Race in the making : cognition, culture, and the child's construction of human kinds / Lawrence A. Hirschfeld.

By:

Hirschfeld, Lawrence A

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Learning, development, and conceptual change | Bradford bookCopyright date: �1996Description: 1 online resource (xvi, 225 pages) : illustrationsContent type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

0585003092
9780585003092
9780262082471
0262082470
9780262275415
0262275414

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Race in the making.DDC classification:

155.8/2 20

LOC classification:

BF311 .H54 1996eb

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

1. Representing race: universal and comparative perspectives -- 2. Mining history for psychological wisdom: rethinking racial thinking -- 3. Domain specificity and the study of race1 -- 4. Do children have a theory of race?1 -- 5. Race, language, and collective inference1 -- 6. The appearance of race: perception in the construction of racial categories1 -- 7. The cultural biology of race1.

Summary: In Race in the Making Lawrence Hirschfeld provides a new understanding of how people conceptualize social categories and shows why this knowledge is so readily recruited to create and maintain systems of unequal power. Hirschfeld argues that knowledge of race is not derived from observations of physical difference, nor does it develop in the same way as knowledge of other social categories. Instead, his central claim is that racial thinking is the product of a special-purpose cognitive competence for understanding and representing human kinds. By demonstrating that a common set of abstract principles underlies all systems of racial thinking, whatever other historical and cultural specificities may be associated with them, he challenges the conventional notion that race is purely a social construction. After surveying the literature on the development of a cultural psychology of race. Hirschfeld presents original studies that examine children's (and occasionally adults') representations of race. He sketches how a jointly cultural and psychological approach to race might proceed, showing how this approach yields new insights into the emergence and the elaboration of racial thinking.

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"A Bradford book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 201-217) and index.

In Race in the Making Lawrence Hirschfeld provides a new understanding of how people conceptualize social categories and shows why this knowledge is so readily recruited to create and maintain systems of unequal power. Hirschfeld argues that knowledge of race is not derived from observations of physical difference, nor does it develop in the same way as knowledge of other social categories. Instead, his central claim is that racial thinking is the product of a special-purpose cognitive competence for understanding and representing human kinds. By demonstrating that a common set of abstract principles underlies all systems of racial thinking, whatever other historical and cultural specificities may be associated with them, he challenges the conventional notion that race is purely a social construction. After surveying the literature on the development of a cultural psychology of race. Hirschfeld presents original studies that examine children's (and occasionally adults') representations of race. He sketches how a jointly cultural and psychological approach to race might proceed, showing how this approach yields new insights into the emergence and the elaboration of racial thinking.

Print version record.

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