Series Editors: Jean Comaroff, Andreas Glaeser, William Sewell, Lisa Wedeen

• Bewitching Development: Witchcraft and the Reinvention of Development in Neoliberal Kenya
  James Howard Smith (Publication in June 2008)

• Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital
  Andrew Sartori (Publication in September 2008)

• Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen
  Lisa Wedeen (Publication in September 2008)

• Ethnicity, Inc.: On Identity, Culture, and the Commodity in the 21st Century
  John L. and Jean Comaroff (Publication in April 2009)

• Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research
  Steven Epstein (2007)

• The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa
  George Steinmetz (2007)

• Parité!: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism
  Joan Wallach Scott (2005)

• Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation
  William H. Sewell, Jr. (2005)

• Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space
  Manu Goswami (2004)

Titles

Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research
Steven Epstein (Spring 2007)

As a society, we have learned to value diversity. But can some strategies to achieve diversity mask deeper problems, ones that might require a different approach and different solutions? With Inclusion, Steven Epstein argues that in the field of medical research, the answer is an emphatic yes.

Formal concern with diversity in American medical research, Epstein shows, is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1980s, few paid close attention to who was included in research subject pools. Not uncommonly, scientists studied groups of mostly white, middle-aged men—and assumed that conclusions drawn from studying them would apply to the rest of the population. But struggles involving advocacy groups, experts, and Congress led to reforms that forced researchers and pharmaceutical companies to diversify the population from which they drew for clinical research. That change has gone hand in hand with bold assertions that group differences in society are encoded in our biology—for example, that there are important biological differences in the ways that people of different races and sexes respond to drugs and other treatments.

While the prominence of these inclusive practices has offered hope to traditionally underserved groups, Epstein argues forcefully that it has drawn attention away from the tremendous inequalities in health that are rooted not in biology but in society. There is, for instance, a direct relationship between social class and health status—and Epstein believes that a focus on bodily differences can obscure the importance of this factor. Only when connected to a broad-based effort to address health disparities, Epstein explains, can a medical policy of inclusion achieve its intended effects.

A fascinating history, powerful analysis, and call to action, Inclusion will be essential reading for medical professionals, policymakers, and any concerned citizen.

The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa
George Steinmetz (Spring 2007)

Germany’s overseas colonial empire was relatively short lived, lasting from 1884 to 1918. During this period, dramatically different policies were enacted in the colonies: in Southwest Africa, German troops carried out a brutal slaughter of the Herero people; in Samoa, authorities pursued a paternalistic defense of native culture; in Qingdao, China, policy veered between harsh racism and cultural exchange.

Why did the same colonizing power act in such differing ways? In The Devil’s Handwriting, George Steinmetz tackles this question through a brilliant cross-cultural analysis of German colonialism, leading to a new conceptualization of the colonial state and postcolonial theory. Steinmetz uncovers the roots of colonial behavior in precolonial European ethnographies, where the Hereros were portrayed as cruel and inhuman, the Samoans were idealized as “noble savages,” and depictions of Chinese culture were mixed. The effects of status competition among colonial officials, colonizers’ identification with their subjects, and the different strategies of cooperation and resistance offered by the colonized are also scrutinized in this deeply nuanced and ambitious comparative history.

Parité!: Sexual Equality and the Crisis of French Universalism
Joan Wallach Scott (Fall 2005)

France today is in the throes of a crisis about whether to represent social differences within its political system and, if so, how. It is a crisis defined by the rhetoric of a universalism that takes the abstract individual to be the representative not only of citizens but also of the nation. In Parité! Joan Wallach Scott shows how the requirement for abstraction has led to the exclusion of women from French politics.

During the 1990s, le mouvement pour la parité successfully campaigned for women's inclusion in elective office with an argument that is unprecedented in the annals of feminism. The paritaristes insisted that if the abstract individual were thought of as sexed, then sexual difference would no longer be a relevant consideration in politics. Scott insists that this argument was neither essentialist nor separatist; it was not about women's special qualities or interests. Instead, parité was rigorously universalist—and for that reason was both misunderstood and a source of heated debate.

Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation
William H. Sewell, Jr. (2005)

While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr., Faculty Fellow and Associate Director of 3CT, observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians.

Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. The essays in Logics of History reveal the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.

Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space
Manu Goswami (2004)

When did categories such as a national space and economy acquire self-evident meaning and a global reach? Why do nationalist movements demand a territorial fix between a particular space, economy, culture, and people?

Producing India mounts a formidable challenge to the entrenched practice of methodological nationalism that has accorded an exaggerated privilege to the nation-state as a dominant unit of historical and political analysis. Manu Goswami locates the origins and contradictions of Indian nationalism in the convergence of the lived experience of colonial space, the expansive logic of capital, and interstate dynamics. Building on and critically extending subaltern and postcolonial perspectives, her study shows how nineteenth-century conceptions of India as a bounded national space and economy bequeathed an enduring tension between a universalistic political economy of nationhood and a nativist project that continues to haunt the present moment.