Welcome!

“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

Capitalism is founded on the ability to appropriate the social surplus of society by the few who control the means of production and of subsistence. The consequence of these capitalist social relations is a chronic and environmentally unsustainable dynamic, periods of boom alternating with bust, resulting in longer and deeper crises that inflict ever greater pain on more and more of the world’s population. The Association for Critical Sociology, through the journal Critical Sociology and the book series Studies in Critical Social Sciences, and during the many conferences and panels it sponsors, is committed to providing both a space for critical analysis and an opportunity to have an open dialogue that can examine the consequences of capitalist development and the potential for resistance.

Critical Sociology

published by SAGE

For almost 40 years the journal has provided a space where scholars can share their ideas and publish their works challenging the dominant paradigms in Sociology.

Current Issue | OnlineFirst | Submit an Article

Studies in Critical Social Sciences

Published by BRILL and Haymarket Books

This series was launched as an outlet of progressive and critical scholarship in support of junior scholars and more accomplished academics seeking a receptive audience for their research.

Paperback editions are available from Haymarket Books, with student discounts for course adoption.

Details | Brill Titles | Haymarket Paperbacks

Special Initiatives in
Critical Sociology

Latin American and Caribbean Research
Editor, R. A. Dello Buono

Solicit and review manuscripts in Spanish from critical scholars from the region who traditionally don’t publish in English language journals

Underwrite the translation costs of accepted articles to facilitate publication in the pages of our journal.

African Research
Editor, Nikitah Imani

Seek out and encourage submissions to the journal by scholars from Africa or those writing from a non-Western intellectual tradition

Challenge conventional perspectives on analyzing the global political economy

Middle East and North African Research
Editor, Tugrul Keskin

Engage scholars from the Arabic world whose critical perspectives expand our analysis of the region

Broaden our understanding of social movements and the region’s political economy from a non-Eurocentric framework

Podcasts:

Critical Sociology provides Podcasts of interviews with noted scholars and contributors to the journal, with transcription available. A current list of Podcasts available can be found here.

The Insurgent Sociologist

Emerging out of the malaise of the 1950s and a growing awareness of social injustice, graduate students challenged functionalism as the dominant paradigm within Sociology. An awareness that social science was being used in the “war on poverty” and inequality was the bi-product of a system promising greater prosperity led students into confrontations with both the academic and social forces of control.

By the 1967 ASA annual meeting the conflict between left and right in sociology came to a head, and by the 1968 ASA meeting in Boston the Sociology Liberation Movement emerged. It quickly became clear that there was interest in a competing analysis, and soon thereafter The Insurgent Sociologist, the forerunner to Critical Sociology, emerged to promote critical scholarship and engage in debates over the direction of the discipline.

Many of the ideas now fully integrated in our current understanding of the impact of capitalist social relations first appeared in the pages of The Insurgent Sociologist, written by scholars who have become the foundation that helped created a significant challenge to conventional wisdom in social science research.