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A Discussion of Jessica Blatt's Race and the Making of American Political Science

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Race and the Making of American Political Science. By BlattJessica. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 216p. $55.00 cloth.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2019

James Farr*
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University

Abstract

In Race and the Making of American Political Science, Jessica Blatt argues that the professionalization of the discipline was deeply entwined with ideas about racial difference, and the concomitant attempt by leading scholars to define and defend a system of racial hierarchy in the United States and beyond. Although it focuses on the period from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s, the book also raises fundamental questions about the historical legacy of racialist arguments for professional political science, the extent of their continuing resonance, and contemporary implications for both academic and broader civic discourse. We have asked a range of leading political scientists to consider and respond to Professor Blatt’s important call for scholarly self-reflexivity.

Type
Review Symposium: American Politics
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2019 

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References

Adcock, Robert. 2014. Liberalism and the Emergence of American Political Science: A Transatlantic Tale. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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Farr, James. 2007. “The Historical Science(s) of Politics: The Principles, Association, and Fate of an American Discipline.” In Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880, ed. Adcock, Robert et al. , 6696. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Keil, Hartmut. 2008. “Francis Lieber’s Attitudes on Race, Slavery, and Abolition.” Journal of American Ethnic History 28(1): 1333.Google Scholar