Disciplines Unbound: Notes on Sociology and Ethnic Studies

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.