Search results

Race has played a central role in state-building in Latin America. This chapter foregrounds the role of transnational racialization politics in bureaucratic development in the region in the late nineteenth century. Analyzing the transformation of the Bolivian diplomatic bureaucracy following the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), I argue that the circulation in Europe and the Americas of racial discourses on Bolivia that cast doubt on its place among the concert of civilized nations motivated its reform and expansion. This study suggests that, given the potential costs of transnational racialization threats, states across the region developed agencies and practices that expanded their capacity to manage their racialized national images among international audiences. Against the threat of racialized imperialism and colonialism, Bolivian liberal reformers envisioned a diplomatic bureaucracy capable of negotiating Bolivia's place in the global racial imaginary abroad. This study emphasizes the central role of the diplomatic bureaucracy as a condition of possibility in these projects and directs attention to the role of race in the development of state agencies less commonly associated with race, such as diplomacy.

Research indicates that work in predominantly white professional settings generates stress for minority professionals. However, certain occupations may enable or constrain these race-related stressors. In this paper, we use affect control theory to examine the identity dynamics present in professions that explicitly require workers to highlight racial issues. We might expect that occupations that require attention to racial inequalities could produce heightened stress for these workers. However, our research on diversity officers indicates that the opportunity to advocate for disadvantaged groups and address racial bias explicitly creates emotions of satisfaction and fulfillment, and removes some of the common pressures to manage negative emotions that arise as a result of cross-race interactions. Importantly, these emotions are achieved when minority diversity workers perceive institutional supports that buttress their work. Thus, our findings offer a more nuanced assessment of the ways professionals of color engage in various types of emotional performance, and emphasize the importance of both occupational role and institutional support.

In his 1919 article ‘The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe’, Thorstein Veblen addressed the subject of Jewish intellectual creativity. Specifically, Veblen traced Jewish overrepresentation in the ranks of leading scientists and scholars back to their hyphenate status between their own community and gentile society. This essay has generally been neglected by Veblen scholars as puzzling or pointless in comparison with his preceding works, in which he developed his institutional-evolutionary economics. Moreover, the allegoric reading of Veblen’s image of the ‘renegade Jew’ as a representation of his own social and academic marginalization has overshadowed the scientific relevance of his analysis of Jewish intellectual creativity. The present article attempts both to take this 1919 essay seriously and to place it firmly within the context of his preceding literary productions. Specifically, this essay shows how Veblen’s view of Jewish intellectual creativity as the product of an enduring dynamic of Jewish–gentile relations is consistent with his ideas on the mechanism of development and reinforcement of institutions developed in his writings published between 1898 and 1914. The present chapter also suggests that Veblen reversed anti-Semitic arguments about the so-called ‘Jewish type’ in a pro-Semitic direction. In this respect, Edward Alsworth Ross’s explanation of the supposed characteristics of the Jewish people is taken as one hallmark of the racial thought of the American Progressive Era.

In an era of global economic expansion, the harsh underside of capitalism clearly affects human subjectivities and consciousness.¹ Emotions, which both express and structure subjectivity and consciousness, reflect and manifest the social reality of human life in its various globalized dimensions. My argument in this chapter thus concerns the ways in which the contradictions as the harsh underside of capitalism affect the subjectivities of racial minorities. For this reason, the relationship between emotions and commodity capitalism is an especially pressing concern for the formation and expression of racial identity in the United States today. To understand the social reality of race in the U.S. capitalist system is to take seriously the affects that express and constitute the critical social thought of racial minorities. As African Americanist scholars such as Cornel West (1994, p. 42) have argued, the ideology of unregulated capital in corporate consumerism creates market moralities and market mentalities that “erode civil society.” The critical thought of black Americans, West (1992, p. 42) avers, suffers irreparable damage by images that relentlessly commercialize the so-called good life:These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others – and thereby edge out nonmarket values – love, care, service to others – handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America.Corporations thus capitalize on civil rights gains while commodifying the activist politics of communities and governmental organizations. In effect, the “status quo” of government that promotes economic justice and civil rights protections is fragmented and replaced by corporate domination and the rule of the free market. Instead of turning to non-commercial avenues of civil society to change oppressive relations of power, Americans opt for consuming social change in a laissez-faire economy that equates individualism and free choice with purchasing merchandise. In her powerful critique of class privilege and consumption-based individualism, Bell Hooks (2000, p. 81) explains how the media's use of race to promote a “shared culture of consumerism” vitiates community values and deflects attention from class antagonism. Such consumerism, Hooks maintains, promotes ambitions for lifestyles of conspicuous consumption and celebrity that renders incoherent and undesirable a democratic sensibility that made civil rights gains for women and minorities possible in the first place (Bell Hooks, 2000, p. 77).

