Disciplines Unbound: Notes on Sociology and Ethnic Studies

<strong>Disciplines</strong> <strong>Unbound</strong>: <strong>Notes</strong> on Sociology and Ethnic Studies
Author(s): Yen Le Espiritu
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 5 (Sep., 1999), pp. 510-514
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2654984 .
Accessed: 31/03/2012 02:48
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
http://www.jstor.org
American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Contemporary Sociology.

510 Symposia
management is notforeveryone. It is acomfort- ideas into management. Since I like moving
able location only if you are willing to move between disciplines and between theory and
beyond the boundaries of sociology and, at the practice, I wouldn't trade places with anyone.
same time, are inclined to bring sociological
<strong>Disciplines</strong> <strong>Unbound</strong>: <strong>Notes</strong> on Sociology and Ethnic Studies
YEN LE ESPIRITU
University of California, San Diego
The new social movements of the 1960s and sociology, the Chicago School sociologists spoke
the post-1965 increases in racialized immigrant powerfully to the social issues of industrialization
populations transformed the academy, usher- and urbanization through their attention to
ing in new subjects of social knowledge as well as everyday experience. In the late 1950s, C.
new critical social knowledges (Seidman 1994). Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination advo-
These new subjects posed new questions, chal- cated a critical social science, urging sociologists
lenged the dominant paradigms of academic dis- to commit themselves to an activist critique and
ciplines, and contested the separation of reconstruction of society. But there were also
knowledge and politics. The new critical knowl- prominent countertrends; in particular, during
edge seeped into the traditional disciplines, but the postwar decades, the growth of the research
took full shape in the emerging interdisciplinary university and of funding sources for the social
fields of Ethnic Studies, Women's Studies, Third sciences "scientized" sociology (Long 1997:
World Studies, Cultural Studies, and Queer 9-10). Anchored in positivist epistemologies,
Studies. It was amid this changing intellectual the disciplinary mainstream of sociology became
and political milieu that I entered the United increasingly more specialized and correspond-
States and eventually the university. Arriving ingly less engaged with related disciplines; its
from Vietnam in 1975 and entering higher edu- claim to universal and objective knowledge also
cation in the early 1980s, I inherited a more moved the field away from an explicit commit-
democratized and diversified university and a ment to social activism (Sprague 1998).
more critical and politicized body of social Paradoxically, even as sociologists wrestled
knowledge. By the time I began graduate school with issues of power, conflict, and inequality,
in the mid-1980s, I had come to view the uni- they have largely neglected or subordinated race
versity as a potentially important site for and thus have missed the manner in which race
activism a site to generate critical social has been "a fundamental axis of social organiza-
knowledge and practices aimed at social change. tion in the U. S." (Omi and Winant 1994: 13).
Focusing my scholarship on comparative race The great social theorists of the nineteenth cen-
and ethnic relations, I received my graduate tury all predicted that race and ethnicity con-
training in sociology but have worked since then ceptualized as remnants of a preindustrial
in the interdisciplinary field of Ethnic Studies. It order would decline in significance in modern
is the relationship between sociology and Ethnic society. For example, the classical Marxist
Studies both the gaps and the overlaps that I understanding that capital seeks "abstract labor"
will attempt to sketch in this brief essay. overlooks the ways in which capital has profited
At its best, sociology grapples seriously and precisely from the "flexible" racialization and
effectively with issues of social inequality, pow- gendering of labor. In the United States, before
er, and collective action. From its inception, the 1 960s, much of the sociology of race
sociology has asked difficult questions about expressed assimilationist principles and predict-
important social issues and believed that it could ed that with each succeeding generation, U.S.
inform social action in answering them. The ethnic groups would improve their economic
founding sociologists Marx, Weber, Durk- status and become progressively more similar to
heim, Simmel, and others all responded to the the "majority culture" (Park 1950; Gordon
crises of emerging industrial capitalism and 1964). Developed to explain the experiences of
intended to shape the course of historical events European immigrants and their children, this
through their social theories. Within American assimilationist framework did not differentiate

Syrnposia 511
between the experiences of racialized minorities the complex roles played by race and ethnicity
and those of white ethnic groups, and therefore in social relations as a way to produce new epis
could not account for the enduring and specific temologies and new data on social power, social
ways in which race as manifested in conquest, institutions, and social identities.
