Ethnicity

Theory and Experience

Nathan Glazer

    This formidable collection of essays by some of America's major sociologists and political scientists marks the coming of age of a new fashion in stratification theory. The discovery, or re-discovery, of ethnicity involves not merely a changed approach to the treatment of race relations but also a recognition that divisions exist within most societies between groups with different cultural or linguistic characteristics...This is a most important book, both for the theoretical issues it raises and for the comparative breadth of its coverage.
       --Michael Hill, The Sociological Review

    [A] rewarding exploration of the reshaping of ethnic pluralism here and abroad...It's an intriguing and open-ended debate...in a wide-ranging...survey of division and cohesion around the world.
       --Richard Robbins, Boston Globe

    In order to understand ethnicity-oriented urban problems in America one must view ethnic dynamics not simply as a cultural phenomenon but more importantly as a political phenomenon which has its origins in the national society, not within ethnic groups. If men and women in the field of education are to understand the basic character of ethnicity, this book can offer an excellent insight into it.
       --Nobuo K. Shimahara, Teachers College Record

    Professor Glazer and Professor Moynihan ride no hobby-horses of their own. They assert simply that there is here an important new phenomenon, one that demands examination. The support the plea with an impressive collection of essays, five of which are dignified as theoretical and eleven described as 'accounts of how the phenomenon expresses itself in a variety of nations and parts of the world'.
       --Michael Banton, Times Literary Supplement

Nathan Glazer is Professor of Education and Sociology, Emeritus, at Harvard University.