Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What does diversity do? What are we doing when we use the language of diversity? Sara Ahmed offers an account of the diversity world based on interviews with diversity practitioners in higher education, as well as her own experience of doing diversity work. Diversity is an ordinary, even unremarkable, feature of institutional life. Yet diversity practitioners often experience institutions as resistant to their work, as captured through their use of the metaphor of the "brick wall." On Being Included offers an explanation of this apparent paradox. It explores the gap between symbolic commitments to diversity and the experience of those who embody diversity. Commitments to diversity are understood as "non-performatives" that do not bring about what they name. The book provides an account of institutional whiteness and shows how racism can be obscured by the institutionalization of diversity. Diversity is used as evidence that institutions do not have a problem with racism. On Being Included offers a critique of what happens when diversity is offered as a solution. It also shows how diversity workers generate knowledge of institutions in attempting to transform them.

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CHOICE Review

Ahmed (Goldsmiths College, Univ. of London, UK) wants to do diversity as well as talk about diversity. She asks how the language of diversity differs from the practice of diversity. Ahmed considers the category of stranger to illustrate how it relates to the category of diversity. Racism, she argues, comes from creating negative images of the stranger: strangers can be anyone. Institutions become stuck in one set of categorizations. The problem occurs when an institution focuses on only one category, exclusive of any other description of that category. Ahmed then investigates how diversity practitioners experience stranger making and how these practitioners help to define and develop categories for the stranger. Practitioners combine theories of diversity with experience of diversity to create a way to understand this idea. The end product is an ethnographic portrait of the diversity practitioner's world. Diversity cannot be resolved, but it can be discussed and experienced. Ahmed develops an excellent study for those wishing to view the multiple realities of diversity. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, undergraduate students, graduate students, and professionals. P. Kriese Indiana University East