'Mixed Race' Studies

Book excerpt: Mixed race studies is one of the fastest growing, as well as one of the most important and controversial areas in the field of race and ethnic relations. Bringing together pioneering and controversial scholarship from both the social and the biological sciences, as well as the humanities, this reader charts the evolution of debates on 'race' and 'mixed race' from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into three main sections: tracing the origins: miscegenation, moral degeneracy and genetics mapping contemporary and foundational discourses: 'mixed race', identities politics, and celebration debating definitions: multiraciality, census categories and critiques. This collection adds a new dimension to the growing body of literature on the topic and provides a comprehensive history of the origins and directions of 'mixed race' research as an intellectual movement. For students of anthropology, race and ethnicity, it is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities and paradoxes of 'racial' thinking across space, time and disciplines.