Joseph Gerteis
Biographic Data
| ID | 160580 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Gerteis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Gerteis |
| SIGNATURE | GERTEIS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7092-8101 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 604 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The Racialized American Dream: Predictors for the 21 st Century
The American Dream has long been understood as a “shorthand summary of a nation’s collective aspirations” (Hauhart 2015:65). What determines optimism about the Dream? This paper uses nationally representative data collected at a critical historical juncture to advance research which has connected the American Dream to America’s racial history. We find faith in the American Dream was racialized into the 21st-Century, both in the sense that our dat…
The Making of the Populist Movement: State, Market, and Party on the Western Frontier
Connecting the 'Others: White Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim Views in America
Drawing from recent work on “otherness” and social boundaries in America, we investigate anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish opinion among white Americans. After outlining the logic of the comparison, we use nationally representative data to analyze these forms of othering. Although anti-Muslim opinion is more extensive, the two track together empirically and share a cultural logic as connected forms of ethno-religious boundary-making. Latent class analy…
Assessing Local “Diversity”: A Nationally Representative Analysis
The meanings and definition of “diversity” can change across different applications and contexts, but many such meanings have implications for racial difference and racial ideology in the United States. We provide a nationally representative analysis of how everyday Americans assess “diversity” in their own communities. We test how county-level racial, religious, economic, and political heterogeneity predict the view that one lives in a highly di…
Context, comparison, and the other: On Chad Alan Goldberg's Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought
Goldberg's Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought examines the central place of Jews within foundational social theory in Germany, France, and the United States. In this essay, I provide my take on Goldberg's argument and provide some notes of appreciation for the better purchase it provided me on several authors' positions. I also raise three interrelated points of discussion and critique, related to the relative weight given to the tw…
Racial, Religious, and Civic Dimensions of Anti-Muslim Sentiment in America
This paper examines anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Existing research has documented rising hostility to Muslims in Western countries, but has been much less clear about what drives such sentiments or exactly what sort of 'other' Muslims are understood to be. Our interest is in the cultural construction of Muslims as a problematic or incompatible 'other.' We explore the extent, content, and correlates of such views. Building from recent work in…
The Civic Side of Diversity: Ambivalence and Belonging at the Neighborhood Level
Although diversity has become a cherished ideal for Americans, a growing literature suggests that many are also ambivalent about lived experiences of diversity. Focusing on three historically homogeneous neighborhoods in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, this paper explores the “civic talk” used to express this ambivalence through interrelated frames of social order and civic engagement. In all three neighborhoods, long–term residents and ne…
Race as an Open Field: Exploring Identity beyond Fixed Choices
This paper uses new, nationally representative data to examine how Americans describe their own racial and ethnic identities when they are not constrained by conventional fixed categories. Recent work on shifting racial classifications and the fluidity of racial identities in the United States has questioned the subjective and cultural adequacy of fixed categorization schemes. Are traditional racial boundaries breaking down? We explore the possib…
Pluralism, American
Pluralism refers to the condition of living with diversity and to a positive appreciation of that condition. Historically, pluralism was understood as a divergent goal from assimilation, however much these concepts have coincided in practice. Assimilation – or “Americanization,” to use an older term – deals with difference by insisting that newcomers or outsiders blend into the dominant society. From the pluralist viewpoint, social and cultural d…
Colorblindness as Identity: Key Determinants, Relations to Ideology, and Implications for Attitudes about Race and Policy
Colorblindness is often conceptualized as a set of deeply held but unrecognized ideological tenets. However, we believe that colorblindness has also now become an explicit cultural discourse involving self-conscious claims and specific convictions. To illustrate this point-which has both conceptual and empirical implications-we introduce the notion of colorblindness as identity. We define this concept as subjectively meaningful, self-asserted ide…
Atheists and Other Cultural Outsiders: Moral Boundaries and the Non-Religious in the United States
We use data from a nationally representative survey to analyze anti-atheist sentiment in the United States in 2014, replicating analyses from a decade earlier and extending them to consider the factors that foster negative sentiment toward other non-religious persons. We find that anti-atheist sentiment is strong, persistent, and driven in part by moral concerns about atheists and in part by agreement with cultural values that affirm religiosity …
