Mara Loveman
Associate Professor and Associate Chair
Department of Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
8112-B Sewell Social Sciences
Email: mloveman@ssc.wisc.edu
I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001 and
joined the UW Madison faculty in 2003. I am a political
and comparative-historical sociologist with broad interests in race and
ethnicity, nationalism, contentious politics, and the state. I am also
interested in the sociology of development, law, and human rights, with a
regional focus on Latin America.
Research
My published research has appeared
in leading journals and addresses a variety of theoretical, conceptual and
empirical questions related to race and ethnicity, nationalism, contentious
politics and the state. Some of my contributions include: an analysis of the
conditions for collective resistance to state repression during military
dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay (“High Risk Collective
Action”, American Journal of
Sociology 1998); an explanation for a popular revolt that led to
state-building failure in 19th-century Brazil (“Blinded Like a
State”, Comparative Studies in
Society and History 2007); a theoretical framework for explaining how
states accumulate symbolic power (American
Journal of Sociology 2005); and a solution to the historical puzzle
presented by the dramatic “whitening” of Puerto Rico’s
population in the first decades of the twentieth century (“How Puerto
Rico Became White”, American Sociological Review 2007). I have also contributed to debates over the
measurement and use of the category “race” in social scientific
research (American Sociological Review
1999; Theory and Society 2004; Ethnic and Racial Studies 2012).
I recently finished writing my
first book, National Colors: Racial
Classification and the State in Latin America (forthcoming, Oxford University Press). The book analyzes
the politics and practices of official racial and ethnic classification in the
population censuses of nineteen Latin American countries over more than two
centuries. I ask when, why and how the formally liberal republics of Latin America engage in official ethnoracial
classification of citizens. I find that over and above domestic politics, the
ways that Latin American states classify their populations respond to changes
in international criteria for how to
construct modern nations and promote national “development.”
My current active research projects include:
* Why Puerto Rico Became White: American Empire and the Boundaries of Race. This is a book
manuscript in progress that examines how American colonial rule changed the
significance of race in early twentieth-century Puerto
Rico.
* “Diversity and Development in Latin America”:
This is a newly initiated project that investigates how, why, and with what
consequences international development organizations and funding agencies came
to embrace “diversity” as a goal and an indicator of development in
Latin America.
* “Measuring and Modeling Ethnic and Racial Population
Change: The Constructionist Challenge and Demography’s Response”:
In a series of collaborative projects, I am tackling some of the conceptual and
practical challenges of measuring, modeling, and
interpreting racial and ethnic population data in quantitative social
scientific research.
* “Puerto Rico Data Linkage
Project”: In collaboration with colleagues in the Dept of Statistics, I
am constructing a representative longitudinal sample of Puerto Rico’s
early twentieth century population by linking the 1910 and 1920 Puerto Rican
PUMS. We are testing alternative strategies for linking individual census
records across surveys without using “race” in the algorithm to
identify matches. This will permit investigation of racial mobility within
populations over time.
Publications
Published and forthcoming papers not
accessible through links below may be requested by writing to mloveman@ssc.wisc.edu
Bailey, Stanley, Mara Loveman and Jeronimo O. Muniz. “Measures of Race and the
Analysis of Racial Inequality in Brazil” Forthcoming in Social Science Research
Loveman, Mara, Jeronimo O. Muniz, and Stanley Bailey. “Brazil in Black and White? Race Categories, the Census, and the Study of Inequality” Ethnic and Racial Studies 35 [8] 2012 (available online July, 2011)
Loveman, Mara. “Census-Taking and Nation-Making in Nineteenth-Century Latin America” forthcoming in Miguel Centeno and Agustín Ferraro (eds) State Building in Latin America and Spain 1810-1930s. Cambridge University Press.
Loveman,
Mara. “Whiteness
in Latin America: Measurement and Meaning in National Censuses” Journal de la Société des Américanistes,
95 [2] (2009): 207-234
Loveman,
Mara. “The Race to Progress:
Census-Taking and Nation-Making in Brazil (1870-1920)” Hispanic American Historical Review 89
[3] (2009): 207-234.
