Synopses & Reviews
What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the andquot;brick wall.andquot; On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as andquot;non-performativesandquot; that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.
Review
andquot;There are no other books of this caliber examining the institutional culture of diversity in higher education. Sara Ahmed not only offers a rigorous empirical study of how diversity operates in the real world; she also develops a brilliant theoretical framework exploring the affective reproduction of inequality. At the same time, as a black feminist, she draws on her own embodiment of difference and experience as a diversity practitioner.andquot;andmdash;Heidi Safia Mirza, author of Race, Gender and Educational Desire: Why Black Women Succeed and Fail
Review
“Just when you think everything that could possibly be said about diversity in higher education has been said, Sara Ahmed comes along with this startlingly original, deeply engaging ethnography of diversity work in the Australian and UK academies. On Being Included is an insightful, smart reflection on the embodied, profoundly political phenomenology of doing and performing diversity in predominantly white institutions. Ahmed follows ‘objects, texts, bodies, and practices’ around, asking what work they/we do for the institution. Her wonderful facility with queering the most mundane, habitual formulations of diversity lead to thought provoking gems like: diversity workers as institutional plumbers, working to reveal blockages (racism) in the system; the violence of inclusion—of being ‘folded into’ whiteness; institutional stories that surface vs. those that recede (the archeology of diversity work); coming up against the wall of racism, rather than going with ‘flow’ of diversity discourse; whiteness as occupying institutions. . . . and I could go on. The eureka moments are just too many to name. I could not put this book down—it is a deeply respectful account of ‘doing and being’ diversity in institutional life. A must-read for everyone committed to anti-racist, feminist work as key to institutional transformation in higher education.”—Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
Review
andquot;Just when you think everything that could possibly be said about diversity in higher education has been said, Sara Ahmed comes along with this startlingly original, deeply engaging ethnography of diversity work. On Being Included is an insightful, smart reflection on the embodied, profoundly political phenomenology of doing and performing diversity in predominantly white institutions. As Ahmed queers even the most mundane formulations of diversity, she creates one eureka moment after another. I could not put this book down. It is a must-read for everyone committed to antiracist, feminist work as key to institutional transformation in higher education.andquot;andmdash;Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
Review
andquot;Sara Ahmed's sensitive and respectful analysis of the complexities faced by diversity workers in higher education institutions arrives at a moment when we urgently need ways to rethink institutional dynamics and the animating effects of policy regimes and processes. This is a vital book: vital as a compass guiding the eye, heart, and mind to the knowledge that can emerge from the labor of institutional transformation, and vital in the sense of being life-giving to those involved in the process.andquot;andmdash;Gail Lewis, coauthor of Citizenship: Personal Lives and Social Policy
Review
andldquo;Drawing from interviews and informal conversations with higher education diversity practitioners across the United Kingdom and Australia, scholar Sara Ahmed has crafted a keen meditation on the meaning of diversity in higher education and its implications for inclusion.... Focusing on what practitioners can learn about institutions as they work to transform them, her book will be of interest to anyone seeking to promote greater inclusion at their institution.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Ahmed develops and excellent study for those wishing to view the multiple realities of diversity. Highly recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and professionals.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Ahmedandrsquo;s book is not a how-to guide to andlsquo;what works.andrsquo; But On Being Included would be an excellent choice for a faculty-staff reading group about social justice in the academy, because Ahmed provides a rich resource for serious rethinking: andlsquo;My aim is not to suggest that we should stop doing diversity, but that we need to keep asking what we are doing.andrsquo;andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;For those of us interested in diversity work, Ahmedandrsquo;s On Being Included provides a novel way of thinking about diversity. In her readings of institutional documents interwoven with the voices of diversity workers, Ahmed cautions us to think about diversity as a tool deployed to further crystallize institutionally sanctioned racist practices that recede to the background of everyday life.andrdquo; - Andres Castro Samayoa, Somatechnics
Review
andldquo;[A] unique account of diversity as an institutional practice and also of what people do and feel when they do not quite fit the norms of an institution or
are andlsquo;out of placeandrsquo;. Ahmed captures the experience of diversity in liberal institutions through the image of a coming up against a brick wall and an important part of this book is the andlsquo;physical and emotionalandrsquo; labour of confronting that wall.andrdquo; - Karim Murji, Ethnic and Racial Studies
Review
andldquo;Regardless of positionality and lived experiences, this text is engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Ahmedandrsquo;s unflinching candor compels reflection and tough (hopefully productive) conversations far more effectively than a conventional andlsquo;diversity documentandrsquo;. and#160;This is a text that moves to confront and change the status quo.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Despite having read widely within the ?eld of diversity and higher education, it is rare for a book to so powerfully call to mind my own identities as did this one. and#160;. . . This work is most appropriate for an educational anthropology course or unit focused on applied work within higher education. . . . It would also be useful for researchers looking for a new theoretical approach to how discourse and documents perform within institutions or, more provocatively, how they fail to do so.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;[T]he book links deeply theoretical questioning to personal experience, empirical findings in interviews, informal discussions and engaged participant observation. It provides the reader with many insights, some created within different varieties of collective intellectual labor that are referred to as discussions in a seminar, meeting or informal talk, that nourish the quest for reading that is simultaneously compelling and delightful. In its combination of theory and practice, the book offers food for thought to theorists and practitioners alike.