Themes and issues in the teaching of race and ethnicity in sociology

This article reviews trends in the teaching of race and ethnicity in sociology over the last thirty years or so. Using as its primary sources of evidence specialist texts as well as more general undergraduate introductions to sociology, it points to contrasts and similarities in developments on both sides of the Atlantic. It identifies a number of influences on the teaching of race and ethnicity lying inside and outside the academy. These include pressures arising within the national political realm and also the effects of more general theoretical fashions within sociology. The article focuses in particular on debates surrounding the appropriate status of the concept of 'race' and locates national differences in the character and progress of those debates in the wider political and social context. The article closes by suggesting that recent trends towards an emphasis on identity and the conceptualization of difference, together with a continuing stress on the significance of racism, are crucial in ensuring that issues of race and ethnicity are placed at the centre of the questions to which students of sociology should be encouraged to pay attention.