Is there a racial order? Comments on Emirbayer and Desmond

ABSTRACT

Emirbayer and Desmond’s THE RACIAL ORDER is a heroic but ultimately quixotic effort. The work relies upon an attempted synthesis of Deweyan pragmatism and Bourdieuian social capital theory. Emirbayer and Desmond deploy an uneasy combination of approaches, insisting upon ‘reflexivity’ in sociological study of race and racism (the pragmatism dimension), and crafting a dubious taxonomy of sociological ‘fields’ where racial conflict takes shape, and in which sociologists study race as well (the social capital dimension). A chapter on ‘racial reconstruction’ proposes to apply their understanding to concrete political struggles, in pursuit of an augmented ‘racial democracy’. While the book is tremendously erudite theoretically and provides a valuable literature review, it does not advance racial theory very much. The authors are distracted by Bourdieu’s scientism and obsession with classification. Although ‘racial order’ is revealed to be a chimera, there is still much to be learned here.     

Reflections provoked by Michael Banton's John Rex's main mistake

Banton's article provoked a number of reflections on working with John Rex in the 1960s. The idea of race has a long history both in human relations and sociological theory. But the possibility of there being a specific field of ‘race relations’ remains contested. Ideas of race and ethnicity are elided in public discourse, making the resolution of linguistic issues in the field especially difficult and as yet unresolved. These reflections touch upon the political environment in which John Rex's earlier writing on race was conducted and upon the breadth of influences upon a sociologist rooted in the classical tradition, especially the sociology of Max Weber.     

Towards a proper interpretation of the declining significance of race thesis

This essay takes a step towards establishing a more informed dialogue about race/class dynamics in structuring the life chances of blacks in contemporary America by revisiting William Wilson's declining significance of race thesis, the most important sociological theory that addresses this issue. Specifically, it explicates the thesis and critiques labour market analyses that purport to examine it. Too often mis-specifications of the parameters of the thesis and the absence of seriously engaging its historical and structural-level subtleties have produced erroneous interpretations including, most conspicuously, that Wilson denies any role to prejudice/discrimination in structuring life chances of blacks. I maintain that better capturing the parameters of Wilson's argument and engaging its subtleties is critical to moving forward in establishing an informed and more consensually held understanding of race/class dynamics.     

Sociology is an applied science,and the application is social change: a contribution to the discussion of Aldon Morris’ The Scholar Denied

I argue that W.E.B. Du Bois’ expulsion from academic sociology at the beginning of the twentieth century was not only animated by the gatekeepers’ desire to maintain academe as a whites-only domain. It also constituted an active effort to defend Social Darwinist dogma, which dominated (white) social science at that time, from the formidable challenge of a resourceful and scientifically superior perspective. The successful exclusion of Du Bois (and his growing legion of colleagues) allowed sociology to drift into functionalist dogma, with its immutable hierarchy and denial of sociology’s role in facilitating social change. The exclusion of Du Boisean analysis, which placed human agency – and especially subaltern groups – at the centre of social change – rendered sociological analysis irrelevant to addressing social problems and social justice, until the Civil Rights Movement in America broke down the walls of the sociological ghetto, allowing it to access the rich Du Boisean perspective.     

Social marketing campaigns as an instrument of influence on the attitude and behavior of youth in the area of sexual health

The principles and necessity of carrying out campaigns "Reasonable Man--Reasonable Choice" are presented. The sociological questioning among young people in Moscow (prior to the campaign) was found to be indicative of the discrepancy between their knowledge of protection from HIV/AIDS and their behavior. The development of the strategy of the campaign included sociological studies, the full set of publicity materials and drawing attention to the campaign itself. The results of the work for 8 months were summed up by means of sociological questioning which demonstrated the effectiveness of all arrangements of the campaign.     

Reconsidering primordialism: an alternative approach to the study of ethnicity

This theoretical article first clarifies the exclusive assumptions of primordialism and constructivism. Subsequently, it demonstrates that primordialism has substantial power to explain ethnic phenomena, since (a) ethnic identities persist even in the hardest cases, such as sub-Saharan Africa and the United States, and (b) the attributed significance of assumed kinship has psychological and sociological bases. Finally, this article formulates hypotheses based on the core primordialist assumptions and develops ethnic distance as an explanatory variable on the level of integration of immigrants. It defines ethnic distance as the degree to which two ethnic identities have been solidified as opposed to each other by their dyadic violent conflicts and religious and/or nationalistic education and hypothesizes that the higher the ethnic distance between immigrants and the host society the lower the level of integration.     

