Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses

Full summary

The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Language in National Censuses examines the ways that states have attempted to pigeon-hole the people within their boundaries into racial, ethnic, and language categories. These attempts, whether through American efforts to divide the US population into mutually exclusive racial categories, or through the Soviet system of inscribing nationality categories on internal passports, have important implications not only for people’s own identities and life chances, but for national political and social processes as well. The book reviews the history of these categorizing efforts by the state, and offers a theoretical context for examining them, illustrating the case with studies from a range of countries.

Chapter Contents

1. "Censuses, identity formation, and the struggle for political power"
   David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel

2. "Racial categorization in censuses "
   Melissa Nobles

3. "Ethnic categorization in censuses: comparative observations from Israel, Canada, and the United States"
   Calvin Goldscheider

4. "Language categories in censuses: backward- or forward-looking?"
   Dominique Arel

5. "The debate on resisting identity categorization in France"
   Alain Blum

6. "On counting, categorizing, and violence in Burundi and Rwanda"
   Peter Uvin

7. "Identity counts: the Soviet legacy and the census in Uzbekistan"
   David Abramson.