A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English-Language Canadian Sociology
![Indigenous elders participating in a ceremony](https://sociology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/05/2023.05.Pandawat-ritual-1024x555.jpg)
A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English-Language Canadian Sociology
Over the past decade Canadian sociology has engaged in spirited debates on the sociology of sociological research, but it has barely begun to address its relation to Indigenous theorizing, scholarship and politics. How does the discipline deal with the settler colonial history and current realities of Indigenous social lives? And where is the place in our field for Indigenous voices and perspectives?
Drawing on Coulthard’s politics of recognition and Tuck’s damage-centered research, we present here the first systematic empirical analysis of the place of Indigeneity in the Canadian Review of Sociology and the Canadian Journal of Sociology.
We situate the presence of Indigeneity in Canadian sociology journals in the sociopolitical context of the time and examine how imperialism, statism and damage are oriented within the two journals. Most importantly, we challenge the silence in the discipline’s intellectual frames and research programs with respect to Indigenous theorizing about the social world.
Researchers
![Neil McLaughlin headshot image](https://sociology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Neil-McLaughlin-1-150x150.jpeg)
Neil McLaughlin
PhD
Professor, Sociology
Professor, Social Psychology
![Vanessa Watts headshot image](https://sociology.mcmaster.ca/app/uploads/2024/07/Vanessa-Watts-1-150x150.jpeg)
Vanessa Watts
PhD
Associate Professor, Sociology
Associate Professor, Indigenous Studies
Paul R. Mac
Pherson Chair in Indigenous Studies
Member, McMaster Indigenous Research Institute (MIRI)
Citation
Watts, V., Hooks, G. and McLaughlin, N. (2020), A Troubling Presence: Indigeneity in English-Language Canadian Sociology. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 57: 7-33. Available online here