New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2023. In this provocative and original retelling of the history of French social thought, George Steinmetz places the history and development of modern French sociology in the context of the French empire after World War II. This colonial orientation permeated all the major subfields of sociological research, Steinmetz contends, and is at the center of the work of four influential scholars: Raymond Aron, Jacques Berque, Georges Balandier, and Pierre Bourdieu.