Loveman,
Mara. "The U.S. Census and the
Contested Rules of Racial Classification in Early Twentieth-Century Puerto
Rico" Caribbean Studies
35 [2] (2007): 79-114.
Loveman,
Mara and Jeronimo O. Muniz. “How
Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Inter-Census Racial
Reclassification” American Sociological Review 72[6]:
915-939, December 2007.
[Online methodological supplement
to Loveman and Muniz (2007) is accessible on the American Sociological Review website: http://www2.asanet.org/journals/asr/2007/loveman07.pdf]
Loveman,
Mara. “Blinded
like a State: The Revolt Against Civil Registration in 19th Century
Brazil” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49(1):
5-39, January 2007.
Loveman,
Mara, Jeronimo O. Muniz and Ana Cristina Collares. “Brazil
– Sociology” Handbook of Latin American Studies. V.63.
United States
Library of Congress. 2007.
Loveman,
Mara. “The
Modern State and the Primitive Accumulation of Symbolic Power” American
Journal of Sociology 110 [6] (2005): 1651-83.
Brubaker,
Rogers, Mara Loveman and Peter Stamatov. “Ethnicity
as Cognition” Theory and Society 33 [1] (2004): 31-64.
Reprinted
in Ethnicity Without Groups. Rogers
Brubaker, (Ed.), Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004.
Loveman,
Mara. “Is
'Race' Essential? A comment on Bonilla-Silva” American
Sociological Review 64 [6] (1999).
Loveman,
Mara. “Making
‘Race’ and Nation in the United States, South Africa, and Brazil:
Taking Making Seriously” Theory and Society 28[6] (1999).
Loveman,
Mara. “High
Risk Collective Action: Defending Human Rights in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina”
American Journal of Sociology 104[2] (1998): 477-525.
Reprinted
in Mexico,
Central, and South America: New Perspectives:
Social Movements (v.3). (Pp. 1-50). Jorge I. Dominguez (Ed.), New York: Routledge,
2001.
Reprinted
in Social Movements in a Global Context: Canadian Perspectives. Rod
Bantjes (Ed.). Canadian Scholars’ Press. 2007
Tables
referenced in “High Risk Collective Action” as available from
author upon request are now available here: Human
Rights Organizations under military dictatorships in Chile, Uruguay and Argentina
Book Reviews
Review
of Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez (eds). When States Kill: Latin
America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror. Austin:
University of Texas Press. 2005. In American
Journal of Sociology. 112 [3] (2006).
Review
of Livio Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil.
New York:
Palgrave Macmillan. 2003. In American Journal of Sociology 110:
854-855 (2004).
Review
of Jonathan W. Warren, Racial Revolutions: Antiracism and Indian Resurgence
in Brazil. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 2001. In Contemporary
Sociology 31[5]: 591-592 (2002).
Review of R.D.
Grillo, Pluralism and the Politics of
Difference: State, Culture, and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1998. In Nations and Nationalism 5[4]: 577-604 (1999).
Teaching
I teach undergraduate courses on comparative racial
inequality, race and ethnicity in Latin America,
and contemporary Brazilian society. I teach graduate courses on nationalism,
critical issues in contemporary sociology of race, and training seminars in
race and ethnicity and in the sociology of economic change and development. I
have been awarded two “Favorite Instructor” awards by undergraduate
residential communities, an “Exceptional Service Award” from the
College of Letters & Science for my contributions to teaching first-year
undergraduates in the FIG program, an “Excellence in Teaching” award
from the Sociology Department, and a Hilldale Mentorship award for my work with
an undergraduate McNair fellow.
Soc 620 -
Comparative Racial Inequality
Inter
L&S 106 – Race and Ethnicity in the Americas (First-year undergraduate
seminar: http://www.lssaa.wisc.edu/figs/)
Inter
L&S 110 – Contemporary Brazilian Society (First-year undergraduate
seminar)
Soc 913 -
Nationalism
Soc
922 – Researching Race: Current Questions and Controversies
Soc
993 – Training Seminar in the Sociology of Economic Change and
Development
Soc
987 – Training Seminar in Race & Ethnicity