Colorblindness in Black and White: An Analysis of Core Tenets, Configurations, and Complexities
The concept of colorblind racism has been developed in recent years to explain racial attitudes held by white Americans in the post-civil rights era. The authors use data from a new nationally representative survey with an oversample of black Americans to investigate the prevalence of core elements of colorblind ideology and to see the extent to which both black and white Americans adhere to three core dimensions of colorblindness theory: (1) abs…
Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a "Sauce-Scented Neighborhood"1
This article investigates the problem of ethnic boundary making in a changing context. Our case is Boston's North End, a historically Italian neighborhood undergoing changes to its social and physical environment, making the ethnic definition of neighborhood identity and belonging more difficult though not less salient. Consequently, participants in the workings of the neighborhood-residents, business owners, politicians-face challenges of both b…
How Americans Understand Racial and Religious Differences: A Test of Parallel Items from a National Survey
How can we better conceptualize attitudes about difference in an increasingly diverse, multicultural United States? This article uses data from a recent, nationally representative telephone survey with oversamples of African Americans and Hispanics to analyze attitudes about two prominent sources of distinction in the United States. Race and religion were selected because they tend to be understood in very different ways—race as a social problem,…
Who Counts as An American: The Boundaries of National Identity
After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty
Multicultural Horizons: Diversity and the Limit of the Civil Nation
Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush
An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many
This paper employs data from a recent national survey to offer an empirical assessment of core theoretical tenets of whiteness studies. Using survey items developed explicitly for this purpose, we analyze three specific propositions relating to whites' awareness and conception of their own racial status: the invisibility of white identity; the understanding (or lack thereof) of racial privileges; and adherence to individualistic, color-blind idea…
Pluralism, American
Pluralism refers to the condition of living amid diversity and also to a positive appreciation for that condition. The many similar metaphors describing America as a “melting pot” of different cultures or a “nation of nations” recognize both the historical fact of diversity and its role in shaping the American national character (see Kohn 1961). “What then is the American, this new man?” asked Jean de Crèvecoeur in an often‐quoted passage from Le…
"Atheists As "Other: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society
Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious…
Nationalism in America: The case of the Populist movement
Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms
Since the 1960s, a variety of new ways of addressing the challenges of diversity in American society have coalesced around the term 'multiculturalism.' In this article, we impose some clarity on the theoretical debates that surround divergent visions of difference. Rethinking multiculturalism from a sociological point of view, we propose a model that distinguishes between the social (associational) and cultural (moral) bases for social cohesion i…
Populism, Race, and Political Interest in Virginia
This article examines the interests expressed by white Populists and black Republicans regarding political coalition in Virginia. Virginia is interesting because it is generally considered a failed site for the Populist movement and for interracial organizing under it. Such a coalition was untenable statewide, but economic, social, and historical conditions opened a space for it in a cluster of majority-black counties. The failure of the coalitio…
The Possession of Civic Virtue: Movement Narratives of Race and Class in the Knights of Labor
This article explores how race is understood within an explicitly class‐based movement, the Knights of Labor. The movement presents an empirical puzzle: it simultaneously pursued racial openness and racial closure, and it justified both in the name of class interest. The article examines movement‐level narratives of race and class to show how underlying conceptions of class become implicated in the construction of interests regarding race. Commun…
"Atheists As "Other: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society
Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious…
Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms
Since the 1960s, a variety of new ways of addressing the challenges of diversity in American society have coalesced around the term 'multiculturalism.' In this article, we impose some clarity on the theoretical debates that surround divergent visions of difference. Rethinking multiculturalism from a sociological point of view, we propose a model that distinguishes between the social (associational) and cultural (moral) bases for social cohesion i…
An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many
This paper employs data from a recent national survey to offer an empirical assessment of core theoretical tenets of whiteness studies. Using survey items developed explicitly for this purpose, we analyze three specific propositions relating to whites' awareness and conception of their own racial status: the invisibility of white identity; the understanding (or lack thereof) of racial privileges; and adherence to individualistic, color-blind idea…
