Comparative Race and Ethnicity

SYG 6705

Fall 2005

LC 309

 

 

Dr. Alex Stepick

DM 320C

348-2247

Office Hours: Thursdays after Class and by Appointment

 

Course Description:

 

This course will cover theoretical literature on the concepts of race and ethnicity from the fields of Sociology and Anthropology. While the literature on race and ethnicity is extensive, it is not expected that you be familiar with all of it. Instead, this course aims to make the student aware and knowledgeable of the main themes prominent to race and ethnicity and the subject matter’s history. Upon completion of this course you should be able to (1) teach a race and ethnicity course at the undergraduate level, (2) identify the core theoretical concepts of race and ethnicity that are shown in the weekly subject headings given below, and (3) pass a graduate level comprehensive exam on the topic of race and ethnicity.

 

The literature on race and ethnicity is extraordinarily large. It is hopeless to try to read all of it, let alone master it all.  There are hundreds of books. Numerous specialized journals address the topic, apart from special issues of the primary disciplinary journals and innumerable articles in disciplinary journals. Web sites and electronic discussion groups also address these issues. Instead of trying to cover all of these materials, we will focus on broad theories that underlay almost all sociological and anthropological writing on the subject. Understanding these theories should allow one to quickly understand the framework for any substantive study of race and ethnicity.

 

Course Requirements:

 

  1. This course will be conducted in a seminar style. It is required that students attend and participate in class.  Each week selected students will present the readings and topic to be discussed. The particular students must submit their Reading Log Questions (see WebCT) by Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm before class on Thursday morning.
  2. All students each week will submit a written summary comparing two (2) of the week’s readings. This  is due at the start of each class session.  These assignments will count for 20% of your final grade.
  3. Each student will be responsible for leading two class discussions during the semester.  Everyone should pair up with a classmate and choose the topic they’d like to present.  For each presentation, the pair should be prepared to discuss the week’s readings, and may choose to introduce any additional, relevant material necessary.  Each presentation should last the duration of the class time, with time allotted for class discourse.  This will count for 15 percent of your final grade.
  4. One oral class presentations that will be either an undergraduate lecture on some subject in Race and Ethnicity or a research presentation on a substantive issue in comparative race an ethnicity. You will apply the theories of the first part of the course to a particular substantive issue. Reading lists for suggested substantive issues are at the end of this Syllabus. You may choose a different substantive issue subject to the approval of Dr. Stepick. The subject and the lecture should be appropriate for an advanced undergraduate, graduate class or professional audience. It should be about 30 minutes on a subject that you choose and is related to your interests. This will count for 15 percent of the course grade
  5. The Final Exam will be, the student will complete a final project for the course by constructing course syllabi for both an undergraduate course and a graduate course. The syllabi should reflect the views of the student on which topics and readings were useful and which were not by reevaluating which readings he or she would include. This project will account for 25% of the final grade.

 

Final Grade:

20% - Presentation of Readings

10% - Class Participation

25% - Weekly Reading Logs

20% - Undergrad Lecture or Research Presentation

25% - Final Exam or Paper

     100%

 

Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct: 

 

The taking of words and ideas from any other sources(s) without full citation/attribution is a serious academic offense.  Students must take care to fully and faithfully attribute both words and ideas taken from any other sources in conjunction with any work produced for this class.  Proper attribution must be given to books, scholarly articles, web-sources, TV, and newspapers/magazines sources.  If students have any questions about how to undertake proper citation of another’s work, please contact the instructor.

 

No outside sources, articles, books, or book reviews are to be used in the writing of the essays.  The assigned readings and your thoughts are all that you need.  If you want to use any other outside sources, either on-line or in print, you must coordinate with me first.

 

http://www.fiu.edu/~oabp/misconductweb/unitinstructions.htm

 

 

Course Schedule and Reading Assignments:

 

Each week the readings will focus on one particular theme of race and ethnicity. As a class we will address the individual assumptions that each author made about race and ethnicity in his or her writing. We will discuss how the readings relate to one another and to readings from previous classes. The topics listed below are on the days they will be discussed and the readings listed and their reading logs are due on the day and should have been read prior to the class. The articles will be available as bound Xeroxed copies available in the Sociology/Anthropology Department. Those sources not found in the bound copies are noted with an asterisk.

Weekly Schedule

Week 1, September 1      Introduction / Basic Concepts

 

Discussion Questions:

What is race? What is ethnicity?

Required Reading

·         Isajiw, Wsevolod W.  "Definitions of Ethnicity," Ethnicity, vol. 1, no.2 (July) 1974: 111-124.

·         Ethnic, ethnical, ethnicity, ethnie, ethnique”: Entries from Oxford English Dictionary

·         The Canadian Board of Social and Economic Statistics, on Ethnicity.

