On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life

Sara Ahmed

ISBN 10: 0822352362 / ISBN 13: 9780822352365

Published by Duke University Press, 2012

About this Item

Argues that a commitment to diversity is frequently substituted for a commitment to actual change. This title traces the work that diversity does, examining how the term is used and the way it serves to make questions about racism seem impertinent. Num Pages: 256 pages, 3 illustrations. BIC Classification: JFFJ; JFSL. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational. Dimension: 155 x 221 x 15. Weight in Grams: 352. . 2012. Paperback. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9780822352365

Bibliographic Details

• Title: On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822352362
• ISBN 13: 9780822352365
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.

About the Author

Sara Ahmed is Professor of Race and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her books include The Cultural Politics of Emotion; Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality; and Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism.