The journal Anthropology News invites submissions on the topic of censuses and anthropology for its May 2010 issue:
A census is a powerful mechanism that both reflects and constructs social taxonomies in profound ways, impacting nations’ perceptions of themselves, the distribution of government funds, the provision of public services, and even legislation. In this US Census year we ask our readers to critically consider this tool: how it is (re)constructed over time, its uses and limitations, its intended and unintended effects.
How have past and present censuses measured race and ethnicity, linguistic diversity, family relationships and residency? How are identities and relationships differentially constructed, recognized, legitimized or made invisible through these metrics? What population measures inform policy and public discourse in areas such as immigration and education?
The deadline for submissions is January 29 and you can read more details on the submission process here.
We have a number of books on the topic at UBC Library. Here’s a couple of relatively recent ones to whet your appetite:
- Categories and contexts : anthropological and historical studies in critical demography / edited by Simon Szreter, Hania Sholkamy, A. Dharmalingam. (Available online or in print.)
- Census and identity : the politics of race, ethnicity, and language in national census / edited by David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel. (Available online or in print.)
Finally, CSA (one of our major database providers) offers a new guide (Jan. 2010) to the topic of race, ethnicity, and the U.S. census in their series of Discovery Guides. This one, called Multiracial Identity and the U.S. Census, offers a a broad overview of the topic, a history of multiracial identity in the US censuses going back to 1790, and links to key citations indexed in CSA’s Sociological Abstracts database (to which UBC Library subscribes).