genocide, slavery, and immigration has been The early Ethnic Studies scholarship and
ingrained in the nation's social structure and programs were intensely nationalistic. Writing
culture.
from an anti-assimilationist stance, many schol-
The social upheavals and minority move- ars sought to unearth a "buried past," to chroniments
of the 1960s underscored the centrality of cle traditions of protest and resistance, and to
race in American life and shattered the myth of establish that racialized populations have been
the inevitability and even the desirability of absolutely crucial to the making of history.
assimilation. Race relations along with pover- Though important, this cultural nationalist
ty, gender, and sexuality surfaced as an urgent paradigm tended to homogenize differences,
social problem. Sociologists varied in their assuming heterosexuality and subordinating
responses. Some sought to uncover and fill gaps issues of gender and social class. For example,
in sociological knowledge by documenting the early Asian-American cultural nationalism puraccomplishments
and contributions of previous- sued an aggressively masculinist agenda "to chally
unstudied and uncelebrated individuals and lenge the metonymic equation of Asian with the
groups. Others began to incorporate race into feminine" (Yanagisako 1995: 287). Confronted
their research, but as a mere variable or as a with a history of painful "emasculation," these
source of research rather than as a central theo- male writers took whites to task for their racist
retical concept. Still others conceptualized race myths, but were often blind to their own accepas
a "problem" to be managed and to get beyond. tance of the racialized patriarchal construct of
Conceptualized primarily in terms of difference, gender stereotypes (Cheung 1990: 236-37). The
race remains a subordinate component of broad- focus on individual groups also obscured the
er and supposedly more important social rela- ways in which racialized ethnicity is relational
tionships, especially class. By treating race as a rather than atomized and discrete, and the ways
property of individuals instead of a principle of in which group identities necessarily form
social organization, sociologists saw "difference" through interaction with other groups through
but failed to "see differently." In other words, the complicated experiences of conflict and cooperinclusion
of race in sociology has most often ation and in structural contexts of power.
been additive, not transformative.
But racialized groups are heterogeneous; their
The Ethnic Studies response was different. cultures are varied and unfixed; their group
Emerging from the student and community boundaries are unstable and changeable; and
grassroots movements of the late 1960s and ear- their identities are marked with identities of
ly 1970s, Ethnic Studies claimed the academy as gender, sexual preference, class, and religion.
one site of struggles over culture, education, and These complex realities the products of
citizenship (Lowe 1996: 37). Explicitly critical uneven histories and unequal power relationsand
oppositional, this scholarship condemned challenge the binaries implicit in the cultural
the production of"objective" and "universal" nationalist paradigm, and they demand that
knowledge that misinterprets, misinforms, and Ethnic Studies scholars pay attention to the
erases the histories, experiences, and actions of complicated, conflicted, and composite nature
racialized groups; and it demanded more inclu- of all social identities, particularly to the insepasive,
situated, and transformative knowledge. rability and mutually constitutive realities of
The Ethnic Studies critiques of socially sanc- race, class, gender, and sexuality. For example,
tioned forms of knowledge echo those raised by writing from and about the realities and comsociologists
of knowledge: Both call attention to plexities of living on the borderlands, Gloria
the ways in which struggles over the production Anzaldua (1987) insists on the interconnectedof
knowledge over meanings, ways of assessing ness and simultaneity of the often contradictory
"truths," and control of discursive production aspects of her gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality,
and authorization are intimately connected to and feminist politics. Calling attention to the
struggles over the (re)production of power and interconnections between patriarchy and the
inequality. However, the primary intellectual racialized capitalist state, Chandra Mohanty
goal of Ethnic Studies is specific: to investigate (1991) argues that the definition of citizenship is

512 Symposia
always a gendered and racial formation. talism. In another instance, Rosa Linda Fregoso
Similarly, George Lipsitz (1994) contends that (1994) shows how culture functions as a social
the rise of identity movements during the 1940s force by documenting how gendered images and
reflected how class came to be increasingly lived ideas in cultural products and practices serve as
and experienced through race and gender. The impetus for the development of a Chicana femirecent
scholarship in Ethnic Studies also calls nist politics of "differential consciousness." This
attention to the ways in which new social rela- interdisciplinarity is not only methodological or
tions have produced new coalitions and conflicts theoretical; it is also a response to the inadequathat
transform the meaning of racial and ethnic cy of self-contained disciplines particularly the
identity. For example, Lisa Lowe (1996) shows universalizing models of social analysis to
how the current global restructuring particu- address the new and complex connections
larly the internationalization and feminization between culture and social structure engendered
of labor forces-constitutes a shift in the mode by a new global context, new communications
of production that now necessitates alliances technologies, and new transnational social relabetween
racialized and Third World women tions (Lipsitz 1997; Basch, Schiller, and Blanc
within, outside, and across the border of the 1994).
