Category: Anthropology

  • In “The Mulatto Republic,” April Mayes looks at the many ways Dominicans define themselves through race, skin color, and culture. She explores significant historical factors and events that have led the nation, for much of the twentieth century, to favor privileged European ancestry and Hispanic cultural norms such as the Spanish language and Catholicism.

  • Based on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to “Mestizo Genomics” explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research.

  • The Post-Racial Mystique: Media and Race in the Twenty-First Century New York University Press April 2014 256 pages 9 halftones and 7 tables Cloth ISBN: 9780814762899 Paper ISBN: 9780814770603 Catherine R. Squires, Associate Professor of Communication Studies University of Minnesota Despite claims from pundits and politicians that we now live in a post-racial America, people…

  • Historically Black: Imagining Community in a Black Historic District New York University Press July 2014 208 pages 10 halftones Cloth ISBN: 9780814762882 Paper ISBN: 9780814763483 Mieka Brand Polanco, Assistant Professor of Anthropology James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia In Historically Black, Mieka Brand Polanco examines the concept of community in the United States: how communities are…

  • Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America University of North Carolina Press October 2014 320 pages 59 figs., 4 maps, 23 tables, notes, bibl., index 6.125 x 9.25 Paper ISBN: 978-1-4696-1783-1 Edward E. Telles, Professor of Sociology Princeton University and The Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (PERLA) Princeton University Pigmentocracies—the fruit…

  • Parsing Race and Blackness in Mexico Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews Volume 43, Number 6 (November 2014) pages 816-820 DOI: 10.1177/0094306114553216a Enid Logan, Associate Professor of Sociology University of Minnesota Land of the Cosmic Race: Race Mixture, Racism, and Blackness in Mexico, by Christina A. Sue  Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013. 234pp. $24.95…

  • Negro? Prieto? Moreno? A Question of Identity for Black Mexicans The New York Times 2014-10-25 Randal C. Archibold, Bureau Chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean JOSÉ MARÍA MORELOS, Mexico — Hernán Reyes calls himself “negro” — black — plain and simple. After some thought, Elda Mayren decides she is “Afromexicana,” or African-Mexican. Candido…

  • Mixed Race Amnesia is an ambitious and critical look at how multiraciality is experienced in the global north. Drawing on a series of interviews she conducted with twenty-four women of mixed race, acclaimed geographer Minelle Mahtani explores some of the assumptions and attitudes people have around multiraciality.

  • The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New Kingdom of Granada by Joanne Rappaport (review) [Roland review] Journal of Latin American Geography Volume 13, Number 3, 2014 pages 253-255 DOI: 10.1353/lag.2014.0045 L. Kaifa Roland, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies University of Colorado, Boulder Joanne Rappaport, The Disappearing Mestizo: Configuring Difference in the Colonial New…

  • Adopting an alternative approach to the question of difference, Joanne Rappaport examines what it meant to be mestizo (of mixed parentage) in the early colonial era. She draws on lively vignettes culled from the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century archives of the New Kingdom of Granada (modern-day Colombia) to show that individuals classified as “mixed” were not…