Social Construction and Achieving Reference

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Philosophy on 2017-03-13 18:39Z by Steven

Social Construction and Achieving Reference

Noûs
Volume 51, Issue 1 (March 2017)
pages 113-131
DOI: 10.1111/nous.12107

Ron Mallon, Professor of Philosophy
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri

One influential view is that at least some putatively natural human kinds are actually social constructions, understood as some real kind of thing that is produced or sustained by our social and conceptual practices. Category constructionists share two commitments: they hold that human category terms like “race” (and racial terms) and “sex” (and sexual terms) and “homosexuality” and “perversion” actually refer to constructed categories, and they hold that these categories are widely but mistakenly taken to be natural kinds. But it is far from clear that these two commitments are consistent. The sort of mismatch between belief and underlying nature constructionists’ suppose is often taken to indicate a failure of reference. Reliance on a causal-historical account of reference allows the preservation of reference, but unfortunately, constructionists’ appropriation of causal historical accounts of reference is beset by difficulties that do not attend natural kind theorists’ appeals to such accounts. Here, I set out these difficulties, but argue that they can be answered, allowing terms for apparently natural human kinds refer to some sort of social construction about which there is massive error.

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The Philosophy of Race

Posted in Anthologies, Books, Health/Medicine/Genetics, History, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, Philosophy, Social Science on 2012-11-28 17:05Z by Steven

The Philosophy of Race

Routledge
2011-12-14
1,584 pages
Hardback: 978-0-415-49602-5

Edited by:

Paul Taylor, Associate Professor of Philosophy; African American Studies
Pennsylvania State University

Since at least the early 1990s, philosophical race theory has emerged as a dynamic and fertile area of serious scholarly inquiry, and this new four-volume Major Work from Routledge meets the need for a comprehensive collection to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important foundational and cutting-edge scholarship.

Volume I (‘Philosophy and the History of Race, Race in the History of Philosophy’) brings together the key texts to have shaped the most widely recognized forms of ‘race thinking’. The second and third volumes in the collection, meanwhile, explore the questions that race raises in philosophy’s traditional subfields. Volume II (‘Racial Being and Knowing’) gathers the best and most influential work to unravel the implications of racial practices for metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. And Volume III (‘Race-ing Beauty, Goodness, and Right’) collects the key scholarship to deal with the consequences of racial practices for aesthetics, ethics, and politics.

The final volume in the collection (‘Intersections and Positions’) assembles the most important work to grapple with the methodological and geographical complications that accompany a commitment to racialism. (Race is an inherently contextual phenomenon and some of the material gathered in this volume—in particular, that exploring racialization in Japan, Brazil, and Norway—provides a refreshing counterweight to the philosophical zeal for abstraction.)

The Philosophy of Race is edited by Paul C. Taylor, a leading scholar in the field. The collection is fully indexed and has a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the material in its intellectual and historic context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource.