Racial, Religious, and Civic Dimensions of Anti-Muslim Sentiment in America
This paper examines anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Existing research has documented rising hostility to Muslims in Western countries, but has been much less clear about what drives such sentiments or exactly what sort of 'other' Muslims are understood to be. Our interest is in the cultural construction of Muslims as a problematic or incompatible 'other.' We explore the extent, content, and correlates of such views. Building from recent work in…
Colorblindness in Black and White: An Analysis of Core Tenets, Configurations, and Complexities
The concept of colorblind racism has been developed in recent years to explain racial attitudes held by white Americans in the post-civil rights era. The authors use data from a new nationally representative survey with an oversample of black Americans to investigate the prevalence of core elements of colorblind ideology and to see the extent to which both black and white Americans adhere to three core dimensions of colorblindness theory: (1) abs…
Colorblindness as Identity: Key Determinants, Relations to Ideology, and Implications for Attitudes about Race and Policy
Colorblindness is often conceptualized as a set of deeply held but unrecognized ideological tenets. However, we believe that colorblindness has also now become an explicit cultural discourse involving self-conscious claims and specific convictions. To illustrate this point-which has both conceptual and empirical implications-we introduce the notion of colorblindness as identity. We define this concept as subjectively meaningful, self-asserted ide…
The Possession of Civic Virtue: Movement Narratives of Race and Class in the Knights of Labor
This article explores how race is understood within an explicitly class‐based movement, the Knights of Labor. The movement presents an empirical puzzle: it simultaneously pursued racial openness and racial closure, and it justified both in the name of class interest. The article examines movement‐level narratives of race and class to show how underlying conceptions of class become implicated in the construction of interests regarding race. Commun…
How Americans Understand Racial and Religious Differences: A Test of Parallel Items from a National Survey
How can we better conceptualize attitudes about difference in an increasingly diverse, multicultural United States? This article uses data from a recent, nationally representative telephone survey with oversamples of African Americans and Hispanics to analyze attitudes about two prominent sources of distinction in the United States. Race and religion were selected because they tend to be understood in very different ways—race as a social problem,…
Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a "Sauce-Scented Neighborhood"1
This article investigates the problem of ethnic boundary making in a changing context. Our case is Boston's North End, a historically Italian neighborhood undergoing changes to its social and physical environment, making the ethnic definition of neighborhood identity and belonging more difficult though not less salient. Consequently, participants in the workings of the neighborhood-residents, business owners, politicians-face challenges of both b…
Race as an Open Field: Exploring Identity beyond Fixed Choices
This paper uses new, nationally representative data to examine how Americans describe their own racial and ethnic identities when they are not constrained by conventional fixed categories. Recent work on shifting racial classifications and the fluidity of racial identities in the United States has questioned the subjective and cultural adequacy of fixed categorization schemes. Are traditional racial boundaries breaking down? We explore the possib…
The Civic Side of Diversity: Ambivalence and Belonging at the Neighborhood Level
Although diversity has become a cherished ideal for Americans, a growing literature suggests that many are also ambivalent about lived experiences of diversity. Focusing on three historically homogeneous neighborhoods in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, this paper explores the “civic talk” used to express this ambivalence through interrelated frames of social order and civic engagement. In all three neighborhoods, long–term residents and ne…
Nationalism in America: The case of the Populist movement
The Salience of Class in Britain and America: A Comparative Analysis
In this paper the authors provide a comparative analysis of the political and ideological salience of class in Britain and the USA, using the Comparative Project on Class Consciousness and Class Conflict dataset. They show that class divisions, however measured, are much more salient in British political choices. They then ask whether this difference results from the weaker cultural salience of class in the USA, or whether it reflects the distinc…
Connecting the 'Others: White Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim Views in America
Drawing from recent work on “otherness” and social boundaries in America, we investigate anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish opinion among white Americans. After outlining the logic of the comparison, we use nationally representative data to analyze these forms of othering. Although anti-Muslim opinion is more extensive, the two track together empirically and share a cultural logic as connected forms of ethno-religious boundary-making. Latent class analy…
Who Counts as An American: The Boundaries of National Identity
Populism, Race, and Political Interest in Virginia
