Subfield Coordinator: Cecilia Hyunjung Mo
This subfield is concerned with major theories and empirical approaches to the study of race and ethnicity as political identities. Drawing from works across the social sciences and a range of methodological tools, faculty and graduate students in this subfield explore a range of topics with implications for politics in the United States and countries around the world. These topics include: how identity should be conceptualized and measured; the measurement of discrimination; why some forms of identity are activated, mobilized, and contested; how identities are represented politically; how racial and ethnic identities intersect with other salient identities; how social diversity and civil society are interrelated; what factors affect the integration of immigrants; and which varieties of democracy enable the flourishing of plural identities.
