 |
 |
|
|
Latina/o Studies: The Continuing by Joan Moore Occasional Paper No. 29
As a formally recognized field of study and teaching, Latina/o Studies started in the late 1960's in the Chicano Southwest and in Puerto Rican New York. The origins of the various Chicano and Puerto Rican Studies programs at that time lay less in a slow evolution of scholarly interests than in the urgent demands of angry students and a few faculty who insisted that universities begin to meet the educational needs of undeserved local Latina/os. But in addition to activist concerns, intellectual issues were of critical importance to sociologists who were among the founding fathers and mothers of these programs. The study of race and ethnicity has been a major specialty within American sociology for the past century, but in the 60's few sociologists who were not directly involved with Latina/os knew or cared about them. This should not be too surprising. Almost all sociologists at that time were white, and if they thought at all about racial and ethnic cleavages in American society they thought first about African-Americans, and second about their own ancestors mostly immigrants from Europe. When I moved to California from Chicago as a new faculty member in the early 1960's, I had had absolutely no sociological exposure to Chicanos - and ethnicity was one of my primary specialties. I knew about one population of East Los Angeles - the Molokans, a minuscule Russian Protestant sect - but not about the Chicanos! The civil rights movement and racial unrest of the late 1960's - both on and off campus - gave sociologists even more cause to think about African-Americans. They were particularly concerned with what had gone wrong with sociological predictions about race. Very few paid any attention to parallel expressions of discontent in Chicano and Puerto Rican communities. Why? There were two main reasons. First, there was very little research literature on these populations, and what little existed was not widely circulated among sociologists. Looking at the bibliography we compiled for the Mexican-American Study Project in 1966, I count no more than a dozen books by and for sociologists about Mexican-Americans published by mainstream academic presses prior to 1965. What little there was on Mexican-Americans was largely focused on rural populations.1 Puerto Ricans, who began to migrate in large numbers between 1946 and 1964, attracted somewhat more sociological attention - probably because they settled in cities (like New York and Chicago) where mainstream sociology flourished. Several prominent sociologists, like C. Wright Mills and Nathan Glazer, undertook the study of these "new" migrants to their city, and they were joined by a few talented, though, less well-known researchers. However, because Latina/os were so heavily outnumbered in those cities by African-Americans and European ethnics, they tended to be overlooked, which was the second major reason for their neglect in those days. In Chicago, the Young Lords attracted nowhere nearly as much attention as the Black Panthers, for example. Thus, lack of research literature and the overshadowing by African-Americans were major reasons for sociological ignorance.2 American sociology was therefore taken by surprise at the very presence of Latina/o sociologists at the tumultuous convention of 1969, let alone at their expressions of discontent with the discipline. Since that time, Latina/o sociologists have become far more visible: the professional association actually has a section devoted solely to Latina/Latino sociology. The study of Latina/os has changed many sociological specialties. Nowhere, however, have the changes been as great as in the way in which sociologists conceptualize the Latino population itself - and especially the poorer members. Latina/os form such a large proportion of the poor that mainstream sociologists simply must pay attention to them. That is far less true for other specialties. It is a little artificial to limit this discussion to sociologists, since one of the main strengths of Latina/o studies is its indisciplinary nature. However, the remainder of this chapter will focus on how Latina/o studies has challenged sociological paradigms, both historically and more recently. Hardcopy Price: $0.00
Please Note: To download and view the publications in PDF format, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software on your machine. You can download the software for free by clicking on the appropriate system you have: Windows or Mac OS. All JSRI Publications are also available in hard copies, at the prices specified. For any orders or further information please send an email to: info@jsri.msu.edu.
JSRI Home | JSRI Research & Publications | Occasional Paper Series |
|
|
|
For more information, contact: |
