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Critical Issues in Health and Medicine
Mapping "Race"

Mapping "Race"

Critical Approaches to Health Disparities Research

Edited by Laura E. Gómez and Nancy López

Contributions by Laura E. Gómez, Nancy López, Jonathan Kahn, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Jay S. Kaufman, John A. Garcia, Simon J. Craddock Lee, Gabriel R. Sánchez, Vickie D. Ybarra, Derek Kenji Iwamoto, Mai M. Kindaichi, Matthew Miller, Aliya Saperstein, Janet E. Helms, Ethan H. Mereish and Arline T. Geronimus

Foreword by R. Burciaga Valdez

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Series: Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Imprint: Rutgers University Press

246 Pages, 152.00 × 229.00 × 15.00 mm, 6 figures, 8 tables

Paperback
9780813561363
Published: August 2013

£33.00

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Hardcover
9780813561370
Published: August 2013

£120.00

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Researchers commonly ask subjects to self-identify their race from a menu of preestablished options. Yet if race is a multidimensional, multilevel social construction, this has profound methodological implications for the sciences and social sciences. Race must inform how we design large-scale data collection and how scientists utilize race in the context of specific research questions. This landmark collection argues for the recognition of those implications for research and suggests ways in which they may be integrated into future scientific endeavors. It concludes on a prescriptive note, providing an arsenal of multidisciplinary, conceptual, and methodological tools for studying race specifically within the context of health inequalities.

Contributors: John A. Garcia, Arline T. Geronimus, Laura E. GÓmez, Joseph L. Graves Jr., Janet E. Helms, Derek Kenji Iwamoto, Jonathan Kahn, Jay S. Kaufman, Mai M. Kindaichi, Simon J. Craddock Lee, Nancy LÓpez, Ethan H. Mereish, Matthew Miller, Gabriel R. Sanchez, Aliya Saperstein, R. Burciaga Valdez, Vicki D. Ybarra

List of Figures and Tables
Foreword by R. Burciaga Valdez
Preface

1. Introduction: Taking the Social Construction of Race Seriously in Health Disparities Research

Laura E. GÓmez

Part I: Charting the Problem

2. The Politics of Framing Health Disparities: Markets and Justice

Jonathan Kahn

3. Looking at the World through"Race"-Colored Glasses: The Fallacy of Ascertainment Bias in Biomedical Research and Practice

Joseph L. Graves Jr.

4. Ethical Dilemmas in Statistical Practice: The Probelm of Race in Biomedicine

Jay S. Kaufman

5. A Holistic Alternative to Current Survey Research Approaches to Race

John A . Garcia

Part II: Navigating Diverse Empirical Settings

6. Organizational Practice and Social Constraints: Problems of Racial Identity Data Collection in Cancer Care and Research

Simon J. Craddock Lee

7. Lessons from Political Science: Health Status and Improving How We Study Race

Gabriel R. Sanchez and Vickie D. Ybarra

8. Advancing Asian American Mental Health Research by Enhancing Racial Identity Measures

Derek Kenji Iwamoto, Mai M. Kindaichi, and Matthew Miller

Part III. Surveying Solutions

9. Representing the Multidimensionality of Race in Survey Research

Allya Saperstein

10. How Racial-Group Comparisons Create Misinformation in Depression Research: Using Racial Identity Theory to Conceptualize Health Disparities

Janet E. Helms and Ethan H. Mereish

11. Jedi Public Health: Leveraging Contingencies of Social Identity to Grasp and Eliminiate Racial Health Inequality

Arline T. Geronimus

12. Contextualizing Lived Race-Gender and the Racialized-Gendered Social Determinants of Health

Nancy LÓpez

Notes on Contributors
Index

LAURA E. GÓMEZ is a professor of law, sociology, and Chicano studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. She is the author of Manifest Destinies: The Making of the Mexican American Race.

NANCY LÓPEZ is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys: Race and Gender Disparity in Urban Education.

"The essays from various disciplines in this collection thoughtfully examine how conceptions of race (or ethnicity) create disparities in health care and its outcomes. Recommended."
(Choice)
"Mapping 'Race' provides keen insights about race as a social construction. With its coherent theme and presentation of possible ways to study race and health, this book will fill an important vacuum in the scholarship on the topic."
- David T. Takeuchi (University of Washington)
"The arguments in Mapping 'Race' are at the cutting edge of research; the authors' tight focus on health and health disparities is sensible and timely. Besides outlining racial disparities in health, the authors provide an executable set of solutions."
- Rachel T. Kimbro (Rice University)
"an important collection that introduces some of the specific methodological debates on the intersection between race and health inequalities in the USA."
(Ethnic and Racial Studies)
"What is race? The contributors in Mapping Race brilliantly renew, reconsider, and reimagine this question in light of the pressing new challenges facing the way we think about diverging health outcomes. Mapping Race is necessary reading."
(American Journal of Sociology)