Journal Articles by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
American Journal of Sociology, 2017
In recent decades, the sociology of the state has become engrossed in the relationship between kn... more In recent decades, the sociology of the state has become engrossed in the relationship between knowledge and modern statecraft. Heeding recent calls for “society-centered” approaches, this article investigates the role of nonstate leaders in the production of state knowledge. It takes up the question: How have nonstate leaders—i.e. civil leaders and community advocates—contributed to what James Scott (1998) has termed “state legibility.” While historical traces suggest these actors have worked to lessen opposition to state projects, this activity remains empirically understudied and conceptually underdeveloped. Addressed to this problem, this article introduces the concept of consent-building and proposes an analytic approach that focuses on the motivations of nonstate leaders, the obstacles of noncompliance they confront, and the persuasive tactics used to foster public cooperation. To illustrate the purchase of this approach, it presents a case study of local Latino promoters of the 2010 U.S. Census. This analysis reveals how nonstate leaders can enable, rather than impede, the capacity to “see like a state.”
Ethnography, 2017
Sociologists exhibit growing interest in the politics of expertise. Analyses of evaluations, econ... more Sociologists exhibit growing interest in the politics of expertise. Analyses of evaluations, economic paradigms, blueprints, censuses, policy instruments and the like have come to occupy an important position in recent research. While much of this emergent scholarship has drawn on historical methods, a growing number of scholars have turned to ethnography. A close reading of this work reveals that ethnographers have actively tailored rather than passively transposed ethnography to the study of expertise. Departing from traditional conceptions of ethnography, these works exhibit growing attentiveness to movement, mediation, and materials. We argue that this retooling of ethnography is not merely a response to empirical realities but rather stems, at least in part, from the influence of science and technology studies, specifically Actor-Network Theory. This case provides the occasion to make a broader point about ethnography as a ‘theory/method package’: theory does not only shape what ethnographers study, but also how they conduct research.
Essay co-authored with G. Cristina Mora (University of California-Berkeley)
This is a short reflective essay on the 50th anniversary of Chicago's 1966 Division Street Riots,... more This is a short reflective essay on the 50th anniversary of Chicago's 1966 Division Street Riots, widely considered the first urban uprising in a Puerto Rican barrio. Drawing on the political theory of Jacques Rancière, the essay describes the riot as a political act of interruption. It was published in the Fall 2016 issue of CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. The issue focuses on Puerto Rican Chicago. https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/library-publications/publications/centro-journal
This short essay reflects on intellectual bridges that scholars have built, are building, and cou... more This short essay reflects on intellectual bridges that scholars have built, are building, and could build to connect critical sociologies of race and STS. Whereas much work in these respective fields have rarely intersected, greater exchange could help scholars better account for ways in which race shapes and stratifies contemporary societies. To this end, the essay begins with a recent example of bridgework—research on race and genetics. Next, I use my own research on ethnoracial statistics to describe how bridgework happening elsewhere can indirectly create openings for connections across the divide. Finally, I propose that research on the broader sociotechnical materiality of race and racial domination represents an important site for further bridgework.
What factors influence the scholarly field of vision, its illuminations and omissions? Reflexive ... more What factors influence the scholarly field of vision, its illuminations and omissions? Reflexive interventions have typically addressed this question via analyses of knowledge producers and their institutional contexts. In contrast, this article foregrounds the inherited cultural infrastructures that enable and constrain knowledge production. I propose a ‘cultural diagnostics’ approach to identify and explain the persistence of what I label ‘ontological myopias’, a type of intellectual constriction rooted in assumptions about the content and composition of the social world. To illustrate the purchase of this analytic strategy, I examine the case of the emerging cultural sociology of poverty. Cultural diagnostics reveal that recent works have, with few exceptions, inherited an underlying presumption of earlier cultural approaches, namely that the ‘poor’ and their lifeworlds should constitute the principal empirical object of poverty research. This myopic focus hinders the creation of a comprehensive and relational approach to the cultural study of poverty and inequality. Ultimately, this article provides grounds to rethink the ontological foundations of contemporary poverty knowledge, and presents, more broadly, a reflexive cultural approach that can be profitably applied to other fields of scholarship.
Introduction to a co-edited special edition of Qualitative Sociology on Actor-Network Theory and ... more Introduction to a co-edited special edition of Qualitative Sociology on Actor-Network Theory and Sociological Ethnography.
Book Chapters by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Diaspora Studies in Education: Towards a Framework for Understanding the Experiences of Transnational Communities, 2014
¡Marcha!: Latino Chicago and the Immigrant Rights Movement, 2010
Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America's Youth, 2006
Book Reviews by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
American Journal of Sociology
Works-in-Progress by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Towards a Political Sociology of Demography
As of yet, there is no political sociology of demography. Although not entirely ignored, demograp... more As of yet, there is no political sociology of demography. Although not entirely ignored, demography has not been a central concern or preoccupation for most political sociologists. But what would such an enterprise look like? What kinds of themes and issues could it address? To answer these questions, this chapter takes stock of the exceptions, those political sociologists who-along with their colleagues in proximate fields-have taken up questions of demography and politics. This work, I argue, reveals three areas of inquiry for a political sociology of demography. The first area investigates "political demography," or the political consequences of demographics. The second focuses on "demographic engineering," or how governments and political elites have attempted to manage and control demographic processes. The third area concerns "population politics," or political discourse and rhetoric about demography. As the study of population politics is the least established, I conclude with an illustrative case: contemporary U.S. population politics concerning the so-called browning of America. In short, this chapter invites greater political sociological engagement with demography.
