Racial Salience and the Consequences of Making White People Uncomfortable: Intra‐Racial Discrimination,Racial Screening,and the Maintenance of White Supremacy

Most sociological research on racial discrimination has had an “inter‐racial” focus. That is, researchers have been principally concerned with the disparate treatment that people of color receive relative to Whites in different social contexts. However, recent theoretical work emerging from legal studies suggests that an alternative conception of “intra‐racial” discrimination exists that extends beyond colorism. This theory of intra‐racial discrimination stipulates that many organizations in the “post‐racial” era desire some measure of racial diversity. Yet, in their efforts to achieve this racial diversity they screen people of color based on their degree of racial salience. Whether a given person of color is hired, promoted, or in the case of college admissions, accepted, is a function of whether or not Whites within the organization consider them racially palatable, or not overly concerned with race. This creates an incentive for people of color to work their identity to allay any concerns among Whites that they may be too racially salient. In this paper I critically review this work and attempt to further buttress its claims by highlighting how this process has clear historical precedent. I conclude by showing how the audit method can be used to empirically examine this practice contemporarily.     

Towards a historical sociology of constitutional legitimacy

This article has two primary objectives. First, it sets out the methodological argument that the conventional antinomy between normative and sociological approaches to questions of state legitimacy depends on a series of false constructions, and that normative and sociological – or specifically historical–sociological – analyses of states and the processes by which they obtain legitimacy can be (and ought to be) mutually reinforcing. This argument hinges on the claim that historical sociology should renounce some of its common presuppositions regarding the coercive functions of state power and reformulate itself as a normative social science, identifying and promoting models of statehood likely to obtain legitimacy in modern differentiated societies. Second, it sets out the more substantive argument that the legitimization of states can be observed both as an evolutionary or adaptive dimension of state formation and as a process of theoretical self-reflection in which the societies where states are located construct and refine the most adequate form for the transmission of the power they designate as political. In this respect, the article questions common assumptions about politics and legitimacy and makes a case for a change of paradigm in the analysis of these concepts. Through this change of paradigm, politics itself and the methods used for securing legitimacy for politics are constructed as abstracted articulations of a society’s own needs and exigencies. The article borrows elements from the systemic-functionalist sociology of Niklas Luhmann to develop the argument. In this context, the article also uses historical case studies to outline a theory of constitutions and constitutional rights. This theory explains how constitutions and constitutional rights help to generate legitimacy for states by enabling modern political systems, both normatively and functionally, to reflect and stabilize their position in society, to control the volume of politics in a society, and to elaborate socially adequate techniques for applying and restricting political power. The article concludes by suggesting that historical–sociological analyses of the functions of rights and constitutions can provide a key to proposing both normatively and sociologically founded models of legitimate statehood.

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Litigation and political transformation: the case of Russia

This article analyzes some recent developments in the system of public law in the Russian Federation, focusing in particular on changing patterns of litigation and increases in use of administrative law, linked to new acts of legislation. It argues that discussion of the Russian case provides a sociological perspective in which we can understand the importance of legal actions in hybrid polities. It explains that litigation in Russia, even where it may have counter-systemic outcomes, is partly incentivized by the government, as promotion of access to law is seen as a means to formalize interactions between citizens and government and so to extend the societal penetration of the political system more generally. Litigation thus forms a mode of practice that, dialectically, possesses both inner- and counter-systemic status. In addition, the article argues that the case of Russia allows us to comprehend litigation as an element in processes of nation building and social integration more widely, and Russia illuminates the systemic significance of litigation in other societies.     

The application of graph theory and percolation analysis for assessing change in the spatial configuration of pond networks

Urban Ecosystems - Pond networks support high levels of biodiversity when compared to other freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, lakes and streams. The persistence of species in these small,...     

Straw men and fairy tales: Evaluating reactions to a natural history of rape

In this paper we respond to two frequent criticisms of our book, A Natural History of Rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). The first criticism portrays the book as little more than a “just‐so” story that human rape is an adaptation. We demonstrate that this portrayal is not accurate. The second criticism reflects a common response to the book's challenge of the popular assertion that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire but instead commit these crimes motivated by the urge to power, domination, and violence, and the urge to degrade and humiliate women. We demonstrate that such criticisms of our book are inherently contradictory and illogical. We believe it is important for sex researchers to understand that these sorts of criticisms are seriously flawed so that future research efforts toward understanding the causes of sexual coercion are not stalled.     

'Will the real Niklas Luhmann stand up, please'. A reply to John Mingers

This article is a critical response to John Minger's recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhmann's theory—especially in the central concepts of openness and closure, system‐environment relation, interaction, and functionality, but also in the interpretation of the role which Luhmann ascribes to the political system—and it attempts to give a more accurate analysis of these terms, and of their place in Luhmann's overall sociology. The article also asserts, more generally, that to criticize Luhmann from the perspective of action‐centred theory, as Mingers has done, fails to reflect on and integrate Luhmann's direct challenge to perspectives of this kind. The article concludes with the argument that legitimate criticism of Luhmann should set out a more immanent account of his sociology, and should not simply have recourse to the more traditional sociological perspectives, which Luhmann has already effectively called into question.     

Straw men and fairy tales: Evaluating reactions to A Natural History of Rape

In this paper we respond to two frequent criticisms of our book, A Natural History of Rape (Thornhill & Palmer, 2000). The first criticism portrays the book as little more than a "just-so story" that human rape is an adaptation. We demonstrate that this portrayal is not accurate. The second criticism reflects a common response to the book s challenge of the popular assertion that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire but instead commit these crimes motivated by the urge to power, domination, and violence, and the urge to degrade and humiliate women. We demonstrate that such criticisms of our book are inherently contradictory and illogical. We believe it is important for sex researchers to understand that these sorts of criticisms are seriously flawed so that future research efforts toward understanding the causes of sexual coercion are not stalled.