Racing Research, Researching Race : Methodological Dilemmas in Critical Race Studies

Read Chapter One.Initiate[s] a useful and innovative dialogue. . . . A very important book, especially in its opening up a discussion of methodological issues around current research on racism and racial grouping.-- Contemporary SociologyEssential reading for all those whose research explicitly engages racial issues-and for all those who do not realize that their work inevitably engages racial issues.-Ruth Frankenberg, author of White Women, Race Matters and editor of Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Cultural CriticismAbsolutely critical reading. This volume powerfully explores how scholars' own racial background shapes the analytical lens with which they view whiteness, blackness . . . the exoticism and eroticism of racial 'others' and the domain of white privilege.-William Darity, Jr., coauthor of Persistent Disparity and Boshamer Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Research Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics, Sociology and African American Studies at Duke UniversityTimely and challenging, this innovative book engages questions and dilemmas that researchers on race and racism rarely talk about in public. Refreshingly clear and comparative in scope, it is a must reading in all courses about race and ethnic relations, calling for a fundamental rethinking of research agendas in this field.-John Solomos, author of Race and Racism in Britain, coeditor of The Blackwell Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, and Professor of Sociology, South Bank University (London)Points to the ethical dilemmas of researchers researching race among communities that are at once 'victims' of racism and active in the continued process of racialization.-Rinaldo Walcott, author of Black Like Who?, and Professor of Humanities, York University (Canada)A remarkable collection of essays interrogating the political, methodological and ethical dilemmas of conducting research in racially stratified societies. These theoretically astute and ethnographically rich case studies compellingly demonstrate how the production of knowledge is framed and mediated by the racialized subject positions held by social scientists. Racing Research, Researching Race will no doubt incite a critical and long overdue discussion of the racial politics of ethnographic fieldwork.-Steven Gregory, author of Black Corona, and Professor of Africana and American Studies at New York UniversityA white woman studies upper-class eighth grade girls at her alma mater on Long Island and finds a culture founded on misinformation about its own racial and class identity. A black American researcher is repeatedly assumed by many Brazilian subjects to be a domestic servant or sex worker.Racing Race, Researching Race is the first volume of its kind to explore how ideologies of race and racism intersect with nationality and gender to shape the research experience.Critical work in race studies has not adequately addressed how racial positions in the field--as inflected by nationality, gender, and age--generate numerous methodological dilemmas. Racing Research, Researching Race begins to fill this gap by infusing critical race studies with more empirical work and suggesting how a critical race perspective might improve research methodologies and outcomes.The contributors to the volume encompass a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds including anthropology, sociology, ethnic studies, women=s studies, political science, and Asian American studies.