W.E.B. Du Bois, a kirekesztett tudós

Abstract

The thesis discusses the exclusion from the discipline, and later (delayed) revision of the American classical sociology’s most distinguished African American scientist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. The aim of the discussion is twofold: to underline his relevance and to give a more comprehensive picture of his impact within the discipline. Furthermore, to offer an explanation why, as a scientist, he was marginalized during his lifetime, and why the delay in the inclusion of his work. To answer these questions, as part of an attempt to reconstruct the history of the American sociology in a more exhaustive way, it includes the description of the social context, an analysis of the American sociological field by using Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam’s theory of strategic action fields, and an overview of how the mainstream sociology construed the concept of race from the turn of the century until the 1960s. The reconstruction of the history of the American sociology is only partial, narrowing down the more than half-a-century analysis to aspects that are relevant to Du Bois’s sociological contribution. Applying the aspects of the sociology of science and the philosophy of science, primary and secondary literature, written in Hungarian and English, was reviewed.