Proceeding from the bold and provocative claim that there never has been a comprehensive and systematic theory of race, Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond set out to reformulate how we think about this most difficult of topics in American life. In The Racial Order, they draw on Bourdieu, Durkheim, and Dewey to present a new theoretical framework for race scholarship. Animated by a deep and reflexive intelligence, the book engages the large and important issues of social theory today and, along the way, offers piercing insights into how race actually works in America. Emirbayer and Desmond set out to examine how the racial order is structured, how it is reproduced and sometimes transformed, and how it penetrates into the innermost reaches of our racialized selves.
“Durkheim was the most deliberate and the most penetrating theorist among the classical sociologists. Emirbayer’s judicious selection of texts, matched with contemporary selections from among the best of modern sociology, shows how central Durkheim themes have been in the increasing sophistication of sociological ideas through the end of the twentieth century, and beyond.” ~ Randall Collins
Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, authors of The Racial Order, have written an undergraduate textbook on race relations for the twenty-first century. Every chapter of Race in America examines how racism intersects with other forms of social division―those based on gender, class, sexuality, ability, religion, and nationhood―as well as how whiteness surrounds us in unnamed ways that produce and reproduce a multitude of privileges for white people. Featuring a table of contents that is organized around race and racism in different aspects of social life, Race in America explores the connections between past and present, individual and institution, and the powerful and the powerless.
“Exceptionally well-written and deeply researched, Racial Domination, Racial Progress: The Sociology of Race in America clearly stands out among the great number of texts in the field of racial and ethnic studies. By linking our own lives with the best social scientific available, this book makes a great contribution both to higher education and to racial justice.” ~Howard Winant
