Relations of extraction, relations of redistribution: Empire, nation, and the construction of the British welfare state

Anticolonial thought, the sociological imagination, and social science: A reply to critics

This essay responds to commentaries (this issue) on Go's "Thinking Against Empire: Anticolonial Thought as Social Theory" (this issue). The essay addressed shared concerns and underlying themes of the commentaries, most of which pivot around the problem of the anticolonial and the status of disciplinary sociology as a knowledge project. Is there a need for sociology to incorporate anticolonial thought? How does anticolonial thought as social theory differ from other epistemic projects? Is the distinction between sociology's imperial episteme and anticolonial thought fruitful or obfuscating? And what are the possibilities and limits of a social science informed by anticolonial thought? Ultimately, the essay maintains that anticolonial thought offers a powerful sociological imagination that can be fruitfully tethered to a project of realist social science. It also maintains that realist social science can be emancipatory; provided that it is reoriented by anticolonial thought.

Decolonizing Zemiology: Outlining and Remedying the Blindness to (Post)colonialism Within the Study of Social Harm

This paper hosts the first meaningful dialogue between two important epistemic movements for criminology: zemiology and decolonisation. I identify that zemiology has a disciplinary blindness to colonialism and explain this using Gurminder K. Bhambra's scholarship-and cognate scholarship-as a frame. Three cases-Pemberton's Harmful Societies, Grenfell, and Border Zemiology-are selected for their critical importance within zemiology. They are used to argue that zemiology works within a standard narrative of modernity characterised by capitalist nation-states, which does not recognise the colonial foundations of both of these. Capitalist modernity is, however, a colonial formation. Recognising this allows for a better understanding for a wide range of harms. I then discuss future directions for decolonial zemiology, advocating not for expansion of repertoire, but canonical revision so that colonialism is afforded space as an explanatory frame and zemiology can better explain social harm on a global level.