Forcible Social Displacement in the African American Historical Experience

• In Event: Comparative-Historical Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Comparative-Historical Roundtable 4

Abstract

This research is aimed at examining the phenomenon of authoritative self-sustenance, the event in which an authoritative entity gives legitimacy to itself. This is achieved through the analysis of slavery codes during the antebellum period and the occurence of lynching in the reconstruction period of United States history through the lens of forcible social displacement, a theory of my own design that seeks to investigate the stratifying consequences of authority/subordinate interactions. Specifically, this research is invested in exploring the following question: “How does the dissemination of capital facilitate the production of racialized social inequality during the Antebellum period of United States history?”. Subsequent to this endeavor is the, perhaps more self-involved, pursuit of the following question: “How do the various components of Forcible Social Displacement manifest when used as a lens to examine the African American experience within the context of various portions of American History?”.

This research takes an interdisciplinary approach consulting hermeneutics and grounded theory methods in order to interogate the ways that legal codes deliniate between human and non human, manipulate the flow of various forms of capital--as outlined by Bourdieu in the theory of Social Reproduction--in order to generate a class of people conditioned towards subjugation, and contribute to the development of lynching as a foothold of racial domination in a "post slavery" society. Beyond this analysis this work also moves to critique Bourdieu's work on it's failure to hold up under analyses of class that consider race as contingent on the concept, and to expand his work into a theoretical framework that does make space for considerations of racially informed class development.

Author

• Marq Riggins, Morehouse College