Race Cosmologies: Toward a Political Sociology of Race and Racial Domination
A political sociology of race—that is, an approach that conceives of race and racial domination a... more A political sociology of race—that is, an approach that conceives of race and racial domination as a political relation—is difficult without addressing an analytic double bind. On the one hand, the social constructivist orientation of the sociology of race has counterpoised the primacy of the social against the biological. On the other hand, the Weberian reaction to Marxism has insisted upon the autonomy of the political from the social. Together, these traditions have contributed to a conception of race as nonpolitical. One way to undo this bind is to return to a tradition inaugurated by Du Bois that understands the “racial” as inseparable from the political. Building on synthetic approaches to race, we propose a new political sociological framework for the study of race and racial domination. Our framework is anchored in the concept of race cosmologies, a kind of political imaginary that prescribes particular relations, rights, and responsibilities among putative “races.” We urge research on the formation, articulation, contestation, and instantiation of race cosmologies.
Race in the Demographic Imaginary: Population Projections and Their Conceptual Foundations
In the United States and Western Europe, projections of the future racial composition of national... more In the United States and Western Europe, projections of the future racial composition of national populations have garnered considerable public, media, political and academic attention. Despite their aura of objectivity and scientific accuracy, however, these demographic predictions are produced through complex processes whose social roots have been only partially uncovered. While scholars rightly point to the political and scientific origins of statistics, demography and censuses, these institutional analyses overlook the role that cultural beliefs play in depictions of the racial future. To address this theoretical shortfall, this article presents a model of racial demography—i.e. estimates and projections of racial composition—that links it to three elements of racial conceptualization (Morning 2011): racial classification, the construction of racial categories and assignment of individuals to them; racial definition, beliefs about the nature of racial difference; and racial characterization, denoting the traits ascribed to a given racial group. Empirical support for the model is drawn both from the historical record and contemporary developments in the United States. In addition, we underscore the utility of the model by using it to identify potential mechanisms of change in racial demography that could result in future portraits of the nation’s makeup that are very different from the projections being made today.
Racial Arithmetic: Ethnoracial Politics in a Relational Key
Societies invested in the quantification of race are rarely, if ever, free of racial arithmetic, ... more Societies invested in the quantification of race are rarely, if ever, free of racial arithmetic, the practice of using statistics to legitimate and justify political decisions along categories of race and ethnicity. Despite this, scholars have tended to focus on the production rather than the use of ethnoracial statistics. This paper argues that the study of racial arithmetic—an understudied feature of contemporary politics—requires a relational approach. To illustrate the purchase of this approach, this paper presents an analysis of Chicago’s most recent bout of aldermanic redistricting. In this case, racial arithmetic rested on the ubiquitous juxtaposition of “Latino” and “Black” demographics, as captured in the 2010 census. By casting Black and Latino political power as a zero-sum game, this juxtaposition helped longstanding white overrepresentation on the City Council escape public scrutiny.
White Demographobia: Media Discourse and the Statisticalization of Latino Threat
Drawing on the sociology of quantification, media studies, and critical scholarship on race, this... more Drawing on the sociology of quantification, media studies, and critical scholarship on race, this paper meditates on the media construction of Latinos as a demographic threat in the wake of the 2010 census. Despite rarely employing explicitly racist language or imagery, the mainstream media nonetheless contributes to white “demographobia,” that is, fear about the so-called “Browning of America.” This contribution cannot be understood in isolation from the methods through which media coverage charges and invests census statistics with racial meaning. In this paper, I focus on two key methods. The first method—“frames of gravity”—refers to textual and visual means of dramatizing statistical data. The second—“racial juxtapositions”—describes the commonplace contrast between “whites” and “nonwhites.” Particularly prevalent is the juxtaposition between Latino demographic “ascendancy” and white demographic “decline.” I argue that these methods promote, implicitly or explicitly, a vision of demographic change as a zero sum game, composed of population winners and losers. Contrary to much public debate and academic research, this analysis suggests that feelings of demographic threat are an affectively cultivated, rather than an automatic, response to population trends.
The Art of Attraction: Toward a Sociology of Knowledge-in-Action
The question of how to conceptualize the role of knowledge in political life is an old one, datin... more The question of how to conceptualize the role of knowledge in political life is an old one, dating to Mannheim, if not Marx. Recent interest in the sociology of knowledge and related fields has revived this question, helping to propel studies of policies, experts, evaluations, and interventions. Taking as our starting point these recent developments, we propose to shift the discussion to foreground the question of “gravity”: the potential capacity of knowledge to gather and assemble publics and to serve as a center around which political activity unfolds and political imaginaries transform. This capacity cannot be entirely explained, we argue, simply by recourse to institutional configuration, the sociopolitical context, the actions of social actors and experts, or even the discursive milieu. Integrating these accounts with approaches sensitive to circulation, materiality, and visuality, we develop a comprehensive framework to assist investigations into how and under what conditions knowledge becomes a gravitational force in political life, and to what effect. A central aspect of this framework is the introduction of several conceptual tools that register the material-semiotic affordances of inscripted knowledge (i.e. documents, blueprints, models).
Papers by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Figures of the Future: Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
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Journal Articles by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Book Chapters by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Book Reviews by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Works-in-Progress by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz
Papers by Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz