In this volume of Political Power and Social Theory, a special collection of papers reconsiders race and racism from global and historical perspectives. Together, these articles serve as an entry point for sharpening our sociological understandings of how racism operates in current times. They address questions such as: What can a new agenda for the global historical sociology of race and racism lend to the existing scholarship? What would it mean to recover the globally constituted forces that have shaped the production of racial categories and dynamics of racial oppression? How can we understand domestic racial policies, not only through their effects on local populations, but also as products of wider global and transnational forces, knowledges, and transformations?

In short, what would re-historicizing the history of racism mean for sociological theorizing on the subject in the 21st century? Drawing on empirical analyses of the relations, mechanisms, machinations, and structures of racial supremacies, this volume generates productive avenues for future thinking on race and racism. It sets the agenda for a new generation of scholars interested in sociological questions of race, imperial forms, and the construction of modernity.

Alexandre I.R. White is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and School of Medicine.

Katrina Quisumbing King is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University.