·         http://www.statcan.ca/english/concepts/definitions/ethnicity.htm

·         The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, William H. Swatos, Jr. “Ethnicity”

·         http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/ethnicity.htm

·         White by Law and What is Race? By Ian F. Haney Lopez, “The Social Construction of Race: Some Observations on Illusion, Fabrication, and Choice,”

·         http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm

 

 

Week 2: September 8th           Biological Constructions of Race

Discussion Questions:

Is race biological? What evidence is there that race is biologically based? Is race merely a social construction? Is the belief that race is biological still widely accepted? Where and in what context? What is the “best” data that Hernstein and Murray present? What are the critiques of Murray and Hernstein? What are the primary historical sources for the biological view of race? How do these theorists define race and ethnicity?  From what you read what would you deem the major biologically influenced historical views on race to be? 

Required Reading

·        Thompson, Richard H. “In Genes We Trust: The Sociobiology of Race and Ethnicity,”

·         Thompson, Richard H. “Ethnicity and Human Nature,” Thompson, Richard H. Theories of Ethnicity: A Critical Appraisal. New York: Greenwood Press.

·         Herrnstein, Richard and Charles Murray. Bell Curve : Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (Sections III and IV)

·         Bernie Devlin, Stephen E. Fienberg, Daniel P. Resnick, and Kathryn Roeder, editors. Intelligence, Genes and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve. (Chapters 1 and 2)

·         The Biological and Social Meaning of Race, 1971.  Social Biology vol. 46 no. 3.  pg  228-231.

·        Glasgow, J. M. On the new biology of race.  The journal of philosophy, vol. 100, no. 9. pg 456-474.

·         Brown, Kathleen. Native Americans and early modern concepts of race. In Empire and Others: British Encounters with Indigenous Peoples, 1600 – 1850. Daunton, Martin and Rick Halpern (eds.). University of Pennsylvania Press: 1999.  (available at the Reserve Desk in the Library)

Recommended Reading

·         http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/

·         C. Loring Brace, "Race" Is a Four-Letter Word, The Genesis of the Concept, Oxford University Press. 1987 Sociology. 3rd edition. New York: Worth Publishing, Inc.

·         Juan Comas. Racial Myths. UNESCO, 1958

·         Richard Goldsby. Race and Races. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

·         Nancy Stepan. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1982.

·         Richard H. Osborne. The Biological and Social Meaning of Race. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co. 1971.

 

Week 3: September 15th Race as a Social Construction: The History of the Construction of Race in the West

Discussion Questions:

Are the beginnings of the concepts of race historically traceable? What might have caused the concept to form? What evidence is there that race is biologically based? Why do we continue in believing that race is biological despite scientific evidence to the contrary?

Required Reading

·         Sanjek, Roger. “The Enduring Qualities of Race” in Gregory, Steven and Roger Sanjek (eds.) Race. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press

·         Van den Berghe, Pierre. Race and Racism. New York: Wiley, Chapter I.

·         Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. W.W. Norton & Company, 1981. Chapters 5, 6 & 7.

·        Armelagos, George J. and Alan H. Goodman.  “Race, Racism, and Anthropology”.  In    Building a New Biocultural Synthesis.  Ed. Goodman and Leatherman. 1998. pg 359-378.    (available at the Reserve Desk in the Library)

Recommended Reading

·         Tocqueville, Democracy in America, chapter XVIII, “The Present and Probable Future Condition of the ThreevRaces that Inhabit the Territory of the United States.”

·         Stocking, George W. Jr. "The Critique of Racial Formalism," in Historical Perspective," in Stocking. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: The Free Press, 1968:161-195.

·         Juan Comas. Racial Myths. UNESCO, 1958

·         Richard Goldsby. Race and Races. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

·         Nancy Stepan. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain, 1800-1960. Hamden, Conn: Archon Books, 1982.

·         Richard H. Osborne. The Biological and Social Meaning of Race. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co. 1971.

·         (1) Brown, Michael K.. “Race in the American Welfare State: The Ambiguities of ‘Universalistic’ Social Policy since the New Deal”. Chapter in Adolph Reed Jr., ed., “Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality”. Westview Press, 1999.

·         (2) Judd, Dennis R.. “Symbolic Politics and Urban Policies: Why African Americans Got So Little from the Democrats”. Chapter in Adolph Reed Jr., ed., “Without Justice for All: The New Liberalism and Our Retreat from Racial Equality”. Westview Press, 1999.

 

 

Week 4: September 23th Primordialism, Culture and Race

Discussion Questions:

What is primordialism? What does it have to do with culture? What does it have to do with race? How does it differ from biological versions of race and ethnicity? Who are the main figures who espouse a primordial view? These authors take many different approached to discuss the idea of primordialism.  What have you come to understand the dynamics of primordialism to be? How does primordialism incorporate the concepts of culture, race, and ethnicity?  How does primordialism differ from biological anthropology when it discusses race and ethnicity?

