Racism as an Agent: Applications of Posthumanist Theory to the Study of Institutionalized Racism

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 38
  In Roundtable Session: Racial Ontologies and New Materialist Methodologies

Abstract

Weary with well-rehearsed debates between naïve empiricists and social constructivists, social science scholars have begun turning to new materialist and post-humanist philosophy for alternative ontologies of the social. These relatively nascent philosophical movements have introduced a variety of provocative concepts into contemporary conversations about research methodology. Perhaps the most challenging and promising of these is agential realism – the idea that agency is a characteristic of human and non-human phenomena. The question with which many educational scholars have been wrestling is: how does agential realism translate into a research practice?

Author

• Jerry L. Rosiek, University of Oregon