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The Trap of “Racial Capitalism”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2023

Loïc Wacquant
Loïc Wacquant*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley – Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique, Paris [loic@berkeley.edu].
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Abstract

This article weighs the meaning, potential, and pitfalls of the concept of “racial capitalism” for studying the nexus of racial division and the economy. The concept has spread like wildfire in Anglophone social science since its≠ introduction in Cedric Robinson’s revisionist account of the rise of capitalism as racializing, but it remains epistemically inchoate and analytically problematic. The critique of leading uses and common corollaries of the term shows that it stipulates that which needs to be explicated, namely, the “articulation” of capitalism “through race,” which is not a structural invariant but ranges from coevalness and synergy to parasitism and disconnection. The notion cannot accommodate the varied bases of race as a naturalizing and hierarchizing principle of vision and division as well as the historical peculiarity of the economic variant of slavery in the Atlantic world. Advocates of “racial capitalism” need to put in the hard work of epistemological elucidation, logical clarification, and historical elaboration needed if they are to make the label more than a “conceptual speculative bubble.”

Keywords

racial capitalismCedric Robinsonraceepistemologyconceptual speculative bubble
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , August 2023 , pp. 153 - 162
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Journal of Sociology

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Footnotes

For their blunt reactions to and sharp comments on an earlier version of this text, I am grateful to Julian Go, Ricarda Hammer, Robin Kelley, Zach Levenson, Chris Muller, Marcel Paret, and Victor Lund Shammas.

References

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