CONTENTS

  • Volume I: HISTORY
    • Part 1: Philosophical Historiography
      • 1. Cornel West, ‘A Genealogy of Modern Racism’, Prophesy Deliverance! Towards an Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Westminster Press, 1982), pp. 47–68.
      • 2. Robert Bernasconi, ‘Race, Culture, History’ (plenary lecture at Sodertorn University, 28 May 2009), pp. 11–46.
      • 3. David Theo Goldberg, ‘The End(s) of Race’, Postcolonial Studies, 2004, 7, 2, 211–30.
    • Part 2: Early Figures and Moments
      • 4. Harry Bracken, ‘Philosophy and Racism’, Philosophia, 1978, 8, 2–3, 241–60.
      • 5. Richard Popkin, ‘Hume’s Racism Reconsidered’, The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought (Brill, 1992), pp. 64–75.
      • 6. Meg Armstrong, ‘”The Effects of Blackness”: Gender, Race, and the Sublime in Aesthetic Theories of Burke and Kant’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1996, 54, 3, 213–36.
      • 7. Bernard Boxill and Thomas E. Hill, ‘Kant and Race’, in Bernard Boxill (ed.), Race and Racism (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 448–71.
      • 8. Patricia Purtschert, ‘On the Limit of Spirit: Hegel’s Racism Revisited’, Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2010, 36, 9, 1039–51.
      • 9. Tom Jeannot, ‘Marx, Capitalism, and Race’, in Harry Van der Linden (ed.), Democracy, Racism, and Prisons (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2007), pp. 69–92.
    • Part 3: Late Modern Race Theory in/and the Canon
      • 10. Berel Lang, ‘Heidegger and the Jewish Question: Metaphysical Racism in Silence and Word’, in Julie K. Ward and Tommy L. Lott (eds.), Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays (Blackwell, 2002), pp. 205–21.
      • 11. Kathryn Gines, ‘Race Thinking and Racism in Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism’, in Dan Stone and Richard King (eds.), Imperialism, Slavery, Race, and Genocide: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt (Berghahn, 2007), pp. 38–53.
      • 12. Jonathan Judaken, ‘Sartre on Racism: From Existential Phenomenology to Globalization and “the New Racism”’, in Jonathan Judaken (ed.), Race After Sartre (SUNY Press, 2008), pp. 23–54.
    • Part 4: Critical Race Theory and the New Canon
      • 13. Diego von Vacano, ‘Race and Political Theory: Lessons from Latin America’, in Jorge Gracia (ed.), Race or Ethnicity? On Black and Latino Identity (Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 248–66.
      • 14. Howard McGary, ‘Douglass on Racial Assimilation and Racial Institutions’, in Bill E. Lawson and Frank Kirkland (eds.), Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader (Blackwell Publishing, 1999), pp. 50–63.
      • 15. Nancy Fraser, ‘Another Pragmatism: Alain Locke, Critical “Race” Theory, and the Politics of Culture’, in Morris Dickstein (ed.), The Revival of Pragmatism (Duke University Press, 1998), pp. 157–75.
      • 16. Vivian M. May, ‘Thinking from the Margins, Acting at the Intersections: Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South’, Hypatia, 2004, 19, 2, 74–91.
      • 17. K. A. Appiah, ‘The Uncompleted Argument: DuBois and the Illusion of Race’, Critical Inquiry, 1985, 12, 1, 21–37.
      • 18. W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept [1940] (Transaction Publishers, 1992), pp. 97–103, 114–17, 129–33, 137–40.
      • 19. Frantz Fanon, ‘The Lived Experience of the Black’, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. R. Philcox [1952] (Grove Press, 1967), pp. 78–99.
      • 20. Lewis R. Gordon, ‘Racism, Colonialism, and Anonymity: Social Theory and Embodied Agency’, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: A Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Routledge, 1995), pp. 37–67.
  • Volume II: Racial Being and Knowing
    • Part 5: What Races Are, What ‘Race’ Means
      • 21. Charles W. Mills, ‘”But What Are You Really?” The Metaphysics of Race’, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 41–66.
      • 22. Lucius Outlaw, ‘Conserve Races? In Defense of W. E. B. Du Bois’, Critical Social Theory in the Interests of Black Folks (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 139–62.
      • 23. Ron Mallon, ‘Passing, Traveling, and Reality: Social Construction and the Metaphysics of Race’, Nous, 2004, 38, 644–73.
      • 24. Robin O. Andreasen, ‘A New Perspective on the Race Debate’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1998, XLIX, 2, 199–225.
      • 25. Philip Kitcher, ‘Does “Race” have a Future?’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2007, 35, 4, 293–317.
      • 26. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture (Blackwell, 1993), pp. 80–9.
      • 27. S. Haslanger, ‘Language, Politics and “the Folk”: Looking for “the Meaning” of “Race”’, The Monist, 2010, 93, 2, 169–87.
      • 28. Joshua Glasgow, Julie L. Shulman, and Enrique G. Covarrubias, ‘The Ordinary Conception of Race in the United States and its Relation to Racial Attitudes: A New Approach’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 2009, 9, 1–2, 15–38.
    • Part 6: What Racial Identities Are
      • 29. Linda Martín-Alcoff, ‘Philosophy and Racial Identity’, Philosophy Today, 1997, 41, 1, 67–76.
      • 30. K. Anthony Appiah, ‘Synthesis: For Racial Identities’, Color Conscious (Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 75–105.
      • 31. Judith Butler, ‘Passing, Queering: Nella Larsen’s Psychoanalytic Challenge’, Bodies That Matter (Routledge, 1993), pp. 167–86.
      • 32. Paul C. Taylor, Race: A Philosophical Introduction (Polity, 2004), pp. 84–7, 112–15.
    • Part 7: Power, Knowledge, Self-Knowledge, and Experience
      • 33. Charles Mills, ‘White Ignorance’, in Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (eds.), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (SUNY Press, 2007), pp. 11–38.
      • 34. Anika Maaza Mann, ‘Race and Feminist Standpoint Theory’, in Kathryn Gines, Donna Dale-Marcano, and Maria del Guadelupe Davidson, Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy (SUNY Press, 2010), pp. 105–20.
      • 35. Shannon Sullivan, ‘Ignorance and Habit’, Revealing Whiteness (University of Indiana Press, 2006), pp. 17–44.
