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Rating: 
Summary: The social construction of reality....
Review: Many social scientists recognize self identity as a precious aspect of individuality, but most social scientists are interested in generalizing, hence the stuggle to conceptualize, define and measure the group identity. There are good legal and political reasons for categorizing people, how else for example could you measure the effects of a genocide--or commit it for that matter. The Nazis and the analysts who attempted to measure the atocities of the Nazis used administrative records with information about ethnicity and religion to do their jobs. CENSUS AND IDENTITY is a nice compendium of essays about the attempts of governments around the world to collect and use information about race, language, and ethnicity in censuses. David Kertzer and Dominique Arel provide an overview of the book in which they state, "identity is a constructed thing and it is constructed over time and with a shifting awareness of values and meaning attached to certain categories, some of which are more meaningful than others." Melissa Nobles' essay, "Racial categorization and the censuses" focuses on two large census efforts--Brazil and the United States. Both countries have attempted over the past two hundred years to define and measure race with mixed results. Calvin Goldscheider compares the efforts of Israel, Canada, and the United States to categorize ethnicity in censuses. The Israeli government stresses religion, while the U.S. government eschews it. Dominique Arel's essay, "Language categories in censuses.." covers the efforts of several countries to define and measure language fluency. Just when does one become fluent in a language. Professor Higgins told Eliza Doolittle that most English ladies could not speak English! Alain Blum discusses the trials of the French in his essay, "Resistance to identity categorization in France." Seems the Algerian descent folks have a different idea of what it means to be French. Peter Uvin's essay, "On counting, categorizing, and violence in Burundi and Rwanda" is a chilling example of ethnic identification gone wrong. How did the Tutsis and Hutus know who to kill? Population exchanges between the two countries seemed to be the only way to avoid additional killing. But who just who was what and how their "papers" were created became a nightmare. My favorite essay was written by David Abramson, " Identity counts: the Soviet legacy and the census in Uzbekistan." Just what is a Tajik anyway, and when is a Tajik really an Uzbek? Some funny things happened in the censuses taken over several decades as the size of the population of Tajiks and Uzbeks changed rather dramatically. While one side pointed at the data and said it was a sure sign of genocide, social scientists aren't so sure. Sometimes people change their "official" identities when the census taker comes knocking on the door. This is a wonderful set of essays for anyone who is interested in the difficulties associated with identifying and measuring "ethnic" groups and what happens to them.
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