Abstract
Oliver Cromwell Cox was a black Trinidadian sociologist that spent most of his personal and intellectual life in the United States. In this country, the heterodox character of Oliver Cox’s critiques to the sociology of his time set over his work a decades long silence. In recent times, however, the growing interest in his work has brought up discussions about its foundations. This text focuses on the author's initial trajectory, a period that dates from his birth in the Caribbean, in 1901, until the publication of his magnum opus Caste, class and race, in 1948. It is argued that this period is primarily marked by a circulation of the author through different grammars of racialization, which in turn were decisive for the deconstructionist impetus that marked his towards the social sciences. It is also argued that the emphasis on this aspect of Cox's trajectory, through a critical and systemic engagement with race, offers an important contribution to the so-called externalist studies of Afrodiasporic intellectuals in Sociology.
Keywords:
Oliver Cox; Race relations; Racialization; Sociology of intellectuals; Caribbean