About

Krishan Kumar is a William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology and University Professor at the University of Virginia. He has previously held the position of Professor of Social and Political Thought at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. Kumar received his undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge and his postgraduate education at the London School of Economics. His professional experience includes roles such as Talks Producer at the BBC, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, and Visiting Professorships at several institutions including Bristol University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Central European University in Prague, the University of Bergen in Norway, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He has also been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Kumar's research interests focus on social and political thought, global history, empires and colonies, nations and nationalism, and East-West comparisons. His key contributions include numerous publications on modern society, nationalism, empire, and social theory, with notable works such as 'Prophecy and Progress,' 'Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times,' 'The Rise of Modern Society,' and 'Visions of Empire.' His current scholarly focus is on empires and imperial peoples, along with related interests in nationalism, European history, global history, and the problems of historical sociology.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• History
• Law
• Social Science
• Archaeology
• Public relations
• Ancient history
• Epistemology
• Psychology
• Gender studies
• Art
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Colony and Empire, Colonialism and Imperialism: A Meaningful Distinction?

  Comparative Studies in Society and History · 2021 · 63 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Ancient history
  • Archaeology

  Abstract Colony and empire, colonialism and imperialism, are often treated as synonyms . This can be acceptable for many purposes. But there may be also good reasons to distinguish between them. This article considers in detail one important attempt in that direction by the classicist Moses Finley. It argues that there is considerable strength in that approach, putting the stress as it does on the distinctiveness of the settler community. It is also valuable in suggesting that early-modern Western colonialism marked a new departure in an older history of imperialism, thus once again suggesting the need for a conceptual separation of the two. But the article concludes that ultimately more may be lost than gained by insisting on the distinction. In particular, it inhibits wide-ranging comparisons between ancient and modern, and Western and non-Western, empires, which can often suggest illuminating connections and parallels. The field of empire studies gains by drawing on the rich store of examples provided by the whole history of empire, from the earliest times to now. Western colonialism is part of that story; to separate it out is to impoverish the field.

  DOI

• The Clamour of Nationalism: Race and Nation in Twenty-First-Century Britain

  Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · 2020 · 98 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  DOI

• From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society

  Routledge eBooks · 2020 · 286 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Social Science

  Just as America's world-wide military role provided both the motive and the opportunity for the development of more and more sophisticated systems of information technology, so too did the world-wide expansion of the American corporation in the years following the Second World War. It has been one of the notable features of the idea of the information society that, just as with the idea of post-industrial society, its exposition and explication in the scholarly literature and at academic conferences have been accompanied by extensive popularization in the mass media and through journalistic best-sellers. Knowledge, according to information society theorists, is progressively supposed to affect work in two ways. One is the upgrading of the knowledge content of existing work, in the sense that the new technology adds rather than subtracts from the skill of workers. The other is the creation and expansion of new work in the knowledge sector, such that information workers come to predominate in the economy.

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Dante Fedele

  Regens (Hungary)

  81 shared

• Hartwin Brandt

  University of Cambridge

  81 shared

• Bruno Bleckmann

  REGEN Biotech (South Korea)

  81 shared

• Statehood In Damián Fernández

  Regens (Hungary)

  81 shared

• Inar Alves de Castro

  Universidade de São Paulo

  81 shared

• Daniel Bertaux

  36 shared

• Lars Mjøset

  36 shared

• C. J. Mills

  36 shared

Similar researchers at University of Virginia

• Stephen S. Richh-170
• Gary Owensh-107
• Jarrod Martoh-101
• Jennifer L. Westh-93
• Edward H. Egelmanh-93