A provocative and eye-opening history of how we have studied and theorized social interaction.
 
In this ambitious, wide-ranging book, anthropologist Michael Lempert offers a conceptual history that explores how, why, and with what effects we have come to think of interactions as “scaled.” Focusing on the sciences of interaction in midcentury America, Lempert traces how they harnessed diverse tools and media technologies, from dictation machines to 16mm film, to study communication “microscopically.” In looking closely, many hoped to transform interaction: to improve efficiency, grow democracy, curb racism, and much else. Yet their descent into a microworld created troubles, with some critics charging that these scientists couldn’t see the proverbial forest for the trees. Exploring talk therapy and group dynamics studies, social psychology and management science, conversation analysis, “micropolitics,” and more, Lempert shows how scale became a defining problem across the behavioral sciences.
 
Ultimately, he argues, if we learn how our objects of study have been scaled in advance, we can better understand how we think and interact with them—and with each other—across disciplinary and ideological divides. Even as once-fierce debates over micro and macro have largely subsided, Lempert shows how scale lives on and continues to affect the ethics and politics of language and communication today.

In the summer of 2020 when protests were mobilizing for social justice, the term “antiracist” started getting more traction. It demanded a more active civic orientation and a commitment to uprooting racism from institutions. In Who Is Antiracist? George Yancey and Hayoung David Oh use this flashpoint moment to ask, what are the characteristics of those who support antiracism? Who is most likely to be swayed toward this set of commitments, who is not, and how do they understand each other?

Who Is Antiracist? provides a systematic approach to understanding the motivations and intentions of racial progressives as well as the impact of political ideology on antiracism. The authors discuss the theoretical origins of contemporary antiracism and review key works of antiracism to piece together the characteristics that define it. They also create the Antiracism Attitude Scale to explore the demographic makeup and social views of those who support the type of antiracism popularized in the United States.

Acknowledging that antiracism faces powerful challenges in fully obtaining the goals articulated by its proponents, Who Is Antiracist? enlightens us about the continuing racial conflict in our society and warns against the risk of antiracism becoming just a proxy for ordinary party politics.