            
 |
|
|
Constructing "Race" and "Ethnicity" in America: Category-Making in Public Policy and Administration
2007 Herbert A. Simon Book Award, Public Administration Section, American Political Science Association |
||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
Comments/Reviews
Description: What do we mean in the U.S. today when we use the terms "race" and "ethnicity?" What do we mean, and what do we understand, when we use the five standard race-ethnic categories: White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic?
Most federal and state data collection agencies use these terms without explicit attention, and thereby create categories of American ethnicity for political purposes. Dvora Yanow shows how "race" and "ethnicity" are socially constructed concepts--not objective, scientifically-grounded variables--and do not accurately represent the real world. She joins the growing critique of the unreflective use of "race" and "ethnicity" in American policy-making through an exploration of how these terms are used in everyday practice. Her book is filled with current examples and analyses from a wealth of social institutions: health care, education, criminal justice, and government at all levels. The questions she raises for society and public policy are endless. Yanow maintains that these issues must be addressed explicitly, publicly, and nationally if we are to make our policy and administrative institutions operate more effectively.
Selected Contents:
Prologue, Bedankjes/L'histoire Du Texte
Part I. Laying the Groundwork: Giving a(n) (Ac)count
1. Constructing Categories: Naming, Counting, Science, and Identity
2. Toward an American Categorical "Science" of Race and Ethnicity: OMB Directive No. 15
Part II. Making Race-Ethnicity Through Public Policies
3. Color, Culture, Country: Race and Ethnicity in the US Census
4. Identity Choices? Agency Policies and Individual Resistance
Part III. Making Race-Ethnicity Through Administrative Practices
5. Ethnogenesis by the Numbers, Ethnogenesis by "Eyeballing"
6. Constructing Race-Ethnicity Through Social Science Research: Managing Workplace Diversity
Part IV. Telling Identities: The Contemporary Legacy
7. Public Policies as Identity Stories: American Race-Ethnic Discourse
8. Changing (Ac)counting Practices: Meditation on a Problem
References
Index
Notes
Comment(s): "Dvora Yanow skillfully traces the 'production of race' in U.S. public policies and administrative practices. She demonstrates that racial and ethnic classifications, as well as the assignment of particular individuals to particular races/ethnicities, are political projects that have profoundly shaped the life prospects of U.S. citizens. Yanow also probes the enormously difficult question: What can now be done to rectify this history of politically generated inequities? Her thought-provoking prescription should stimulate a much-needed and long-overdue debate about the appropriate remedies for a history of political injustice." -- Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University
"Dvora Yanow's synthesis of years of pathbreaking work on race and ethnicity is a tour de force. Her topic has been exhaustively studied by others but her unique creativity shines through as she brings her combined interpretive, policy analytical, political, and ethical expertise to bear on some of the central dilemmas of American life. Combining political realism with profound optimism, Yanow offers possibilities for change where others only imagine forces beyond our control and she persuasively urges us to change ourselves for the better." -- Davydd Greenwood, Cornell University
"Yanow helps us see the world we create when we take the meaning and salience of racial and ethnic categories for granted as we make policies and administer programs. She presents to us a perspective essential to both scholars and practitioners of public policy." -- Martha S. Feldman, University of Michigan
Review(s): Yanow's analysis is historically rich and argumnetatively solid...her book is an important contribution to thinking out the role of narratives and social categories in the reproduction of social, political, and legal hierarchy. The Law and Politics Book Review Vol. 14 No. 4
...timely and important. ...This book will appeal to those who study race and ethnicity in particular and the construction of difference and diversity more generally. Anyone with an interest in the history and use of racial and ethnic categories by government agencies will also find the book illuminating. Administrative Science Quarterly
...a balanced, level-headed methodology that acknowledges the inevitability of categories on the one hand, but remains critical towards their use and perpetuation on the other. ...this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of the social construction of categories and how American ethnogenesis is practiced every day. It deserves to be read by anyone who is interested in the interplay between ethnicity, organizations, and public policy. Organziational Studies, 26:11
    
|