Sociology

This book examines interracial intimacy in the beginning of the twenty-first century, an era rife with racial contradictions in which interracial relationships are increasingly seen as forward-thinking symbols of racial progress, even as old stereotypes about illicit eroticism endure. With extensive qualitative research, this book examines the racial dynamics of everyday life for lesbian, gay, and heterosexual Black/White couples. It disputes the notion that interracial partners are enlightened subjects who have somehow managed to “get beyond” race. Instead, for many partners interracial intimacy represents not the end, but rather the beginning of a sustained process of negotiating racial differences. This research reveals the ordinary challenges that partners frequently face and the myriad ways in which race shapes partners’ interactions with each other, as well as with family members, neighbors, coworkers, and strangers.This book analyzes contemporary interracial lives through the lens of “racework”: the everyday actions and strategies by which individuals maintain close relationships in a society with deeply rooted racial inequalities. It explores how racework operates in three realms: public spaces, the internal dynamics of relationships, and in the construction of interracial identities. Comparing the experiences of gay and lesbian partners with heterosexual partners, it argues that sexuality and gender play a significant role in how partners use racework in negotiating public spaces and identities, but a minor role in how partners deal with inequalities inside their relationship. With a focus on racework, this book positions interracial intimacy as an ongoing process, rather than as a singular accomplishment.

The book introduces a new theory that overcomes essentializing approaches to ethnicity all the while avoiding the pitfalls of excessive constructivism. It suggests understanding ethnic/racial boundaries as the outcome of a negotiation process between actors who pursue different boundary making strategies, depending on institutional incentives, their position within power hierarchies, and their pre-existing networks of alliances. This theory contrast with mainstream approaches in the social sciences, where ethnic groups are often treated as self-evident units of observation and ethnic culture and solidarity as self-explanatory variables, thus overlooking the process through which certain ethnic cleavages but not others become culturally meaningful, politically salient, and associated with dense networks of solidarity. By paying systematic attention to variation in the nature of ethnic boundaries, the book also overcomes the exclusive focus on fluidity, malleability, and contextual instability that characterizes radically constructivist approaches. Ethnic Boundaries introduces a series of epistemological principles, theoretical stances, research designs, and modes of interpretation that allow to disentangle ethnic from other processes of group formation and to assess in how far ethnic boundaries structure the allocation of resources, invite political passion, and represent primary aspects of individual identity. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, several chapters exemplify how this agenda can be realized in concrete empirical research: on how local residents in immigrant neighborhoods draw symbolic boundaries against each other, on the ethnic and racial composition of friendship networks, and how ethnic closure influences the cultural values of Europeans.

This book uncovers the dynamic processes through which some white Americans become activists for racial justice, reporting accounts of the development of racial awareness drawn from in-depth interviews with fifty white activists in the fields of community organizing, education, and criminal justice reform. Drawing extensively on the interview material, the author shows how white Americans can develop a commitment to racial justice, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because they embrace the cause as their own. Contrary to much contemporary thinking on racial issues focused on altruism or interests, he finds that cognitive and rational processes alone do little to move whites to action. Rather, the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational. The author shows how white activists come to find common cause with people of color when their core values are engaged, as they build relationships with people of color that lead to caring, and when they develop a vision of a racially just future which they understand to benefit everyone: themselves, other whites, and people of color. He also considers the complex dynamics and dilemmas white people face in working in multiracial organizations committed to systemic change in America's racial order, and provides a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role that white people can play in efforts to promote racial justice.

The Naxalite beginnings are by now history, and not a little nostalgia tinges the memory of these dreaded events. The leaders, the organizers, the spine, and the continuity of the movement are the revolutionary intellectuals. The Naxalite movement is not principally a rural, agrarian problem as the doctrine of the Naxalites argues, but is a problem of the leading edge of the urban intelligentsia. Though the Naxalites take their name from the incident at Naxalbari in 1967, the defining attributes of the Naxalite view of revolution emerged only later. From the beginning, it was not the labouring poor of the nation or Bengal that Charu Mazumdar addressed, but, first, the disaffected revolutionary activists within the communist movement and, later, the ‘student–youth’. This book discusses the ideologies of the Naxalite terrorists, the terrorist in the Bengali society, the Communist Party of India, and the Indian economy.

Every industrial nation in the world guarantees its citizens access to essential health care services—every country, that is, except the United States. In fact, one in eight Americans—43 million people—do not have any health care insurance at all. This book offers a history of America's failed efforts to address the health care needs of its citizens. Covering the entire twentieth century, it shows how each attempt to enact national health insurance was met with fierce attacks by powerful stakeholders, who mobilized their considerable resources to keep the financing of health care out of the government's hands. The author describes how, at first, physicians led the anti-reform coalition, fearful that government entry would mean government control of the lucrative private health care market. Doctors lobbied legislators, influenced elections by giving large campaign contributions to sympathetic candidates, and organized “grassroots” protests, conspiring with other like-minded groups to defeat reform efforts. As the success of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-century led physicians and the AMA to start scaling back their attacks, the insurance industry began assuming a leading role against reform that continues to this day.

This book details a sociological, comparative analysis of the institutional and group dynamics in eight schools located within four cities in the United States and South Africa. This book details how even as discussions and approaches to educational equality differ significantly in two nations rebounding from centuries of overt practices of racial and social inequality, many everyday school exchanges and practices parallel one another. Educators in the United States and South Africa are faced with the continual challenges of how to make schools work better for all students and of how to incorporate diverse groups of students better within these schools. This book argues chiefly that schools in these two societies, weakened historically by racial and ethnic discrimination, will greatly miss the benefits of a critical social policy for reducing inequality via education if they do not pay sufficient attention to the school's socio-cultural context. This book sheds insight into how to enable school-communities to better incorporate previously disadvantaged groups and to engender equity by promoting “cultural flexibility.” It also raises important and timely questions about the social, political, and philosophical purposes of schooling that have been greatly ignored by many and cautions against myopic approaches to education that merely focus on test-scores and attainment outcomes.

Despite recent progress against racial inequalities, American society continues to produce attitudes and outcomes that reinforce the racial divide. This book offers a fresh perspective on how to combat racial division. The chapters document the historical move from white supremacy to institutional racism, and then look at modern efforts to overcome the racialized nature of our society. They argue that both conservative and progressive approaches have failed, as they continually fall victim to forces of ethnocentrism and group interest. They then explore group interest and possible ways to account for the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. They also look to multiracial congregations, multiracial families, the military, and sports teams—all situations in which group interests have been overcome before. In each context they find the development of a core set of values that binds together different racial groups, along with the flexibility to express racially-based cultural uniqueness that does not conflict with this critical core. The book offers what is at once a balanced approach towards dealing with racial alienation and a bold step forward in the debate about the steps necessary to overcome present-day racism.