About
The UCSB Department of Sociology maintains a multi-level and multi-method approach to social inquiry. UCSB Sociology focuses on seven areas of research: Conversation Analysis; Culture; Global Studies; Feminist Studies; Institutions, Inequalities, and Networks; Race, Ethnicity, and Nation; and Social Movements and Social Change. Moreover, the Department of Sociology at UCSB is part of a large cluster of faculty and students in the History, Art, Chicana and Chicano Studies, and Asian American Studies, who are engaged in research on multiraciality/mixed race and related topics. Finally, the Department of Sociology is the home of “Betwixt and Between,” which is one of the first and longest-standing university courses to deal specifically with the question of multiraciality comparing the U.S. with various parts of the world. The Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies (JCMRS) builds upon the UCSB Sociology Department mission to broaden the breadth and depth of the study of race, ethnicity, and nation (REN). To read about additional UCSB Sociology REN efforts, visit: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/research/race-ethnicity-nation
Department of Sociology
Open Access Policy Deposits (281)
Confronting an Empire: An Analysis for the Global Justice Movement of the U.S.-made World Crisis
This essay advances an original sociological perspective for understanding U.S. foreign policy, historically and in the present, as a product of economic, political, cultural, and social psychological factors, shaped by race and gender as well as class. It offers an interpretation of the real reasons for both the first U.S.-Iraq war in 1991 and the recent conflict in 2003, assessing the first in terms of a project of international hegemony through roll-back of the negative impact of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and arguing that the 2002-3 Gulf War followed the same lines in a more extreme direction: a project of imperial hegemony through unilateral pre-emptive war abroad and manipulation of public opinion coupled with a climate designed to demonize dissent at home. It closes with suggestions for what roles progressive sociologists might play in the global justice movement and Green Party in light of the analysis offered in the essay.
Racial categories as resources and constraints in everyday interactions: Implications for racialism and non-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa
The anti-apartheid struggle was characterized by tensions between the opposing ideologies of non-racialism (exemplified by the Freedom Charter) and racialism (exemplified by Black Consciousness). These tensions have remained prevalent in public policies and discourse, and in the writings of social scientists, in the post-apartheid period. In this paper I examine some ways in which issues of whether, when, and how race matters become visible in everyday interactions in South Africa, and what insights this may offer with respect to these ongoing tensions. Specifically, I employ an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to examine some ways in which racial categories are treated as resources for action or constraints on action. I conclude by arguing that these findings point to the contingent and situational operation of a practical non-racialism (as well as practical racialism), and thus to the achievement of these ideologies in the moment-by-moment unfolding of interactions. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Changing Constellations of Southeast Asia From Northeast Asia to China
From Northeast Asia to China Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Abdul Rahman Embong, Siew Yean Tham. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2014. Asia rising: Welcome to the multipolar world. In Hyun-Chin Lim, W. Shafer, and Suk-Man Hwang, eds.