How Americans Make Race

Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-1-107-61958-6
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 234 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 335 g

How do people produce and reproduce identities? In How Americans Make Race, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges what is sometimes called the 'narrative identity thesis': the idea that people produce and reproduce identities as stories. Identities have greater staying power than one would expect them to have if they were purely and simply narrative constructions, she argues, because people institutionalize identity-stories, building them into laws, rules, and other institutions that give social actors incentives to perform their identities well, and because they objectify identity-stories, building them into material forms that actors experience with their bodies. Drawing on in-depth historical analyses of the development of racialized identities and spaces in the twentieth-century United States, and also on life-narratives collected from people who live in racialized urban and suburban spaces, Hayward shows how the institutionalization and objectification of racial identity-stories enables their practical reproduction, lending them resilience in the face of challenge and critique.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hayward, Clarissa Rile

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. Comme il faut; 1. Identities and stories; 2. Black places; 3. Ordinary stories; 4. Home, sweet home; 5. White fences; Conclusion: stories, institutions, and spaces; Appendix. Interview respondents and interview schedule.

Über Autor(innen)

Hayward, Clarissa Rile
Clarissa Rile Hayward teaches political theory at Washington University in St Louis. The author of De-Facing Power (Cambridge University Press, 2000) and of many articles in journals and edited volumes, she writes broadly on the themes of power and identity in the contemporary United States.