Child of Empire

A child of the empire: British sociology and colonialism, 1940s-1960s.

British sociology was established as an academic discipline between 1945 and 1965, just as the British Empire was gearing up for a new phase of developmental colonialism backed by the social and other sciences. Many parts of the emerging sociological discipline became entangled with colonialism. Key themes and methods in sociology and the staff of sociology departments emerged from this colonia...

The Empire of the Lone Mother: Parental Rights, Child Welfare Law, and State Restructuring

2002, H. Lessard. * University of Victoria Faculty of Law. The author would like to thank: this Journal’s anonymous reviewer, whose detailed and thorough critique greatly assisted revisions and improved the article; Andrew Petter and Dorothy Chunn, whose comments spurred the author to rethink and refine her argument; the Office of Research Administration at University of Victoria, for providing...

Racism, Empire and Sociology

‘[T]he entity called Europe was constructed from the outside in as much as from the inside out.’ So wrote Mary Louise Pratt, at the start of Imperial Eyes (1992: 6), her insightful account of colonial travelogue. Pratt’s point provides a pithy summary of one of the central claims of what was, at the time, the still emerging field of postcolonial studies (in which context, of course, Imperial Ey...

Twilight of Empire: a Narrative

Sports of the Byzantine Empire

From the fourth century A.D. until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the people of the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire participated in a wide range of sports and physical recreations. Most of these activities were inherited from Greek and Roman civilizations, or were introduced through contacts with Asia Minor and Crusading Europe. Some sport forms disappeared after a few centuries, while o...