Ronald Sundstrom

Race and place: social space in the production of human kinds

Recent discussions of human categories have suffered from an over emphasis on intention and language, and have not paid enough attention to the role of material conditions, and, specifically, of social space in the construction of human categories. The relationship between human categories and social spaces is vital, especially with the categories of class, race, and gender. This paper argues that social space is not merely the consequent of the division of the world into social categories; it is constitutive of social categories. To put it more bluntly, if who we are is bound up with place, then not only do we inhabit a divided America; divided America inhabits us. The second, and equally dramatic, conclusion is that attempts to transform social categories must involve the transformation of social space. When we sort people by categories, we do so spatially: with race come racialized spaces. And because our place comes to inhabit us, when we divide spatially we cannot help but to inscribe and produce categories and identities associated with our spatial divisions: with racialized spaces come race. Recognition of this dialectic is a direct challenge to the one-way considerations of social identity and social space that occurs in much urban sociology and history. Moreover, it demonstrates that there is an internal contradiction in policies--often based in urban sociology and history--that assume that integration can be accomplished along with the conservation of ethnic and racial identity.

Race as a human kind

In this article I present a positive ontology of ‘race’. Toward this end, I discuss metaphysical pluralism and review the theories of Ian Hacking, John Dupre and Root. Working within Root’s framework, I describe the conditions under which a constructed kind like ‘race’ would be real. I contend these conditions are currently satisfied in the United States. Given the social presence and impact of ‘race’ and the unique way ‘race’ operates at differing sites, I will argue that it is site-specific, it is socially constructed, and it is real.

Racial politics in residential segregation studies

Most research about race has been influenced by values of one sort or another. This started with the inception of race as a biological category. Cognitive values about race were concerned with the worth of distinctive taxonomic divisions, and political values about it were concerned with the moral, aesthetic, and political meanings of these human distinctions. The presence of cognitive and non‐cognitive values in contemporary social science concerning race is no less present or important. The role of racial politics is exposed in the debate over the nature of contemporary residential housing patterns, as well as in examinations of the methods and measures of segregation research. Such examinations uncover not only a sociology of the segregation studies, but also certain values about race and segregation. This leads us to richer explanations, given our public political desires, than we would have without those values.

Torture and Legitimacy

George W. Bush’s administration has undermined the legitimacy of the United States of America as a member of the international community through an astonishing array of unilateral policies that do not respect the interests and concerns of that community. On matters of serious concern to the peoples of the world, such as the global environment, human rights, nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism, and, of course, war, the United States has pursued its foreign policy interests guided by “political realism” and a stubborn commitment to its narrowly interpreted national interests. It is not enough, however, to merely identify and condemn the legitimacy crisis of the United States; action is required to bring it into alignment with the laws of the international community. Responsibility for that action belongs to the American people. Action sufficient to restore U.S. legitimacy would include the reclamation of our democratic political structures, as well as public acts that denounce torture.

Introduction: place and the philosophy of race

Over drinks at a philosophy of science conference in Birmingham, Alabama, a philosopher of science who has contributed important work in the philosophy of biology and the metaphysics of human kinds asked me what considerations of social space add to philosophy of human categories. But, all things considered, what a question to ask in Birmingham! What do considerations of space add to our understanding of human categories? His question was motivated by simple and innocent curiosity, for the majority of the work in that area had simply been concerned with group intentionality, conditions for social facts, and the possibility of social reality between the subtle shades of various conceptions of nominalism. Just a few miles away from our lunch table were Kelly Ingram Park, the sixteenth street Baptist church, and the jail-cell in which Martin Luther King, on scraps of paper, penned “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” Really, the question should be: How can we understand human categories, or even human experience, without the inclusion of social space and geography? In Birmingham, how can one talk so casually about “human kinds,” even if it is a most technical and removed notion, and not think of race and the experience of segregation? It is already incredible that we dare not remember that we are on land ethnically cleansed of its indigenous peoples. In Birmingham, in Alabama, in the US, on our planet since 1492 (at least), how can we understand race—in its earliest forms or as scientific racism—without considering place? It is no wonder that the American public pays its philosophers no heed. What could we possibly say that is worth anything if we cannot understand Birmingham amidst our philosophy? This special section of Philosophy and Geography collects six papers that in various ways bring together philosophy, race, and place. Together, these papers theorize the