Terrorism, National Security & Conflict Studies

Minoritized Space: An Inquiry into the Spatial Order of Things
Michel Laguerre, 152pp, Book #3877, $15 

Starting with the assumption that in order to have colonial subjects one must have a colonized space, Michel Laguerre proceeds to show that in order to have ethnic minorities one must also have a minoritized space.  By conceptualizing the mechanisms that produce this minoritized space, the way it operates, and the technology of its reproduction, this book explains how and why the spatial question is intrinsic to the minority question and is crucial to our reevaluation of minority status in American society. Specifically, spatial analysis allows an opportunity to remap the  terrain, identify hegemonic and subaltern sites of relationships and, in the process, develop a new and critical cartography of social practices.

The spatial approach used to examine the geography of minoritized identities, spatial positions, and geographical sites has led to a critical analysis of the foundational concept of minority through the use of which the dominant sector has naturalized the behavioral expression of inequality and uneven development among groups of diverse national origins on the basis of ethnicity. Once the core meanings of the concept are laid bare, the artificial edifice of ethnicity as an indicator of inferiority for some groups collapses, thereby indicating that the subaltern position of minorities in society is socially constructed and that there is nothing natural about fixing some individuals and groups in a situation of subordination. If power is the mechanism that makes possible the allocation of a subaltern position to minorities, space emerges as the mechanism by which the separation between the dominant and the dominated, the assignments of status and class, and the differences among various American ethnic groups are maintained.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michel S. Laguerre is Professor of Afro-American Studies/Social Anthropology and a member of the executive committee of the College of Letters and Science, University of California, Berkeley. He has published 12 books, among them The Informal City and Diasporic Citizenship.  He is completing a new volume entitled The Global Chronopolis: Diasporic Implosion in American Society.