BU Sociology

Julian Go is Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University, where is also a Faculty Affiliate in Asian Studies and the American Studies and New England Studies program. Previously he was an Academy Scholar at the Academy for International and Area Studies of Harvard University. He is the winner of the 2007 Wisneski Teaching Award for the College of Arts and Sciences; elected member of the Council of the Comparative-Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association; and is on the editorial board of the journal Sociological Theory. Julian is also editor of Political Power and Social Theory, an annual interdisciplinary journal of politics, power, and social relations published by Emerald Press.

Julian received his B.A. in Sociology & Political Science from the University of Michigan (1992), his M.A. in sociology from the University of Chicago (1995) and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago (2000). He joined the faculty of Boston University's sociology department in 2004. Julian’s teaching and research areas include comparative-historical sociology, globalization, cultural sociology, social theory, and colonialism and post-colonialism. He has received grants or fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the MacArthur Foundation & the University of Chicago Council on Advanced Studies in Peace and International Cooperation, the Harvard Academy, the United States Department of Education, and the American Sociological Association-National Science Foundation (Funds for the Advancement of the Discipline). His 2008 book American Empire and the Politics of Meaning won the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book from the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association.

Much of Julian’s work has focused upon the United States empire and American colonialism, examining them from the perspective of cultural sociology, political sociology, and comparative-historical sociology. This research has resulted in various articles and two book projects: The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives (co-edited with Anne Foster, Duke University Press, 2003 and Anvil Press), and American Empire and the Politics of Meaning (Duke University Press, 2008). He is also editor of the book, to be published by the Vibal Foundation in the Philippines in 2009, More American Than We Admit.

For 2010, Julian is co-organizer, with Renisa Mawani (University of British Columbia), of the workshop “Law’s Imperial Fields,” which will be held at the Institute for the Sociology of Law at Oñati, Spain and will result in a book volume. Besides this project, Julian is working on a pooled time-series analysis of imperial expansion in the world-system; a study of cosmopolitan colonial elite interaction across the US empire; and a theoretical project “Postcolonial Sociologies.” His next book is tentatively titled "Cycles of Global Power," which compares US and British imperial formations, 1688-2003.

BOOKS

American Empire and the Politics of Meaning (Duke U. Press 2008) (Go to Book Hompage)
Co-Winner, Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book, Sociology of Culture Section, American Sociological Association, 2009

The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives (Duke U. Press, 2003)

ARTICLES

Go, Julian. 2009. "The 'New' Sociology of Empire and Colonialism" Sociology Compass 3: 1-14.

Go, Julian. 2008. “Global Fields and Imperial Forms: Field Theory and the US and British Empires.” Sociological Theory 26(3): 201-229.

_________. 2007. “The Provinciality of American Empire: ‘Liberal Exceptionalism and US Colonial Rule.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 (1): 74-108.

________. 2007. “Waves of American Empire, 1787-2003: US Hegemony and Imperialistic Activity from the Shores of Tripoli to Iraq.” International Sociology 22(1): 5-40.

________. 2004. "'Racism' and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America's Pacific Empire." Qualitative Sociology 27(1): 35-58.

________. 2003. “A Globalizing Constitutionalism? Views from the Postcolony, 1945-2000” International Sociology 18(1): 71-95.
Reprinted in Constitutionalism and Political Reconstruction, ed. Said Arjomand. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers

________. 2002. "Modeling the State: Postcolonial Constitutions in Africa and Asia." Southeast Asian Studies 39 (4): 557-584.

________. 2000. "Chains of Empire, Projects of State: Colonial State-Building in Puerto Rico and the Philippines." Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(2): 332-362.
Reprinted in Julian Go and Anne Foster, eds., The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives. Duke University Press, 2003.

________. 1999. "Colonial Reception and Cultural Reproduction: Filipino Elite Response to U.S. Colonialism." Journal of Historical Sociology 12 (1): 337-368.

________. 1998. "El Cuerpo, Razon, and Kapangyarihan (The Body, Reason, and Power): Filipino Elite Cosmologies of State." Asian Studies 34 (1): 146-193

________. 1997. "Democracy, Domestication, and Doubling in the U.S. Colonial Philippines." POLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review (Journal of the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology, American Anthropological Association) 20(1): 50-61.

_________. 1996. "Inventing Industrial Accident Insurance: The Discourse of Workers' Compensation in the United States, 1880s-1910s." Social Science History 20(3): 401-438.

BOOK CHAPTERS

Forthcoming. “Sociology’s Imperial Unconscious: Early American Sociology in a Global Context” in George Steinmetz, ed., Sociology and Empire. Durham: Duke University Press

In Press. “American Imperial Identity and the Philippine Experience” in The Philippines and Japan in the US Shadow, ed. Kiichi Fujiwara and Yoshiko Nagano. National University of Singapore Press
Japanese translation published by Hosei University Press, Tokyo

2005. “Imperial Power and its Limits: America’s Colonial Empire" in Lessons of Empire, Craig Calhoun, Frederick Cooper, and Kevin W. Moore (eds). New York: the New Press
Reprinted as "America's Colonial Empire: the Limits of Power." Items & Issues (Quarterly of the Social Science Research Council) 2004, 4(4).

2005. "Modes of Rule in America's Overseas Empire: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Samoa," in The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, eds. Sanford Levinson and Bartholomew Sparrow. Rowan & Littlefield.

2003. "Introduction: Global Perspectives on the U.S. Colonial State in the Philippines" in Julian Go and Anne Foster, The American Colonial State in the Philippines: Global Perspectives. Duke University Press.