United states. In sum, most of the best work in The critical social knowledge produced by
Ethnic Studies views ethnicity as corljurlCtural, as Ethnic Studies and related interdisciplinary
a "product of intersubjectivity and interaction in studies left the barest traces on sociology until
concrete historical and social circumstances" the 1980s. The publication of Michael Omi and
(Ethnic Studies Department 1994).
Howard Winant's Racial Formatiorl irl the Urlited
Perhaps most important, the most exciting States in 1986 (republished in 1994) was groundwork
in Ethnic Studies is relentlessly interdisci- breaking. Emphasizing the socially constructed
plinary and multidisciplinary. Born amid the nature of race, Omi and Winant insist that race
radical flux and reconfigurations of knowledge and racial logic are ubiquitous, determining
within the academy, Ethnic Studies owes its one's political rights, one's location in the labor
existence to the development of interdiscipli- market, and one's sense of identity. Perhaps
rlary trends within traditional disciplines, to the most important, the authors link cultural expresestablishment
of new interdisciplinary studies, as sions with social structure by defining race as "a
well as to the growing dialogue across disci- matter of both social structure and cultural repplines.
Drawing from the best work in the resentation" (1994: 56). Subsequent studies of
humanities and social sciences and from the bur- race in sociology have both drawn from and
geoning theoretical and methodological innova- expanded on Omi and Winant's influential
tions in Feminist Studies, Queer Studies, racial formation perspective. For example, in a
Postcolonial Studies, Cultural Studies, and study of multicultural and multiracial California
Communication Studies, Ethnic Studies schol- during the last half of the nineteenth century,
ars conceptualize race and ethnicity as an ele- Tomas Almaguer (1994) skillfully traces the
ment of both social structure and culture. "racial formation" of Anglos, Mexicans, Indians,
Noting the mutually constitutive qualities of Chinese, and Japanese populations by denoting
cultural forms and social structures, Ethnic how race is mutually determined by structural
Studies scholars delineate the role of race in the and ideological factors. In her pivotal study
cognitive mapping of U.S. culture, emphasize Black Femirlist Thought ( 1 99 1 ), Patricia Hill
the oppositional cultural practices among Collins argues that ideological representations of
aggrieved groups, and examine how the cultural gender and sexuality are central in exercising
symbols generated by the dominant group seem and maintaining racial, patriarchal, and class
to justify the economic exploitation and social domination. Nonsociologists have also been
oppression of racialized populations over time. influenced by the racial formation perspective.
In an innovative study of Asian-American For example, in an impressive study of Asianwomen
as a problem of knowledge, Laura Hyun American cultural politics, literary theorist Lisa
Yi Kang (1997) traces the complex connections Lowe (1996) traces the genealogy of a distinct
linking the discursive production and circula- "racial formation" of Asian Americans through
tion of Asian-American women as transnation- the history of the legislation of the Asian as
al labor with the actual physical labor performed alien and the administration of the Asian
by these women in globalized, militarized capi- American as citizen.