Reflections on Race,Community and Conflict: A Study of Sparkbrook

There are few sociology texts that acquire truly seminal status. This brief paper, however, reflects on one of the most celebrated and often cited works in British urban sociology. It seeks to explain: (1) the book's initial impact on debates and research in the field of ‘race and ethnic relations’; (2) the key controversies sparked by its theoretical positioning; and (3) why, and in what ways, it remains of relevance almost half a century after it was written. It concludes that there are two reasons for its continued appeal and significance. First, it placed housing firmly at the centre of debates about the position of Britain's migrant communities; second, it illustrates the potential of sociological research. At a time when controversies rage about ‘impact’, here is a work that not only contributed to our theoretical understanding of contemporary society, but also illustrated the value of ‘public sociology’ by engaging with the polity to bring about social change.     

The debate between Michael Banton and John Rex: a re-evaluation

Michael Banton's paper provides fascinating insights into his long-running intellectual disagreements with John Rex, the other major post-war figure in the sociology of ‘race relations’. Published work and personal recollections are supplemented by a series of communications by letter to flesh out the precise nature of these debates. They reveal differing views on the ontological status of ‘race’, race relations and racism, as well as a number of criticisms of Rex's work. He argues that Rex was wrong to put so much faith in the ability of classical sociology to address these concerns, and that there was a disjuncture between theory, methods and substance in his empirical work. There is also a suggestion that Rex played down the significance of racism. The greatest difference between them, however, lay in their divergent views on the role of sociology and the sociologist.     

The colour line and the colour scale in the twentieth century

Some more recent evidence supports Du Bois’ prediction that the twentieth century would prove the century of the colour line. It indicates that men have always and everywhere shown a preference for fair complexioned women as sexual partners, whereas males seeking a mate are rarely disadvantaged by a dark complexion. In the employment market in the USA, a dark complexion is a significant disadvantage for both males and females. Though there is no properly comparable evidence from other countries, there appears to be a widespread tendency for any negative valuation of darker skin colour to be incorporated into a scale of socio-economic status. In some situations a colour scale is replacing the colour line.

Du Bois’ reference to differences of colour has been largely superseded in English-speaking countries by references to differences of race. From a policy standpoint, the switch from colour to race has had both positive and negative consequences. From a sociological standpoint, it has made it more difficult to disaggregate the dimensions of social difference and to dispel the confusions engendered by ideas of racial difference.     

Jewishness as sui generis: extending theorizations beyond the debate of “race,ethnicity, or religion”

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on Jewishness has often assumed that race, ethnicity, and religion are discrete categories. This review article surveys the place of Jewishness within race literature, ethnicity literature, and sociological religion literature, and offers a new theoretical framework for considering Jewishness as sui generis – of its own unique quality. The categories of race, ethnicity, and religion must be theorized as a system of interconnected frames and processes that overlap, interact, and are co-constituted. This web of frames and processes must be situated within the larger social system and meanings that construct Jewishness alongside other subjectivities.     

How can we meet ‘the demands of the day’? Producing an affective,reflexive, interpretive,public sociology of ‘race’

This article argues for a public sociology of ‘race’ that can respond to Weber's injunction that sociology should ‘meet the demands of the day’. While the author's version of these demands – for a society of autonomous individuals and groups, living as equals – is utopian, the main argument offered here is that a sociology of ‘race’ should be a modified version of Burawoy's ‘public sociology’. Adopting Bauman's notion of a sociology of interpreters, a further suggestion is that this type of sociology needs to be reflexive and affective. Based on an analysis of his own sociological education in the late 1960s, his participation in social and political movements in which ‘race’ was key, and with brief reference to the sociology of ‘race’, the author argues that the emotions that circulated in each arena need to be examined, acknowledged and incorporated if theoretical and practical progress is to be made.     

Biosocial criminology and the mismeasure of race

This article examines biosocial criminology’s partial social constructionism of race, that is a logic of difference that attempts to accommodate both a social and biological interpretation of race. We focus on the way biosocial criminologists operationalize race to outline the sociological consequences of what we see as a renewed commitment to the bio-criminalization of race. Biosocial criminologists do not reject that race is socially constructed, but in practice they disregard the main consequences and raison d’être of this postulate. Though biosocial criminologists praise the incorporation of cutting-edge science into criminology, the research programme’s actual findings concerning race do not necessarily align with views from genetic and neuroscientific research. Instead, we argue that biosocial criminology solicits social constructionism as a shield to re-insert antiquated biologic notions of race through a guise of bio-sociality.     

