Author Meets Critics: Michael G. Hanchard's The Spectre of Race

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Utilizing a combination of qualitative research methods, neglected primary materials and extant literature on comparative methodologies in the social sciences and humanities, The Spectre of Race marshalls evidence to demonstrate how racial and ethno-national regimes have served as two of the most enduring forms of political differentiation in the history of democratic polities, from the city-states of classical Athens to the nation-states of the contemporary era. Racial and ethno-national regimes within democratic polities provide research opportunities for students interested in exploring the dissonance between democratic and anti-democratic institutions operating in nominally democratic spheres. While the United States, France and Britain are the three cases under examination in this book, it’s conclusions resonate in contemporary politics in various parts of the world.
Central to this book is a recovery of a neglected portion of the field and discipline’s history. Edward Augustus Freeman, Oxford historian and Euro-Aryan advocate, devised the first methodology for the comparative study of political institutions, in a series of 1873 lectures entitled Comparative Politics. According to Freeman, the idea of race was central to political life in ancient as well as modern politics; to the formation of a polis, commonwealth, and institutions; and ultimately, to the conjuncture of nation and state. The power of race lay not in its biological provenance, but in commonly held beliefs and assumptions shared by groups of people who join to form political communities. Freeman’s influence is evident in the development of seminars and Ph.D. programs devoted to the study of political institutions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the scholarship and policy recommendations of Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States.
This book will be of interest to students of institutionalism, state power, nationalism, racial and ethnic politics and xenophobia, as well as the intertwined formation of both history and political science as scholarly disciplines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Cristina Beltran New York University

Presenters

• Michael G. Hanchard University of Pennsylvania

• Nolan McCarty

• Vesla Mae Weaver Johns Hopkins University

• Adom Getachew University of Chicago

• Charles W. Mills CUNY Graduate Center

• Danielle P. Clealand Florida International University

• Zoltan L. Hajnal University of California, San Diego