Race in the 21st Century: Ethnographic Approaches

John Hartlgan.Jr. Race in the 21st Century: Ethnographic Approaches. New York: Oxford University Press, 20 1 0. 226 pp. $29.95.

In Race in the 21st Century, anthropologist John Hartigan, Jr. presents an overview of current ethnographic research on racial interaction in America and offers a cultural analysis of the ways that race is lived and experienced. Organized thematically, the book begins by introducing and exploring the value of ethnographic research before moving into an overview of the debates surrounding American racial typologies as well as the biological component of race. Hartigan then offers a summary of contemporary whiteness studies, an examination of how Blackness has been constructed and problematized in social science research, and an overview of the ambiguous position Asian and Latino Americans hold in the U.S. racial categorization system. By utilizing what he terms a "cultural approach" to the question of race, Hartigan seeks to highlight how people "think about and respond to race in everyday contexts" (p. 193) and to showcase the ways in which race is constructed and reconstructed through everyday interactions, performances, and situations.

This focus on the cultural dimension of race is both the book's greatest strength and, possibly, a source of frustration for sociologists whose teaching emphasizes structural analysis and racial inequality. By offering an examination, for example, of the ways in which race is both experienced and lived, Hartigan offers a complex and thoughtful overview of the ways in which power shifts between racial groups and how "whiteness," in particular, may be experienced as both a powerless and economically marginal position. Drawing from research as varied as Maria Kefalas's examination of white neighborhoods in Chicago,...