In this chapter, we use the concepts of emotional labor or emotion work to examine the experiences of transracial families – white families rearing Black adoptees. We focus on the emotion work done by the parents to inculcate and develop positive racial identities for their adoptive children as their adoptees experience racial mistreatment. We also use the concept of white racial framing to examine strategies for effectively coping with racial mistreatment. African Americans have more emotion work than the members of dominant group because of their status as stigmatized minorities in American society. African Americans adopted by white families have even greater emotion work because they tend to have the extra burden of living in predominately white communities where there are fewer people of color to serve as positive role models in the socialization process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a long-term mentoring relationship between a White female from the Traditional Generation and an African American male from the Xennial Generation, as engaged in a mentoring relationship within higher education institutions in the USA. The study investigated if, how and to what degree the differences and similarities between them influenced their mentoring relationship.

The authors used an autoethnographic approach involving extensive questioning, dialoguing, note keeping and analysis over eight months.

The analysis suggested that race had the greatest influence on the relationship. The primary reasons for mentoring success were similarities in family backgrounds and commonly held values.

This study may not be generalizable to mentoring relationships that do not involve cultural differences in race, age or gender.

The paper offers a model for the types of strategies individuals can use in cross-racial mentoring endeavors to help build and sustain these relationships. It also includes suggestions for individuals engaged in mentoring relationships, which include gender, race or age differences, and organizations seeking to enhance diversity within their institutions.

There is not an extensive body of research on individual cross-racial, gender and generational mentoring that provides an analysis of the experience of those involved. Additionally, the model presented for examining cross-racial mentoring relationships is unique.

This volume of Political Power and Social Theory highlights ongoing conversations concerning sociological approaches to the global and historical study of race and racism. In this introduction, we discuss the challenges and promises of studying race across space and time. We emphasize that attending to race on the global scale not only improves our understanding of how race operates in current times, but also helps us better recognize how social relations of power are organized. We underscore how scholars ought to conceive of racism as central to the making of the so-called modern world. The eight papers in this volume advance this intellectual project. We consider them in conversation with one another to highlight four foundations for the global historical study of race and racism. First, the authors emphasize on-the-ground race-making. Second, they explore continuity, change, and overlapping racial orders. Third, the authors document the tensions between local dynamics and global relations, drawing attention to sites where the two meet. Fourth, the authors interrogate the relationship of modernity to the construction of race around the world. The articles in this volume are important examples of work that pushes the study of race and racism forward.

The purpose of this paper exploratory study is to decipher sport consumer associations and sentiments connected to the brand image of retired athletes.

In total, 14 sport consumers, who demonstrated an in-depth knowledge of throwback branding tactics and expertise in athlete brand promotion, participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews.

The findings indicate there are three prevalent themes across the present data (i.e. epoch epitome, athlete-team connection and off-the-field persona).

While the proliferation of throwback merchandise and affinity for brands of retired athletes is evident, the internalization of associations related to retired athletes has escaped empirical investigation. Numerous questions concerning how specific facets of a retired athlete’s image (e.g. athletic skills or life off the field) activate nostalgic feelings, drive consumer loyalty and establish market permanence remain unanswered. The current study contributes to the understanding of the brand image of the retired athlete and the existing literature concerning athlete branding.