      • 36. Ned Block, ‘How Heritability Misleads About Race’, Boston Review, 1996, 20, 6, 30–35.
      • 37. Michael Root, ‘The Problem of Race in Medicine’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2001, 31, 1, 20–39.
      • 38. Ronald Sundstrom, ‘Race and Place: Social Space in the Production of Human Kinds’, Philosophy and Geography, 2003, 6, 1, 83–95.
  • Volume III: Race-ing Beauty, Goodness, and Right
    • Part 8: Racism
      • 39. Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘Racisms’, in D. T. Goldberg (ed.), Anatomy of Racism (University of Minnesota Press, 1990), pp. 3–17.
      • 40. Lewis R. Gordon, ‘Racialism, Racism, Racialists, Racists’, Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism (Humanity Books, 1999), pp. 67–77.
      • 41. J. L. A. Garcia, ‘The Heart of Racism’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 1996, 2, 5–45.
      • 42. Tommie Shelby, ‘Is Racism in the Heart?’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 2002, 33, 411–20.
      • 43. L. Faucher and E. Machery, ‘Racism: Against Jorge Garcia’s Moral and Psychological Monism’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2009, 39, 1, 41–62.
      • 44. Robert Bernasconi, ‘The Policing of Race Mixing: The Place of Biopower within the History of Racisms’, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, 2010, 7, 2, 205–16.
    • Part 9: Race, the Right, and the Good
      • 45. Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 1–19.
      • 46. Anna Stubblefield, ‘Races as Families’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 2001, 32, 1, 99–112.
      • 47. L. Blum, ‘Three Kinds of Race-Related Solidarity’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 2007, 38, 53–72.
      • 48. Linda Martín Alcoff, ‘Latino/as, Asian Americans, and the Black-White Binary’, Journal of Ethics, 2003, 7, 1, 5–27.
      • 49. Howard McGary, ‘Psychological Violence, Physical Violence, and Racial Oppression’, in Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (Routledge, 1996), pp. 263–72.
      • 50. Samantha Vice, ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’, Journal of Social Philosophy, 2010, 41, 3, 323–42.
    • Part 10: Selected Issues in Racial Politics
      • 51. Richard Wasserstrom, ‘Preferential Treatment, Color-Blindness, and the Evils of Racism and Racial Discrimination’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 1987, 61, 1, 27–42.
      • 52. Howard McGary, ‘Achieving Democratic Equality: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Reparations’, Journal of Ethics, 2003, 7, 1, 93–113.
      • 53. Angela Y. Davis, ‘Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition’, in Tommy L. Lott (ed.), A Companion to African-American Philosophy (Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 360–9.
      • 54. Glen Coulthard, ‘Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the “Politics of Recognition”’, Contemporary Political Theory, 2007, 6, 4, 437–60.
    • Part 11: Aesthetics
      • 55. Monique Roelofs, ‘Racialization as an Aesthetic Production: What Does the Aesthetic Do for Whiteness and Blackness and Vice Versa?’, in George Yancy (ed.), White on White/Black on Black (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 83–124.
      • 56. Dan Flory, ‘Spike Lee and the Sympathetic Racist’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2006, 64, 1, 67–79.
      • 57. Mariana Ortega, ‘Othering the Other: The Spectacle of Katrina for our Racial Entertainment Pleasure’, Contemporary Aesthetics, 2009, 2.
      • 58. Robert Gooding-Williams, ‘Aesthetics and Receptivity: Kant, Nietzsche, Cavell, Astaire’, Look, a Negro! Philosophical Essays on Race, Culture and Politics (Routledge, 2006), pp. 43–68.
      • 59. Falguni A. Sheth, ‘The Hijab and the Sari: The Strange and the Sexy Between Colonialism and Global Capitalism’, Contemporary Aesthetics, 2009, 2.
  • Volume IV: Intersections and Positions
    • Part 12: Intersectionality
      • 60. Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2007, 10, 4, 561–74.
      • 61. Patricia Hill Collins, ‘It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation’, Hypatia, 1998, 13, 3, 62–82.
      • 62. Jorge J. E. Gracia, ‘The Nature of Ethnicity with Special Reference to Hispanic/Latino Identity’, Public Affairs Quarterly, 1999, 13, 1, 25–42.
      • 63. Ladelle McWhorter, ‘Sex, Race, and Biopower: A Foucauldian Genealogy’, Hypatia, 2004, 19, 3, 38–62.
      • 64. Stuart Hall, ‘Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance’, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (UNESCO, 1980), pp. 305–45.
      • 65. Étienne Balibar, ‘Uprisings in the Banlieues’, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 2007, 14, 1, 47–71.
    • Part 13: Mapping Racial Imaginaries: Inventing the Other
      • 66. Edward Said, ‘Introduction to Orientalism’, in Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin (eds.), The Edward Said Reader (Vintage, 2000), pp. 67–74, 78–81, 90–3.
      • 67. David Haekwon Kim, ‘Orientalism and America Enlarged’, Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, 2003, 2, 2, 30–4.
      • 68. V. Y. Mudimbe, ‘Discourse of Power and Knowledge of Otherness’, The Invention of Africa (Indiana University Press, 1988), pp. 1–23.
      • 69. Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers (Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 41, 56–9, 73–5, 80–90, 98–102.
      • 70. David Theo. Goldberg, ‘Racial Europeanization’, Ethnic & Racial Studies, 2006, 29, 2, 331–64.
      • 71. Nadia Abu El-Haj, ‘Racial Palestinianization and the Janus-Faced Nature of the Israeli State’, Patterns of Prejudice, 2010, 44, 1, 27–41.
    • Part 14: Positioning Critical Identities: Inventing Self and Community
      • 72. Sonia Sikka, ‘In What Sense are Dalits Black?’ (presentation to ‘Beyond the White–Black Binary’, conference held at Pennsylvania State University, 12 November 2010).
      • 73. Linda Martín Alcoff, ‘Mestizo Identity’, in Naomi Zack (ed.), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), pp. 257–78.
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Passing, Traveling and Reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Passing, Philosophy on 2012-03-03 22:59Z by Steven

