USA Africa Dialogue Series - Choice Review of Sociology in South Africa

CHOICE

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February 2017 Vol. 54 No. 6

Palgrave Macmillan

The following review will appear in the February 2017 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only until our publication date of 01 February 2017

Sociology

54-3009

HM477

MARC

Sooryamoorthy, R. Sociology in South Africa: colonial, apartheid and democratic forms. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 156p bibl index afp ISBN 9783319403243, $54.99; ISBN 9783319403250 ebook, $39.99.

Sooryamoorthy (Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) offers an informative, slim book applying the quantitative "scientometric" methodology of counting the books, articles, dissertations, departments, grants, and the number of sociologists in the country since 1903, when a philosopher delivered the first sociological conference paper in South Africa. Applying Michael Burawoy's classification of sociology, Sooryamoorthy identifies "critical, policy, public and professional sociologists" in the 100 years of the discipline in the country. Under the influence of US and European sociology, structural functionalism became the hegemonic paradigm with which the doctrines of racial segregation and white supremacy were justified by many South African sociologists until the 1970s, when the influence of the relative success of decolonization in the rest of Africa, the rise of Steve Biko's Black Consciousness Movement, and the rest of the world's cultural boycott of the segregated South African universities resulted in the adoption of the Marxist paradigm by some sociologists, who were censored, banned, jailed, assassinated, or exiled by the apartheid regime. With the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994 as the first democratic president, the emphasis has shifted to the "Africanization" of sociological knowledge through a preference for qualitative methodologies.

--B. Agozino, Virginia Tech

Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries.