A01=Katherine Cramer Walsh
america
american
Author_Katherine Cramer Walsh
authority
Category=JBSL
Category=JPVC
civic
common ground
communal
communities
community
controversial
controversy
cultural
culture
data
debate
dialogue
discourse
discussion
diverse
diversity
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnic
ethnicity
interpersonal
interracial
national
political
politics
public
race
racial
racism
racist
relations
relationships
Product details
- ISBN 9780226869063
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 15 May 2007
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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It is a perennial question: how should Americans deal with racial and ethnic diversity? More than 400 communities across the country have attempted to answer it by organizing discussions among diverse volunteers in an attempt to improve race relations. In "Talking about Race", Katherine Cramer Walsh takes an eye-opening look at this strategy to reveal the reasons behind the method and the effects it has in the cities and towns that undertake it. With extensive observations of community dialogues, interviews with the discussants, and sophisticated analysis of national data, Walsh shows that while meeting organizers usually aim to establish common ground, participants tend to leave their discussions with a heightened awareness of differences in perspective and experience. Drawing readers into these intense conversations between ordinary Americans working to deal with diversity and figure out the meaning of citizenship in our society, she challenges many preconceptions about intergroup relations and organized public talk.
Disputing the conventional wisdom that unity is the only way forward, Walsh prescribes a practical politics of difference that compels us to reassess the place of face-to-face discussion in civic life and the critical role of conflict in deliberative democracy.
Katherine Cramer Walsh is associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and the author of Talking about Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity in American Life, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