This article examines the interests expressed by white Populists and black Republicans regarding political coalition in Virginia. Virginia is interesting because it is generally considered a failed site for the Populist movement and for interracial organizing under it. Such a coalition was untenable statewide, but economic, social, and historical conditions opened a space for it in a cluster of majority-black counties. The failure of the coalitio…
Assessing Local “Diversity”: A Nationally Representative Analysis
The meanings and definition of “diversity” can change across different applications and contexts, but many such meanings have implications for racial difference and racial ideology in the United States. We provide a nationally representative analysis of how everyday Americans assess “diversity” in their own communities. We test how county-level racial, religious, economic, and political heterogeneity predict the view that one lives in a highly di…
The Salience of Class in Britain and America: A Comparative Analysis
In this paper the authors provide a comparative analysis of the political and ideological salience of class in Britain and the USA, using the Comparative Project on Class Consciousness and Class Conflict dataset. They show that class divisions, however measured, are much more salient in British political choices. They then ask whether this difference results from the weaker cultural salience of class in the USA, or whether it reflects the distinc…
American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor
The Possession of Civic Virtue: Movement Narratives of Race and Class in the Knights of Labor
This article explores how race is understood within an explicitly class‐based movement, the Knights of Labor. The movement presents an empirical puzzle: it simultaneously pursued racial openness and racial closure, and it justified both in the name of class interest. The article examines movement‐level narratives of race and class to show how underlying conceptions of class become implicated in the construction of interests regarding race. Commun…
Populism, Race, and Political Interest in Virginia
This article examines the interests expressed by white Populists and black Republicans regarding political coalition in Virginia. Virginia is interesting because it is generally considered a failed site for the Populist movement and for interracial organizing under it. Such a coalition was untenable statewide, but economic, social, and historical conditions opened a space for it in a cluster of majority-black counties. The failure of the coalitio…
Nationalism in America: The case of the Populist movement
Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms
Since the 1960s, a variety of new ways of addressing the challenges of diversity in American society have coalesced around the term 'multiculturalism.' In this article, we impose some clarity on the theoretical debates that surround divergent visions of difference. Rethinking multiculturalism from a sociological point of view, we propose a model that distinguishes between the social (associational) and cultural (moral) bases for social cohesion i…
"Atheists As "Other: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society
Despite the declining salience of divisions among religious groups, the boundary between believers and nonbelievers in America remains strong. This article examines the limits of Americans' acceptance of atheists. Using new national survey data, it shows atheists are less likely to be accepted, publicly and privately, than any others from a long list of ethnic, religious, and other minority groups. This distrust of atheists is driven by religious…
Pluralism, American
Pluralism refers to the condition of living amid diversity and also to a positive appreciation for that condition. The many similar metaphors describing America as a “melting pot” of different cultures or a “nation of nations” recognize both the historical fact of diversity and its role in shaping the American national character (see Kohn 1961). “What then is the American, this new man?” asked Jean de Crèvecoeur in an often‐quoted passage from Le…
Multicultural Horizons: Diversity and the Limit of the Civil Nation
Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush
An Empirical Assessment of Whiteness Theory: Hidden from How Many
This paper employs data from a recent national survey to offer an empirical assessment of core theoretical tenets of whiteness studies. Using survey items developed explicitly for this purpose, we analyze three specific propositions relating to whites' awareness and conception of their own racial status: the invisibility of white identity; the understanding (or lack thereof) of racial privileges; and adherence to individualistic, color-blind idea…
Who Counts as An American: The Boundaries of National Identity
After Multiculturalism: The Politics of Race and the Dialectics of Liberty
How Americans Understand Racial and Religious Differences: A Test of Parallel Items from a National Survey
How can we better conceptualize attitudes about difference in an increasingly diverse, multicultural United States? This article uses data from a recent, nationally representative telephone survey with oversamples of African Americans and Hispanics to analyze attitudes about two prominent sources of distinction in the United States. Race and religion were selected because they tend to be understood in very different ways—race as a social problem,…
Ethnic Community and Ethnic Boundaries in a "Sauce-Scented Neighborhood"1
