Overview

Official statistics about ethnicity in advanced societies are no better than those in less developed countries. An open industrial society is inherently fluid, and it is as hard to interpret social class and ethnic groups there as in a nearly static community. In consequence, the collection and interpretation of ethnic statistics is frequently a battleground where the groups being counted contest each element of every enumeration. William Petersen describes how ethnic identity is determined and how ethnic or racial units are counted by official statistical agencies in the United States and elsewhere. The chapters in this book cover such topics as: ""Identification of Americans of European Descent,"" ""Differentiation among Blacks,"" ""Ethnic Relations in the Netherlands,"" ""Two Case Studies: Japan and Switzerland,"" and ""Who is a Jew?"" Petersen argues that the general public is overly impressed by assertions about ethnicity, particularly if they are supported by numbers and graphs. The flood of American writings about race and ethnicity gives no sign of abatement. Ethnicity Counts offers an indispensible background to meaningful interpretation of statistics on ethnicity, and will be important to sociologists, historians, policymakers, and government officials.

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9781560002963

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Reviews

<p> William Petersen has been for many years now our sharpest analyst of how the US Census handles or mishandles the problems of counting by race, ethnicity, ancestry, and the like. These issues become more and more important as counts of racial and ethnic groups are used to make policy, assert demands, generalize on the impact of immigration on American society. This book is invaluable as a resource on how we have handled these issues for now two centuries, and for insights into how we might handle them better. <p> --Nathan Glazer, professor of education and sociology, Harvard University

Author Information

William Petersen is Robert Lazarus Professor of Social Demography Emeritus at Ohio State University and is known throughout the profession as a leading demographer. His work has appeared in Population and Development Review, Annual Review of Sociology, and Demography.

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