Race in Cultural Sociological Perspective

Summary

Culture, defined most broadly as the ideas, ideational constructs, symbols, and practices that individuals and groups utilize to make meaning of their lives, has a special place in the sociological analysis of race. In the history of sociology, that analysis has taken two general forms. To paraphrase sociologist Loic Wacquant, on one hand the sociology of race has been a project of discerning how and why racial division emerges and endures in social life. On the other, the sociology of race has illustrated how varied visions of social reality and possibility come into being according to one’s membership in racial categories. Both approaches have offered testimony to the pervasiveness of race in shaping social life. Cultural sociological perspectives on race have largely catered to the second of these approaches. That is, the analysis of race through cultural sociological perspectives has brought forth penetrating insight into how members of racial and ethnic groups have made meaning of their social experiences and conditions, as well as how they conceived of and employed cultural tools and practices to sustain and support their survival. Since the 1970s, international perspectives on race in cultural sociological analysis gained greater currency in the canon. Developments and findings in research on race through a cultural sociological perspective have focused on the following areas: the early tradition of sociological inquiry into race and culture; the mid-20th century emphasis on subcultures; the cultural sociology of race in the age of the underclass (1970–1990); expanding the empirical terrain and vocabulary for the cultural sociology of race; race-making and race framing in the post–civil rights era; the cultural sociology of racial identity; cultural sociological studies of poverty and inequality in the post-underclass era; the cultural sociology of racial production and consumption; and race, culture, and socialization.