This article investigates the problem of ethnic boundary making in a changing context. Our case is Boston's North End, a historically Italian neighborhood undergoing changes to its social and physical environment, making the ethnic definition of neighborhood identity and belonging more difficult though not less salient. Consequently, participants in the workings of the neighborhood-residents, business owners, politicians-face challenges of both b…
Colorblindness in Black and White: An Analysis of Core Tenets, Configurations, and Complexities
The concept of colorblind racism has been developed in recent years to explain racial attitudes held by white Americans in the post-civil rights era. The authors use data from a new nationally representative survey with an oversample of black Americans to investigate the prevalence of core elements of colorblind ideology and to see the extent to which both black and white Americans adhere to three core dimensions of colorblindness theory: (1) abs…
Atheists and Other Cultural Outsiders: Moral Boundaries and the Non-Religious in the United States
We use data from a nationally representative survey to analyze anti-atheist sentiment in the United States in 2014, replicating analyses from a decade earlier and extending them to consider the factors that foster negative sentiment toward other non-religious persons. We find that anti-atheist sentiment is strong, persistent, and driven in part by moral concerns about atheists and in part by agreement with cultural values that affirm religiosity …
Pluralism, American
Pluralism refers to the condition of living with diversity and to a positive appreciation of that condition. Historically, pluralism was understood as a divergent goal from assimilation, however much these concepts have coincided in practice. Assimilation – or “Americanization,” to use an older term – deals with difference by insisting that newcomers or outsiders blend into the dominant society. From the pluralist viewpoint, social and cultural d…
Colorblindness as Identity: Key Determinants, Relations to Ideology, and Implications for Attitudes about Race and Policy
Colorblindness is often conceptualized as a set of deeply held but unrecognized ideological tenets. However, we believe that colorblindness has also now become an explicit cultural discourse involving self-conscious claims and specific convictions. To illustrate this point-which has both conceptual and empirical implications-we introduce the notion of colorblindness as identity. We define this concept as subjectively meaningful, self-asserted ide…
The Civic Side of Diversity: Ambivalence and Belonging at the Neighborhood Level
Although diversity has become a cherished ideal for Americans, a growing literature suggests that many are also ambivalent about lived experiences of diversity. Focusing on three historically homogeneous neighborhoods in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles, this paper explores the “civic talk” used to express this ambivalence through interrelated frames of social order and civic engagement. In all three neighborhoods, long–term residents and ne…
Race as an Open Field: Exploring Identity beyond Fixed Choices
This paper uses new, nationally representative data to examine how Americans describe their own racial and ethnic identities when they are not constrained by conventional fixed categories. Recent work on shifting racial classifications and the fluidity of racial identities in the United States has questioned the subjective and cultural adequacy of fixed categorization schemes. Are traditional racial boundaries breaking down? We explore the possib…
Context, comparison, and the other: On Chad Alan Goldberg's Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought
Goldberg's Modernity and the Jews in Western Social Thought examines the central place of Jews within foundational social theory in Germany, France, and the United States. In this essay, I provide my take on Goldberg's argument and provide some notes of appreciation for the better purchase it provided me on several authors' positions. I also raise three interrelated points of discussion and critique, related to the relative weight given to the tw…
Racial, Religious, and Civic Dimensions of Anti-Muslim Sentiment in America
This paper examines anti-Muslim sentiment in America. Existing research has documented rising hostility to Muslims in Western countries, but has been much less clear about what drives such sentiments or exactly what sort of 'other' Muslims are understood to be. Our interest is in the cultural construction of Muslims as a problematic or incompatible 'other.' We explore the extent, content, and correlates of such views. Building from recent work in…
Assessing Local “Diversity”: A Nationally Representative Analysis
The meanings and definition of “diversity” can change across different applications and contexts, but many such meanings have implications for racial difference and racial ideology in the United States. We provide a nationally representative analysis of how everyday Americans assess “diversity” in their own communities. We test how county-level racial, religious, economic, and political heterogeneity predict the view that one lives in a highly di…
Connecting the 'Others: White Anti-Semitic and Anti-Muslim Views in America
Drawing from recent work on “otherness” and social boundaries in America, we investigate anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish opinion among white Americans. After outlining the logic of the comparison, we use nationally representative data to analyze these forms of othering. Although anti-Muslim opinion is more extensive, the two track together empirically and share a cultural logic as connected forms of ethno-religious boundary-making. Latent class analy…
Political science (21 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Law (16 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Gender Studies (7 works)