1st Edition
The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion Identity Politics in Twenty-First Century America
Assessing the limits of pluralism, this book examines different types of political inclusion and exclusion and their distinctive dimensions and dynamics. Why are particular social groups excluded from equal participation in political processes? How do these groups become more fully included as equal participants? Often, the critical issue is not whether a group is included but how it is included. Collectively, these essays elucidate a wide range of inclusion or exclusion: voting participation, representation in legislative assemblies, representation of group interests in processes of policy formation and implementation, and participation in discursive processes of policy framing.
Covering broad territory—from African Americans to Asian Americans, the transgendered to the disabled, and Latinos to Native Americans—this volume examines in depth the give and take between how policies shape political configuration and how politics shape policy. At a more fundamental level, Ericson and his contributors raise some traditional and some not-so-traditional issues about the nature of democratic politics in settings with a multitude of group identities.
1. Introduction (David F. Ericson) Part I: Politics of Inclusion 2. Minimal Political Inclusion of Minorities at Risk: The Case of the Americas, 1870-2000 (Victor Asal) 3. Race, Nativity, and the Political Participation of Asian and Other Americans (Pei-te Lien) 4. The Home Styles of California Latino Representatives: Policy, Constituency, and Symbolic Representation (Sally Friedman and Shannon Scotece) 5. Puerto Rican Politics in New York City During the 1960s: Structural Ideation, Contingency, and Power (José E. Cruz) 6. Inclusion, Exclusion, and Citizenship (Kathleen Sullivan and Patricia Strach) Part II: Politics of Exclusion 7. The Micro-Politics of Immigration: Local Government Policies of Inclusion and Exclusion (Nadia Rubaii-Barrett) 8. Outside the Binary: Transgendered Politics on a Global Stage (Jenna Basiliere) 9. Politics and the Disabled Body: Diverse Thoughts about Human Diversity (William Roth) 10. The Conservative Attack on Affirmative Action: Toward a Legal Genealogy of Color Blindness (Julie Novkov)
Biography
David F. Ericson is a professor in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University. His current research focuses on the centrality of slavery to the American experience.
"These essays present a panoply of ideas, analysis and case studies of the contours and reactions to the multijcultural and transracial nature of politics in the U.S. These scholars present new challenges to old issues that need re-examination and re-analysis to help this society advance to a 21st century understanding of what it means to be included or excluded in the U.S." - Robert Stanley Oden, California State University, Sacramento
"The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion is a timely and provocative book that brings together work by established and emerging scholars contributing to the debate over group boundaries, discrimination, and public policy. These original essays guide the reader through the complexity of difference and its political ramifications. It is an outstanding contribution to the social science literature on identity and participation." - Ben Marquez, University of Wisconsin-Madison
"David Erickson assembles in one volume a provocative and enlightening collection of essays. Representing a diverse range of groups currently seeking equal inclusion in the America political system, each essay reveals something new about the complicated process groups confront as they strive to overcome historic patterns of discrimination, exclusion, or partial inclusion in contemporary American society and politics. Several essays in the collection elucidate the connection between how minority group mobilization affects the outcome of policy debates (politics determines policies), while other essays provide evidence that public policy decisions themselves determine the course that groups must take in their political struggle (policies determines politics). By including both perspectives, the volume offers a mainstream political science approach inflected by a nuanced understanding of post-modernism. The case studies in this volume bring to life theses analytic points making The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion interesting and valuable to several fields: American politics, policy studies, minority politics and social movements." - Gary Lehring, Smith College
