Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics

Kazuko Suzuki · Diego A. von Vacano

Oct 2018 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by Mirron Willis

About this audiobook

Race is one of the most elusive phenomena of social life. While we generally know it when we see it, it's not an easy concept to define. Social science literature has argued that race is a Western concept that emerged with the birth of modern imperialism, whether in the sixteenth century (the Age of Discovery) or the eighteenth century (the Age of Enlightenment). This book points out that there is a disjuncture between the way race is conceptualized in the social sciences and in recent natural science literature. In the view of some proponents of natural-scientific perspectives, race has a biological-and not just a purely social-dimension. The book argues that, to more fully understand what we mean by race, social scientists need to engage these new perspectives coming from genomics, medicine, and health policy. This book considers three fundamental tensions in thinking about race: one between theories that see race as fixed and those that see it as malleable; a second between Western (especially US-based) and non-Western perspectives that decenter the US experience; and a third between sociopolitical and biomedical concepts of race.

About the author

Prolific audiobook narrator Mirron Willis has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards and an Audie Award. An accomplished actor, he has appeared on stage, in films, and on television. His many theater credits include roles in Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Knock Me a Kiss, and A Raisin in the Sun.

Kazuko Suzuki is Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University and the author of Divided Fates: The State, Race, and Korean Immigrants' Adaptation in Japan and the United States, winner of the 2017 Book Award on Asia/Transnational from the Asia and Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association.

Diego A. von Vacano is Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University and the author of The Color of Citizenship: Race, Modernity and Latin American/Hispanic Political Thought and The Art of Power: Machiavelli, Nietzsche and the Making of Aesthetic Political Theory.