Latina/o/x Sociology: From Insurrection to Institutionalization

• In Event: 3157 - What is Latino Sociology?

Abstract

During the 21st century, Latina/o Sociology has become instituted in different departments and the American Sociological Association. The institutionalization of Latina/o sociology has occurred unevenly across academic sites and has a political history related to the Chicano Movement and other social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. The original calls on departments nationwide and on the ASA to include “Chicano” sociology—a demand that occurred across multiple disciplines—led to a time of insurrection and the formation of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, as a space to develop alternative theoretical frameworks and substantive knowledge of Chicana/o and Latina/o communities. The ASA and numerous sociology departments nationwide resisted the call from these movements to remap the research, teaching and organizational structures of the discipline. More recently, Chicana/o sociology increasingly has been included within the aegis of a broader Latina/o sociology and incorporated more slowly within departments than the study of African Americans. This paper will situate the institutionalization of Latina/o and/or Latinx Studies within the context of the growth of the Latina/o population, Latina/o immigration, and growing number of Latina/o students and faculty, all of which have created the demand for research beyond the black/white binary to create new knowledge on diverse Latina/o and increasingly gender-nonconforming Latinx subjects who together form the largest racial-ethnic minority in the United States.

Author

• Denise A. Segura, University of California-Santa Barbara