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Posted Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:15:50
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From: "David Jones" <[log in to unmask]>
Call for Papers: What’s the Use of Race?
Conference: April 25-26, 2008
Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Submission Deadline: October 15th, 2007
Despite long-standing critiques of the concept of race from
biologists, anthropologists, and social scientists, race continues to
thrive as a category of analysis among scholars, pundits, and the
conventional wisdom. State and federal institutions routinely
collect data about race and ethnicity. The National Institutes of
Health requests that researchers include racially and ethnically
diverse populations in their studies. Journals in fields as diverse
as genetics, public health, and sociology report data on race and
ethnicity and use these variables as significant factors in their
analyses. This pursuit of race has produced overwhelming
documentation of racial disparities, from birth rates to education,
income, crime, punishment, disease, medical treatment, and life
expectancy. While many scholars believe that research must consider
race if it is to understand fully human biology and experience,
critics argue that race is a hollow and misleading concept that leads
to invidious distinctions. While advocates of social justice argue
that racial disparities must be documented before they can be
alleviated, our vast knowledge of disparities has not yet led to
decisive social or political action against them.
What should be done? Should the concept of race be invoked to
further the goals of science or social justice? Do racial and ethnic
distinctions produce natural categories for scholarly or political
analysis? Do the benefits of including diverse populations in
research outweigh the potential harm caused by reifying racial and
ethnic distinctions? Will efforts to improve the precision of these
categories with subtler distinctions based on ancestry or genetic
markers increase the utility of the resulting data? What role do
funding agencies (whether governmental or philanthropic) and journal
editors have as gatekeepers for the appropriate use of racial and
ethnic categories? What hopes and conflicts are embedded in analyses
of race as a scientific, medical or social category? This conference
invites papers from any discipline -- medicine, history,
anthropology, epidemiology, STS, genetics, sociology, law, ethics,
and others -- that consider these debates about the uses of race. We
hope to describe and explore the competing interests that have made
studies of race simultaneously feared and desired.
Abstracts (300 words or less) should be submitted by October 15th to:
David S. Jones, M.D., Ph.D.
77 Massachusetts Avenue E51-290
Cambridge, MA 02139
[log in to unmask] (email submissions preferred)
Additional information at web.mit.edu/csd
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