Required Reading

·         Merton, Robert K. “Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge (1972) The American Journal of Sociology 78(1) July 1972:9-47.

·          Geertz, Clifford. “Primordial Ties,” in Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith Ethnicity. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

·          Thompson, Richard. “Primordial Sentiments Versus Civil Ties” Theories of Ethnicity, Chapter 3.

·         Barth. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Boston: Little Brown. Introduction.

·          Weber, Max. “Ethnic Groups,” from Chapter V in Guenther Roth and Clas Wittich (eds.) economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press 1978: 385-98. Originally published in 1922 but written before 1914.

·         Hale, H.  Explaining ethnicity.  Comparative Political Studies.  vol. 37 no. 4, pg 458-485.

·         Arias, E. D.  Blackness without ethnicity: Constructing race in Brazil.

·          Alexander, J. "The Culture of Race in Middle-class Kingston, Jamaica," American Ethnologist, volume 4, number 3 (August) 1977:413-436.Edward Shils "Primordial, Personal, Sacred and Civil Ties" British Journal of Sociology 8 pp. 130-145.

Recommended Reading

·         Keyes, Charles. "Towards a New Formulation of the Concept of Ethnic Group, Ethnicity 3:3 1976:202-13

·         Geertz, Clifford . The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

·         A.L. Epstein. "Ethos and Identity,"

·         Keyes, Charles. "The Dialectics of Ethnic Change," in Ethnic Change. Charles Keyes, ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press 1981: 4-30.

·         Dan Segal, "'Race' and 'Colour' in Pre-Independence Trinidad and Tobago," in Kevin Yelvington (ed.), Trinidad Ethnicity, Knoxville: University of Tennesse Press and London: Warwick University/Macmillan Caribbean Studies Series, 1993.

·         Howard Stein and Robert F. Hill. The Ethnic Imperative: Examining the New White Ethnic Movement. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1977.

 

 

Week 5 September 29                     Primordialism, Culture and Race

Discussion Questions:

What is instrumentalism? What examples of instrumentalism do you see in today’s society? How does it differ from primordialism? What does it have to do with culture?  Who are the main figures who espouse an instrumental view?

Required Reading

·          Nagel, Joane. “Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture” Social Problems, 41 (1) February 1994: 152-179.

·          Cohen, Abner. "Introduction: The Lesson of Ethnicity," in Urban Ethnicity, A. Cohen, ed. London: Tavistock. 1974: ix-xxiv.

·          Cohen, Ronald. Ethnicity: Problem and Focus in Anthropology. Annual Reviews in Anthropology. 1978, 7:379-403.

·          Calderon, Jose “Hispanic” and “Latino”: The Viability of Categories for Pan-ethnic Unity. Latin American Perspectives 19:4 (Spring 1992) 37-44.                

·          Naroll, Raoul. "Native Concepts and Cross-Cultural Surveys," American Anthropologist, vol. 69, no. 5, 1967: 511-512

·         Gualtieri, S.  Becoming “white”: Race, religion, and the foundations of Syrian/Lebanese Ethnicity in the United States.  Journal of American Ethnic History.  Vol 20, no. 4, 29-58

·          

·         Michael Banton. "Rational Choice Theory," Ethnic & Racial Studies, 1985. Read articles by Lyon, Dex, and Banton's rejoinder.

 

 

Week 6, October 6th                       Ethnic Identity and Culture

Discussion Questions:

How does race affect the formation of identities? How does ethnicity affect identity? Is identity typically a reflection of culture? Do our identities shape our beliefs on race?

 

Required Reading

·         Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) London: Verso. (Chapters 2 and 3)

·          Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson.  “Beyond Culture” Cultural Anthropology 7 (1) 1992:6-23

·          Wolf, Eric. “Perilous Ideas,” Current Anthropology 35 (1) February 1994

·          Stolcke, V. “Talking Culture” Current Anthropology 36 (1) February 1995

·          Daniel Horowitz. 1975. "Ethnic Identity." Chapter 4, pp. 111-140 in Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Ethnicity: Theory and Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Reserve folder)

Recommended Reading

·         Cohen, David William and E.S. Atieno Odhiambo. (1992) Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. 

 

 

Week 7, October 13th     Inter-Ethnic Relations and Stratification

Discussion Questions:

What differences are there between sociological and anthropological theories of race and ethnicity? What conflict do conflict theories address?  What is/are the basis(es) of conflict in these theories? Are there any differences between race and ethnicity in these theories?

Required Reading

·         Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant. “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” Theory, culture and Society 16(1) 1999:41-58

·         Sollors, Werner. “Foreward: Theories of American Ethnicity,” in Sollors,Werner. Theories of Ethnicity. New York: New York University Press, 1996

·         Milton Gordon (1975) “Toward A General Theory of Racial and Ethnic Group Relations” in Ethnicity: Theory and Experience edited by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan.