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
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.
Final Grade:
20% - Presentation of
10% - Class Participation
25% - Weekly
20% - Undergrad Lecture or Research Presentation
25% - Final Exam
or Paper
100%
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
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.
Week
1, September 1 Introduction / Basic
Concepts
What is race? What is
ethnicity?
·
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?
·
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.
·
Herrnstein, Richard and Charles
Murray.
·
Bernie Devlin, Stephen E.
Fienberg, Daniel P. Resnick, and Kathryn Roeder, editors. Intelligence, Genes and Success: Scientists Respond to The
·
The Biological and Social Meaning of Race,
1971. Social Biology vol. 46 no. 3. pg
228-231.
·
·
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.).
·
http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/
·
C. Loring Brace,
"Race" Is a Four-Letter Word, The Genesis of the Concept,
·
Juan Comas.
Racial Myths. UNESCO, 1958
·
Richard Goldsby.
Race and Races.
·
Nancy Stepan. The
Idea of Race in Science:
·
Richard H.
Osborne. The Biological and Social Meaning of Race.
Week
3: September 15th Race as a Social Construction: The History of the
Construction of Race in the West
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?
·
Sanjek, Roger. “The Enduring
Qualities of Race” in Gregory, Steven and Roger Sanjek (eds.) Race.
·
Van den Berghe,
·
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)
·
Tocqueville,
Democracy in
·
Stocking, George
W. Jr. "The Critique of Racial Formalism," in Historical
Perspective," in Stocking. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the
History of Anthropology.
·
Juan Comas.
Racial Myths. UNESCO, 1958
·
Richard Goldsby.
Race and Races.
·
Nancy Stepan. The
Idea of Race in Science:
·
Richard H.
Osborne. The Biological and Social Meaning of Race.
·
(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
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?
·
Merton, Robert K. “Insiders
and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge (1972) The American
Journal of Sociology
·
Geertz, Clifford.
“Primordial Ties,” in Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith Ethnicity.
·
Thompson, Richard.
“Primordial Sentiments Versus Civil Ties” Theories of Ethnicity, Chapter 3.
·
Barth. Ethnic
Groups and Boundaries.
·
Weber, Max.
“Ethnic Groups,” from Chapter V in Guenther Roth and Clas Wittich (eds.)
economy and Society.
·
Hale,
H. Explaining ethnicity. Comparative Political Studies. vol.
37 no. 4, pg 458-485.
·
Arias,
E. D. Blackness without ethnicity:
Constructing race in
·
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.
·
Keyes, Charles.
"Towards a New Formulation of the Concept of Ethnic Group, Ethnicity 3:3
1976:202-13
·
Geertz, Clifford
. The Interpretation of Cultures.
·
A.L. Epstein.
"Ethos and Identity,"
·
Keyes, Charles.
"The Dialectics of Ethnic Change," in Ethnic Change. Charles Keyes,
ed.
·
Dan Segal,
"'Race' and 'Colour' in Pre-Independence
·
Howard Stein and
Robert F. Hill. The Ethnic Imperative: Examining the New White Ethnic Movement.
Week
5 September 29 Primordialism,
Culture and Race
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?
·
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.
·
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
·
·
Michael Banton.
"Rational Choice Theory," Ethnic & Racial Studies, 1985. Read
articles by
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?
·
Anderson,
Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (1983)
·
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.
·
Cohen,
David William and E.S. Atieno Odhiambo. (1992) Burying SM: The Politics of
Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in
Week
7, October 13th Inter-Ethnic
Relations and Stratification
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?
·
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.
·
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.