and scientific while non-positivist approaches are inferior, subjective, and unscientific. It makes a case for a racialized hierarchical relationship by asserting the positivism/non-positivism binary as central to the very foundation of the discipline, inherent in the vision of the early pioneers of sociology. This assertion only holds weight in accordance with the narrative that sociology was created by a small group of European men who set out to create a scientific discipline to understand their changing conditions in the midst of industrialization and the rise of modern capitalism—a narrative that has been effectively debunked by numerous scholars (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Connell 1997, 2007, 2018; Go 2020; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998; Magubane 2016; Morris 2015; Padilla Wyse 2014; Rawls 2018; Wright 2002, 2020; Young and Deskins 2001). It also relies on a strategic and selective reading of Durkheim’s work that positions his characterization of social facts as things as an indication of a positivist stance (Jones 1996), thereby affiliating his quantitative approach—and later iterations of quantitative sociology—with positivism. Correspondingly, the centrality of the positivism/non-positivism binary to both the way the foundation of sociology is taught, and the segregation of white and Black sociologies must also be brought into question.
As scholars work to rewrite the history of sociology to reckon with the discipline’s racist, sexist, and colonialist foundations and center the work of historically marginalized scholars, the need to reexamine the epistemological foundations of the discipline and their relevance to contemporary sociology is apparent (Collins 2000; Go 2020). Our analysis demonstrates that centering previously marginalized scholars in sociology requires not only adding these scholars’ works to the canon but shifting what we consider the discipline’s dominant concerns during its inception. The hegemonic foundation story defines positivism and adherence to the scientific method as a central concern of early sociology. However, a more accurate and inclusive approach would emphasize the quest for truth—in its multiple and varied forms—as a central concern. A shift toward emphasizing the quest for truth can contribute to advancement beyond the positivism/non-positivism binary, which lies at the heart of the privileging of positivist approaches. This advancement is necessary for creating an inclusive discipline, better reflecting sociology’s emancipatory potential.
Moving beyond the positivism/non-positivism binary in the way that the foundation of sociology is taught is not merely a cognitive task with intellectual outcomes, but one that has emancipatory potential for current scholars who are marginalized in sociology due to their racial or intersectional social positions. Assessing the positions of Black sociologists today, Jasmine L. Harris (2021) argues that the continued dominance of positivism creates additional barriers for the advancement of Black scholars, in part due to the perception that Black scholars’ research conclusions are necessarily situated within their social position whereas white scholars see each other as viewing the world objectively. This hegemonic viewpoint ignores the facts that white scholars are also situated intersectionally within the social hierarchy and that the positivist perspective itself was created from the distinct vantage point of privileged scholars. Resituating positivism as one epistemological approach among many developed in early sociology and contextualizing its development within the intersectional subject positions of its champions challenges positivism’s hegemonic position and invites debate and critique from other epistemological approaches. Revealing debates and critiques of positivism as well as the plethora of alternative approaches that existed in early sociology can contribute to the dismantling of positivism’s reign. Expanding the discipline in this way to value multiple epistemological approaches can contribute to stronger institutional support for the work of current scholars who utilize non-positivist approaches and qualitative techniques, removing some additional barriers that Black scholars encounter.
This move beyond the positivism/non-positivism binary relies on transformation in teaching sociology. The way sociology is taught in most graduate and undergraduate programs today perpetuates the marginalization of early Black scholars, preserving the hegemonic foundation story and the centrality of the positivism/non-positivism binary to the discipline’s foundation (Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021; Thomas and Kukulan 2004). Angela Fillingim and Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana (2021) aptly state this curriculum centers “Europe and whiteness, reinforcing a view of the world grounded in white supremacy and delineating sociology as a space for white thought” (p. 277). This curriculum sends a message to Black and other minoritized students that their histories and viewpoints are not welcome in the discipline, which is reinforced through oppressive interactions in graduate classrooms, particularly toward Black women (Favors-Welch 2021; Stone 2021). Revisioning how the foundations of sociology are taught in ways that center and contextualize—rather than just include (or worse, exclude)—marginalized scholars’ work is critical for transforming the discipline and reckoning with sociology’s historic and continued perpetuation of anti-Black racism (Brunsma and Padilla Wyse 2019; Fillingim and Rucks-Ahidiana 2021; Magubane 2016; Padilla Wyse 2014). This revision applies not only to courses in sociological theory, but it is intertwined with research methods curricula that continue to privilege positivist and quantitative approaches.
Dismantling systems of oppression within sociology is necessary for the discipline to be an ally to movements for broader social change. As a discipline consumed with studying how social inequalities operate within social institutions and organizations, substantive change within the discipline is long overdue.