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;On Being Included is one of those books that took over my life. It seemed like, for a while, I inserted this text into just about every conversation I had. andlsquo;Oh, thatandrsquo;s similar to what Sara Ahmed talks about when she says andhellip; andlsquo; Maybe itandrsquo;s because I want people to associate me with this brilliant author! and#160;Itandrsquo;s also partially because this book is really smart about dealing with the ways that termsandndash;specifically, diversityandndash;are taken up within the institution (and she does a neat job of thinking through what institution means) and used to obscure particular kinds of work.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;On Being Included does an excellent job of bringing to life, in highly perceptive ways, the experience of doing diversity work. As ethnography, its strength indeed may lie in bracketing other times and places. However, the resonance with other documented experiences in Britain and Australia contributes to the bookandrsquo;s value in offering not just a picture of diversity politics but a vivid account of the persistent features of contemporary organisational life when faced with projects seeking change.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;What is most striking about Ahmedandrsquo;s work is her detailed analysis of the various paradoxes that result when diversity workers attempt to transform institutions that resist the very transformations diversity workers are hired to put into effect.andrdquo;and#160;
Review
andldquo;This book offers a grounded and open exploration of what it means to andlsquo;doandrsquo; diversity, to andlsquo;beandrsquo; diverse. It challenges the reader, both in style and in content, to reconsider relations of power that stick to the multiple practices, meanings, and understandings of diversity, and to reconsider how we engage, reproduce, and disrupt these relations.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;A key finding in Ahmedandrsquo;s rich analysis of race relations is how diversity policies can become a mechanism for preserving whiteness. . . . Above all, Ahmedandrsquo;s corpus of work on race and cultural studies continues to remind us that race is a andlsquo;sticky signandrsquo;. . . . The wonder of Ahmedandrsquo;s book is that it allows us insight into some of the more ephemeral ways whiteness, privilege and institutional discrimination come to operate as normative.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Regardless of positionality and lived experiences, this text is engaging both intellectually and emotionally. Ahmedandrsquo;s unflinching candor compels reflection and tough (hopefully productive) conversations far more effectively than a conventional andlsquo;diversity documentandrsquo;. This is a text that moves to confront and change the status quo.andrdquo;
- Corin de Freitas and Alex Pysklywec, Society and Space, Environment and Planning D
Review
and#8220;The excellent analysis of race and gender is a noteworthy strength of this book. . . . Highly readable.and#8221;and#8212;Jeffrey H. Jackson,
American Historical ReviewReview
and#8220;Methodologically innovative and skillfully researched, Colonial Metropolis supports the authorand#8217;s contention that the grand European city itself had become colonized. In demonstrating the profoundly complex, intertwined, and shifting roles that gender and race played in this colonization, Boittinand#8217;s work recasts our understanding of the metropole and its place in the empire during this period.and#8221;and#8212;Carolyn J. Eichner, French Politics, Culture, and Society
Review
"Examining performers such as Josephine Baker, black and feminist print culture, and police records about anti-imperial activists, the author connects diverse threads regarding race, gender, and colonialism."and#8212;Choice
Review
"Jennifer Anne Boittin's Colonial Metropolis represents a bold assertion of the centrality of colonial relationships to the political and cultural history of interwar Paris."and#8212;Ian Germani, H-Urban
Review
"[Colonial Metropolis] offers insightful and original analysis of the links between the vogue nand#232;gre and anti-imperial politics, and of the important role of the city of Paris in facilitating such a nexus."and#8212;Kate Marsh, H-France Review
Review
"Colonial Metropolis should beand#160;required reading for any scholars of French empire in the twentieth century, as well as forand#160;graduate students working on twentieth century European imperialism. This book is consciously in dialogue with the richer literature on gender and race in the British Empire, so its value goes beyond specialists of France."and#8212;Jeremy Rich, Itinerario
Synopsis
Examination of how the language and policies promoting diversity in institutions of higher education fall short of or undermine their stated goals.
Synopsis
Ahmed argues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. She traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent. Her study is based in universities and her research is primarily in the UK and Australia, but the argument is equally valid in North America and beyond.
Synopsis
Sara Ahmed argues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. Institutions will produce programs promoting diversity, or sponsor committees to study it, rather than actually engaging in affirmative action hiring or anti-racist, anti-discrimination actions. Ahmed traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent. Ahmed’s study is based in universities and her research is primarily in the UK and Australia, but the argument is equally valid in North America and for a wider range of institutions.
Synopsis
World War I gave colonial migrants and French women unprecedented access to the workplaces and nightlife of Paris. After the war they were expected to return without protest to their homesand#8212;either overseas or metropolitan. Neither group, however, was willing to be discarded.
and#160;Between the world wars, the mesmerizing capital of Franceand#8217;s colonial empire attracted denizens from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. Paris became not merely their home but also a site for political engagement. Colonial Metropolis tells the story of the interactions and connections of these black colonial migrants and white feminists in the social, cultural, and political world of interwar Paris. It explores why and how both were denied certain rights, such as the vote, how they suffered from sensationalist depictions in popular culture, and how they pursued parity in ways that were often interpreted as politically subversive.
About the Author
Sara Ahmed is Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her books include The Cultural Politics of Emotion; Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality; and Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. On Arrival 1
1. Institutional Life 19
2. The Language of Diversity 51
3. Equality and Performance Culture 83
4. Commitment as a Non-performative 113
5. Speaking about Racism 141
Conclusion. A Phenomenological Practice 173
Notes 191
References 221
Index 235