Oh,you're racist? I've got a cure for that!

It has recently been discovered that the beta blocker drug, propranolol, can potentially reduce implicit racial bias among its users. By acting upon the affective conditions associated with implicit racial bias functioning at the non-conscious and pre-conscious levels, researchers have expressed excitement about the potential of propranolol and similar drugs to decrease implicit racial attitudes, and, thus, potentially decrease racism. This study and others like it not only provide indications of an affective component to modern-day racism, but, more importantly, an epistemological shift in the meaning of racism within academia from a social and cultural problem to a medical problem. In this article, we examine this shift in academic discourse towards a pathologization of racism and the implications of this on the sociological study of race and racism.     

A white side of black Britain: The concept of racial literacy

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.     

A PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION OF THE KINSEY REPORT

In Kinsey''s investigations there seems to be a tendency to study human sexuality from a biological point of view and to neglect the psychological with which sexuality is intimately involved. He does not sufficiently differentiate between sexual behavior in animals and humans which appear to be similar but which are really very different. His sociological conclusions suffer from this limited approach. Experience with patients strongly suggests that his statistics on women may include gross distortion. From a clinical psychiatric standpoint his concept of perversions is oversimplified. To Kinsey, all sexual activity represents the expression of sexual desire whereas it not uncommonly may be used to relieve tensions which are not of sexual origin.     

Jean Rouch and the Birth of Visual Anthropology: A Brief History of the Comité international du film ethnographique

The true scope of Jean Rouch's international activities for the advancement of visual anthropology is little known. Few in the field today are aware that he was for more than 10 years the driving force of the Comité international du film ethnographique, where he was secretary-general as of 1958. It is thanks to his initiative, backed by UNESCO, that the first anthropologist–filmmakers were able to present their films (and often see them hotly debated) in Paris, Brussels, Prague, Venice, Florence, and Locarno. He was, together with sociologist Edgar Morin (with whom he would produce the influential film Chronique d'un été), one of the collaborators of the Florence Festival dei Popoli, then entirely devoted to ethnographic and sociological films. Here Luc de Heusch, closely associated to Jean Rouch throughout those intrepid times, chronicles the seminal years of visual anthropology.     

The state of ethnicity and the ethnicity of the state: Ethnic politics in Southeast Asia

Attitudes about racial inequality in the United States are often viewed through the lenses of discrimination and disadvantage. However, as whiteness studies suggest, systems of racial inequality produce both disadvantage and advantage. National surveys have documented explanations for African American disadvantage but have not collected data on explanations for white advantage. African American disadvantage and white advantage are two sides of the same coin – racial inequality. To understand attitudes about racial inequality, we need to know Americans' beliefs about both sides of the racialized system. This research uses national survey data to examine explanations for both sides of racial inequality and identifies which factors are believed to be most important in explaining white advantage, finding that racial attitudes are complex and are dependent upon the specific situation and context. This research will provide a valuable contribution to both whiteness studies and race relations research.     

A World Divided? Studies of Gender Relations in Modern Greece

This paper explores anthropological and sociological representations of gender relations in modern Greece, in the light of recent re-examination of the perspective and inherent biasses of such representations. I argue that the dichotomous schema used in many studies obscure the complexities of gender relations Moreover, further analysis of the centrality of the family in economic and political activities suggests both ethnocentrism and androcentrism in studies of modern Greece.     

Beyond the “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”: a response to Rogers Brubaker

In this short reflection, I revisit Rogers Brubaker’s influential 2005 article on “The ‘diaspora’ diaspora”. I consider the key arguments of this important intervention, before addressing three key conceptual issues in diaspora studies: (i) the role of place, origin and scale; (ii) diaspora, race and difference; (iii) sociological and historical approaches to diaspora. In the concluding section, I briefly consider some new directions in diaspora studies.     

The sociology of ethnic relations

The sociological problems presented by ethnic relations should be distinguished from problems of social policy. The foundations for a micro-sociology of ethnic relations laid by Max Weber in 1906–11 have to be interrelated with the macro-sociological contexts within which ethnic groups are constructed by collective action. When ethnic relations have their origin in trans-national migration, much depends on the immigrants’ points of entry into the receiving society's scale of socio-economic status, and, thereafter, on transmitted inequalities. While the nature and causes of social differences associated with ethnic origin have been illuminated by quantitative and qualitative studies, new styles of research are needed to bridge these modes of analysis, such as the measurement of relative preferences for association with co-ethnics.