Naming Difference: Race-thinking, Common Sense and Sociology

Abstract

The classification of people, events and experiences by ‘race’ remains something of an orthodoxy in sociology and social policy.1 The belief in the value of ‘race’ categories is still ingrained in the approaches, content and methods of academic research, making comprehension of social actions and relations outside of a ‘race’ discourse difficult to develop. For decades, sociologists have proclaimed the importance of ‘racial’ matters in shaping institutional life and structuring social interaction: in our work we have recorded the nuances of ‘racial’ conciousness, the race-ist policies of governments and politicians, and the ‘race’ principles by which labour markets, housing markets and other distributive mechanisms of social resources have operated.