Symposia 513
As a sociologist who works in Ethnic Studies, Anzaldua, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera. San
I draw from both disciplines. From sociology, I Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute.
learn to be attentive to lived social experience, Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina
to grasp the social constructions of social reality, Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations <strong>Unbound</strong>:
Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments,
and to link the study of individual lives with
and Deterritorialized Nation States. Langhorne, PA:
broader issues of political economy.
Gordon & Breach.
But I am excited and challenged by Ethnic Cheung, King-Kok. 1990. "The NVoman NVarrior
Studies' aggressive theoretical and empirical Versus the Chinaman Pacific: Must a Chinese
engagement with the reality and complexity of American Critic Choose Between Feminism and
race, by its insistence that knowledge is always Heroism?" Pp. 234-51 in Conflicts in Feminism,
partial and situated in relationship to power, and edited by M. Hirsch and E. F. Keller. New York:
by its explicit interdisciplinarity. These concep- Routledge.
tual and methodological frames provide me with Collins, Patricia Hill. 1991. Black Feminist Thought:
alternative ways of gaining knowledge about the Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment. New York: Routledge.
world that better reflect my experience as a
1998. "On Book Exhibits and New
racialized immigrant woman. This is not to say Complexities: Reflections on Sociology as
that sociologists have not produced important, Science." Contemporary Sociology 27: 7-11.
even indispensable scholarship on race. To the Ethnic Studies Department. 1994. "A Proposal for a
contrary, sociological theory and research on Program of Graduate Studies in Ethnic Studies for
race have grown exponentially, producing an the M.A. and Ph.D. Degrees." University of
enormous body of critical studies on the issues of California, San Diego.
social difference, social conflict, and social Gordon, Milton. 1964. Assimilation in American Life:
change. But it is to say that the institution of soci- The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origm.
ology continues to resist change.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Fregoso, Rosa Linda. 1994. The Bronze ScreerL .
Even as race was incorporated into individual
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
research projects, no corresponding change has Kang, Laura Hyun Yi. 1997. "Si(gh)ting
been made in the discipline's concepts, theories, Asian/American Tomen as Transnational Labor."
methods, and epistemologies. Consequently, the Positions 5: 403-37.
racial paradigm, which positions race as a promi- Lipsitz, George. 1994. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and
nent social category creating hierarchies of dif- Culture in the 1 940s. Urbana: University of Illinois
ference in society, remains a minority position Press.
within mainstream sociological paradigms. Like . 1997. "Facing Up to NVhat's Killing Us:
Patricia Hill Collins (1998), I suspect that this Artistic Practice and Grassroots Social Theory."
resistance has something to do with sociologists' Pp. 234-261 in From Sociology to Cultural Studies,
edited by Elizabeth Long. Oxford: Blackwell.
efforts to guard disciplinary borders and in turn
Long, Elizabeth. 1997. "Engaging Sociology and
to protect their assigned places in the natural- Cultural Studies: Disciplinarity and Social
ized sociological hierarchy. But in an era of glob- Change." Pp. 1-32 in From Sociology to Cultural
alization, new technologies, and paradigm shifts, Studies, edited by Elizabeth Long. Oxford:
the boundaries of sociology continue to be "ever Blackwell.
more slippery" (Long 1997: 12) as sociologists- Lowe, Lisa. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American
especially graduate students and young faculty- Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University
stretch beyond sociology for other conceptual Press.
frames more fully to gain knowledge about their Mills, C. NVright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination.
world. If the goal of our scholarship is to better New York: Oxford University Press.
Mohanty, Chandra. 1991. "Cartographies of Struggle:
understand and thus better build a more just and
Third NVorld NVomen and the Politics of
humane social order, then it seems imperative Feminism." Pp. 1-47 in Third World Women and
that we learn from as many areas of academic the Politics of Feminism, edited by Chandra
expertise as possible. A good place to start is to Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres.
establish dialogue across disciplines, beginning Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
with sociology and Ethnic Studies.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial
Formation in the United States. New York &
References
London: Routledge.
