The Race that Space Makes: The Power of Place in the Formation of Social Categorizations

• In Event: 4124 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (100 min): Table 4. Inequalities

Abstract

This paper takes a social argument—that spaces can be racialized—and asks whether the directionality of the association between space and race reflects a limitation of extant scholarship and an underlaying commitment to race as a social terminus. In response to David Delany’s 2002 articulation of the ways in which race constructs space, this paper offers an inversion of this line of thinking. I argue that the dominant view amongst social scientists is that space takes the position of a dependent variable whose constitution is predicted by a series of independent variables, including race. An intellectual commitment to questioning the ontological status of race requires, however, a purposeful flip in the typical causal assumptions about the relationship between race and space. Informed by racial formation theory (Omi and Winant 1986) and Henri Lefebvre’s (1974) conceptualization of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space, I argue that racialization is tightly tethered to the production of knowledge about space. Instead of asking how race creates space, I question the ontological status of race, itself, by providing a theoretical argument that racialization is predicated upon understandings of space. Specifically, I present theoretical scaffolding that may be employed by future researchers to explore the ways in which space creates race and racial categories.

Author

• Jennifer Carol LaFleur, Brandeis University