How do people produce and reproduce identities? In How Americans Make Race, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges what is sometimes called the 'narrative identity thesis': the idea that people produce and reproduce identities as stories. Identities have greater staying power than one would expect them to have if they were purely and simply narrative constructions, she argues, because people institutionalize identity-stories, building them into laws, rules, and other institutions that give social actors incentives to perform their identities well, and because they objectify identity-stories, building them into material forms that actors experience with their bodies. Drawing on in-depth historical analyses of the development of racialized identities and spaces in the twentieth-century United States, and also on life-narratives collected from people who live in racialized urban and suburban spaces, Hayward shows how the institutionalization and objectification of racial identity-stories enables their practical reproduction, lending them resilience in the face of challenge and critique.

In this major contribution to the power debate, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges the prevailing view which treats power as something powerful people have and use. Rather than seeing it as having a 'face', she considers power as a complex network of social boundaries - norms, identities, institutions - which define both the field of action and the individual's freedom within it, for the 'powerful' and 'powerless' alike. Hayward suggests that the critical analysis of power relations should focus on the ways these relationships affect people's capacities to help shape the institutions and practices which govern their lives. Using a detailed comparative analysis of the relationships within two ethnically diverse educational settings - one in a low-income, predominantly African-American, urban school, the other in an affluent, predominantly white, suburban school - this book develops a compelling account of the concept of power in terms of networks of practices and relations.

How do people produce and reproduce identities? In How Americans Make Race, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges what is sometimes called the 'narrative identity thesis': the idea that people produce and reproduce identities as stories. Identities have greater staying power than one would expect them to have if they were purely and simply narrative constructions, she argues, because people institutionalize identity-stories, building them into laws, rules, and other institutions that give social actors incentives to perform their identities well, and because they objectify identity-stories, building them into material forms that actors experience with their bodies. Drawing on in-depth historical analyses of the development of racialized identities and spaces in the twentieth-century United States, and also on life-narratives collected from people who live in racialized urban and suburban spaces, Hayward shows how the institutionalization and objectification of racial identity-stories enables their practical reproduction, lending them resilience in the face of challenge and critique.

In this major contribution to the power debate, Clarissa Rile Hayward challenges the prevailing view of power as something powerful people have and use. Rather than seeing it as having a "face," she argues for a view of power as a complex network of social boundaries--norms, identities, institutions--which define individual freedom, for "powerful" and "powerless" alike. The book's argument is supported by a comparative analysis of relationships within two ethnically-diverse educational settings--a low-income, predominantly African-American urban school; and an affluent, predominantly white, suburban school.

Today's American cities and suburbs are the sites of "thick injustice"-unjust power relations that are deeply and densely concentrated as well as opaque and seemingly intractable. Thick injustice is hard to see, to assign responsibility for, and to change. Identifying these often invisible and intransigent problems, this volume addresses foundational questions about what justice requires in the contemporary metropolis. Essays focus on inequality within and among cities and suburbs; articulate principles for planning, redevelopment, and urban political leadership; and analyze the connection between metropolitan justice and institutional design. In a world that is progressively more urbanized, and yet no clearer on issues of fairness and equality, this book points the way to a metropolis in which social justice figures prominently in any definition of success. Contributors: Susan S. Fainstein, Harvard U; Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford U; Gerald Frug, Harvard U; Loren King, Wilfrid Laurier U; Margaret Kohn, U of Toronto; Stephen Macedo, Princeton U; Douglas W. Rae, Yale U; Clarence N. Stone, George Washington U; Margaret Weir, U of California, Berkeley; Thad Williamson, U of Richmond.