Passing, Traveling and Reality: Social Constructionism and the Metaphysics of Race

Noûs
Volume 38, Issue 4 (December 2004)
pages 644–673
DOI: 10.1111/j.0029-4624.2004.00487.x

Ron Mallon, Associate Professor of Philosphy
University of Utah

Among race theorists, the view that race is a social construction is widespread. While the term ‘social construction’ is sometimes intended tomeanmerely that race does not (as once believed) constitute a robust, biological natural kind, it often labels the stronger position that race is real, but not a biological kind. For example, Charles Mills (1998) writes that, ‘‘the task of those working on race is to put race in quotes, ‘race’, while still insisting that nevertheless, it exists (and moves people)’’(xiv, italics his). It is to “make a plausible social ontology neither essentialist, innate, nor transhistorical, but real enough for all that” (xiv). Racial constructionism, thus conceived, is a metaphysical position that contrasts both with the view that race is an important biological kind (racial naturalism) and with the more recent claim that race does not exist (racial skepticism). The desire for a constructionist metaphysics of race emerges against the background of a cluster of normative disputes, including:

  1. Labeling Practices: Is the use of any racial terms to pick out various human groups or subgroups by arbitrary bodily features useful or permissible?
  2. Terminology: Should term x be used in social life, social theory or social science?
  3. Significance of Racial Identity: What is the value of racial identification of oneself or others? Is racial identification morally significant? Is the social enforcement of racial identification morally permissible? Is it morally required?

To simplify, we can characterize these normative disputes as disputes over the value of ‘race’ talk. By ‘‘‘race’ talk’’ I mean talk that uses ‘race’ and other race terms including terms such as ‘black’, ‘white’, ‘Asian’, etc. to classify people (including oneself) or differentially treat them. A rough characterization of these normative disputes has it that at one pole of these debates short-term eliminativists want to eliminate ‘race’ talk quickly (e.g. Appiah 1995, D’Souza 1996, Muir 1993, Webster 1992, Zack 1993). At the opposite extreme, long-term conservationists hold that racial identities and communities are beneficial and that ‘race’ talk—suitably reformed from the excesses of racism—is essential to fostering them (e.g. Outlaw 1990, 1995, 1996). In between these two extremes, there are many who believe that race talk is necessary (and perhaps inevitable) in at least some domains in the short term because of the pervasive existence of racial division and the effects of such division in modern life but who differ with regard to its long term value.

Normative disputes give rise to a concern with the metaphysics of race because of the role metaphysical arguments play in supporting normative conclusions. For example, Naomi Zack argues that “the ordinary concept of race in the United States has no scientific basis” (1993, 18), and K. Anthony Appiah writes that, ‘‘the truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask ‘race’ to do for us’’ (1995, 75). According to Zack and Appiah, ‘race’ talk makes reference to a set of racial properties that literally do not exist, and, for each, this provides a reason to eliminate such talk as mistaken. According to this line of argument, the correct metaphysical position (racial skepticism) provides a reason to endorse a particular answer to the normative question (eliminativism). Like their eliminativist opponents, short and long-term conservationists about ‘race’ talk argue from a metaphysical (constructionist) account of race to conclusions about the need for ‘race’ talk. We can see this appeal in Lucius Outlaw’s claim that, ‘‘For most of us that there are different races of people is one of the most obvious features of our social worlds’’ (1990, 58), as well as in Mills’s insistence that race “exists” and “moves people.” Such theorists argue that theories or policies that do not make reference to race leave something out (e.g. Outlaw 1995, Mills 1998, Omi and Winant 1986, 1994, Root 2000, Sundstrom 2002).

But what is this thing? Constructionist theorists are loath to embrace racial skepticism, but they (like racial skeptics) wish to avoid a commitment to racial naturalism. Instead, constructionists hope to chart a third metaphysical option, one that holds that race exists, but as a product of particular social practices. But what, exactly, does it mean for race to be socially constructed? In recent years, a variety of philosophers including Robert Gooding-Williams (1998), Mills, Adrian Piper (1992), Michael Root (2000), and Iris Marion Young (1989) have turned their attention to this metaphysical question. In what follows, I argue that despite the progress these accounts represent, they nonetheless fail to arrive at an adequate constructionist account of race. The reason, I suggest, is that constructionists are committed to three mutually unsatisfiable constraints on an acceptable account of race, and no univocal account can satisfy all three. Faced with this failure, one might be tempted to abandon constructionism for racial skepticism. Another alternative is to abandon one or another of the proposed constraints in favor of an attenuated constructionism. I argue, however, that we need not choose between these alternatives. Once we set aside the worry about which account is appropriately considered an account of race, we see that skepticism and the various attenuated forms of constructionism are best understood not as metaphysical rivals at all. Rather, these positions share a broad base of metaphysical agreement.

Here’s how I proceed. In Section 1, I briefly discuss the widely endorsed view that race is not a biological natural kind. Then, in Section 2, I focus on whether constructionists can account for the phenomena of passing. Passing occurs whenever a member of some category is perceived (and allows herself to be perceived) as a member of another, mutually exclusive category, for example a white person passing as black, or a black person passing as white. Walter Benn Michaels (1994) charges that constructionist accounts of race cannot account for passing. I show how a constructionist account of race drawing on work by Gooding-Williams (1998), Mills (1998), and Piper (1992)—a version of what I call a thin account of race—can answer Michaels’s critique. In Section 3, I turn to discuss the claim by Root and others that race ‘does not travel’ beyond a particular cultural-historical site, and I will show that constructionists can make sense of such claims by endorsing an interactive kind account of race. Constructionists thus have ready answers for the challenges raised by passing and not traveling. Unfortunately, the two answers invoke two different accounts of what race is and thus do not provide us with a univocal account of race. For this reason, I consider a third, institutional account of race. Such an account, I suggest, can accommodate both passing and not traveling. But, in Section 4, I argue that institutional accounts fail to meet a third condition of adequacy on a constructionist account of race: accounting for the reality of race. I conclude that no single constructionist account of race can accommodate all the theoretical needs to which constructionists wish to put it. In Section 5, I argue that the failure to find a univocal constructionist account leads us to a variety of alternative accounts of race that abandon one or more of the adequacy constraints I have suggested. But rather than choose between these accounts, I argue the divisions among them are not metaphysically significant. In confronting racial phenomena, skepticism and the varieties of constructionism share a broad base of metaphysical agreement, and an adequate racial theory should exploit this agreement and work to distinguish all the features of racial phenomena that matter…

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Sources of Racialism

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Philosophy, Social Science on 2012-03-03 03:20Z by Steven

Sources of Racialism

Journal of Social Philosophy
Volume 41, Issue 3 (Fall 2010)
Special Issue: New Thinking in Race Theory. Edited by Paul C. Taylor and Ronald Robles Sundstorm
pages 272–292
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2010.01498.x

Ron Mallon, Associate Professor of Philosphy
University of Utah

Work in social philosophy on racial classification generally shares a commitment to “social constructionism” in two quite distinct senses of that term. In the first sense, to be constructionist is to hold that race (the subject of racial classification) does not exist as a biological kind in the way ordinary or folk ideas of race seem to assume and is therefore “merely a construction.” Call this constructionist view anti-racialism and the folk view it opposes racialism. As we understand it here, racialism involves the idea that humans can be divided into natural groups whose members have characteristic, unseen differences that explain group-typical properties, including physical, psychological and characterological properties, and anti-racialism is the denial of this view.

But much of this work is also committed to social constructionism in a quite different, empiricist sense: it holds that racial classification itself is primarily the product of social and cultural practices, which is to say that we (as individuals and as cultural groups) have the theoretical representations of race that we do, rather than some other theories or no theories at all because of historically and culturally specific conventions, decisions, practices, and so forth. Call this second sort of social constructionism representational constructionism.

Recent work by evolutionary and cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers has posed a challenge to representational constructionism (e.g.. Gil-White 1999. 200la.b; Hirschfeld 1996; Kurzban. Tooby. and Cosmides 2001; Machery and Faucher 2005a.b). While these theorists join in the endorsement of anti-racialism, they go on to explain folk racial theories at least in part as the result of cognitive mechanisms which are culturally canalized, species-typical and domain-specific. To call them “culturally canalized” is here to say that they have a property associated with (and often considered a condition for) innateness: they develop stably across a wide range of different cultural environments.’To say they are “species-typical” is to say that, like having two arms and legs, eyes, ears. hair, and so forth, these cognitive capacities are traits that humans typically possess. And to say that they are “domain-specific” is to say that, unlike domain-general cognitive capacities (like memory, attention, or perception) that are employed across a wide range of problem domains, these mechanisms are specialized for solving a particular sort of problem. But while evolutionary-cognitive theorists hold that racial cognition is subserved by culturally canalized, domain-specific mechanisms that were shaped by evolution in ways that adapted them to solving certain problems, they do not hold that these mechanisms are adaptations for…

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