Almaguer, Tomas. 1994. Racial Fault Lines: The . 1994. Racial Formation in the United States
Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2d Ed. NewYork &
Berkeley: University of California Press.
London: Routledge.

514 Symposia
Park, Robert E. 1950. Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: Yanagisako, Sylvia. 1987. "Transforming Orientalism:
Free Press.
Gender, Nationality, and Class in Asian American
Seidman, Steven. 1994. Contested Knowledge: Social Studies." Pp. 275-98 in Naturalizing Power: Essays
Theory in the Postmodern Era. Oxford: Blackwell. in Feminist Cultural Analysis, edited by Sylvia
Sprague, Joey. 1998. "(Re)Making Sociology: Yanagasiko and C. Delaney. New York: Routledge.
Breaking the Bonds of Our Discipline."
Contemporary Sociology 27: 24-28.
A Gray Zone? Meetings between Sociology and Gerontology
GUNHILD 0. HAGESTAD
Northwestern University and Agder College, Norway
It is nearly impossible to discuss the border lectual concerns in sociology could be pursued in
between sociology and gerontology without con- gerontology, through well-anchored questions
sidering several disciplines. While some people about how age is related to social integration,
would disagree with me, I do not consider geron- social differentiation, and the creation of mean-
tology a discipline. Rather, I see it as a field of ing. Gerontology would also seem to allow for
inquiry in which a number of disciplines address theoretical and methodological explorations of
questions related to aging and old age. Thus, micro-macro connections. In her ASA
when we consider sociologists who have partici- Presidential Address, Matilda Riley (1987) gave
pated in this field, we ask how they have con- us a powerful reminder that age is and should be
tributed to and have been affected by its significant in sociology. Yet, about the same
discourse. Gerontology, with etymological roots time, a group of British colleagues argued that:
in the Greek ger- (to grow old) and geron (an old
person) (Achenbaum and Levin 1989), brings
Any sociologist working on old age (in
together questions, theoretical perspectives, and
England at least) knows self-evidently how
marginal the subject has been to sociology as
methodological preferences from various disci-
plines, ranging from biology and medicine to
a whole and how under-represented has
been the sociological perspective within the
psychology and sociology. Very often, as
conglomeration of disciplines working under
Achenbaum and Levin point out, attempts to
the umbrella of social gerontology. (Fennel,
define gerontology have used the word problem.
The field has experienced fairly continuous ten-
Phillipson, and Evers 1988: 170)
sion between two goals: building scientific To begin thinking about the meeting ground
understanding versus seeking to ameliorate between sociology and gerontology, I contacted
problems associated with individual and popula- a number of colleagues in North America and
tion aging. This tension is important in the rela- Europe who have been active in the field of
tionships between sociology and gerontology. aging. I asked them when the border started to
Long before gerontology was a field of exist, who the early key actors were, how sociol-
inquiry, classics in the social sciences included ogy and gerontology might have mutually influ-
considerations of age and social structure. For enced each other, and what might constitute
example, Comte pondered progress and how it unrealized potentials for cross-fertilization.
might be linked to generational succession and Although the word gerorltology was in use ear-
the average length of life. Marx and Engels con- ly in this century, a series of new institutions,
sidered how industrialization would affect the such as associations and journals using the name,
significance of age and gender. Durkheim arose shortly after World War II. It is therefore
explored connections between age and social not surprising that when I asked colleagues how
integration. Early in the twentieth century, far back they would trace interconnections, the
Mannheim gave us his influential essay on how 1940s was the earliest point. Nearly all of them
age places individuals in the flow of history, and mentioned Talcott Parsons, often also anthropol-
generational units constitute a social location, ogist Ralph Linton. Both Parsons and Linton
with subjective awareness of such location. It published essays on age and sex as bases of social
would seem reasonable that long-standing intel- roles in the 1942 volume of Americarl Sociological