LIBERAL EXPECTANCY

Liberal Expectancy

Liberal Expectancy

Introduction

Scholars from many disciplines have investigated the concepts of culture, ethnicity, and race and their impact on relationships, interactions, and society. Over time, unpacking how meanings have been attributed to “The Other” and understanding conflict among people have been not only attempts to understand one another better but also processes of self-discovery. For example, when Frederick Douglass wrote his first narrative over 150 years ago, he was defining himself in the face of negative attributions that questioned why a brute should even be allowed to read or write. It is from this context that the importance of understanding concepts of culture, ethnicity, and race arises

Discussion

For many around the globe, the events of 11 September 2001 ushered in an entirely different world. September 11 may also reveal how the sociology of race and ethnicity has misunderstood the racial/ethnic politics of the post-Second World War era. As Jalali and Lipset flatly assert, 'race and ethnicity provide the most striking example of a general failure among experts to anticipate social developments in varying types of societies' (1998: 317). Much evidence supports their thesis. For example, because it assumed that the importance of ethnicity would decrease in conjunction with modernization, the sociology of race and ethnicity seemed unprepared for the resurgence of racial/ethnic conflict in the 1990s. Conflicts in places as diverse as Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Canada, Sri Lanka and Malaysia challenged the theoretical consensus among Marxist and non-Marxist scholars alike that industrialization, urbanization and education would foster racial and ethnic group integration into emerging democracies (Jalali and Lipset, 1998).

Why has a field whose mission remains the study of social relations of race and ethnicity been repeatedly caught off guard by racial and ethnic conflict? More importantly, in what ways can the sociology of race and ethnicity better analyze how race and ethnicity influence such conflicts? Because these are large questions, this two-part chapter can only sketch out some preliminary answers. In the first part, I examine the relationship between the sociology of race and ethnicity, a sub-specialty within sociology that is housed across a confederation of 'national sociologies', and the increasing significance of the interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity. I suggest that the historical organization of the sociology of race and ethnicity limits its ability, in isolation, to generate paradigms that adequately explain its own subject matter.

Bridging the Gap: National Sociologies and the Interdisciplinary Study Of Race And Ethnicity

Studying race and ethnicity from a variety of disciplinary vantage points is not new. Prior to the Second World War, biology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, psychology, law and political science all studied race and/or ethnicity simply because these topics constituted unavoidable elements of their fields. Because no compelling reason existed for sustained scholarly collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, academic disciplines agreed to respect each other's academic turf. Believing that objectivity, rationality, and the importance of empirical evidence in scientific research would excise from the scientific research process the seeming biases associated with race and ethnicity themselves, Western science aimed for a science of ...