First published 2015
Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond argue that no comprehensive theory of race has ever existed. They build a new framework using insights from Bourdieu, Durkheim, and Dewey to explain how racial systems operate in American society. The authors examine how racial hierarchies form, persist, and occasionally change. They explore how these structures shape individual identity and social relationships. The book investigates how racial categories penetrate personal experience and collective life. Emirbayer and Desmond also consider possibilities for reconstructing racial arrangements. Their analysis extends beyond race itself to address broader questions of social order, individual agency, and power structures. The work combines social theory with institutional analysis and normative evaluation. It offers readers a systematic approach to understanding how race functions as a organizing principle in American life.
Genres: race, social-science, political-science, non-fiction, academic, american-history
Vibes: academic, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: academic-analysis, social-theory
Setting: America
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
520 pages · Hardcover · University of Chicago Press