Is citizenship simply a legal status or does it describe a sense of belonging to a national community? For Arab Americans, these questions took on new urgency after 9/11, as the cultural prejudices that have often marginalized their community came to a head. Citizenship and Crisis reveals that, despite an ever-shifting definition of citizenship and the ease with which it can be questioned in times of national crisis, the Arab communities of metropolitan Detroit continue to thrive. A groundbreaking study of social life, religious practice, cultural values, and political views among Detroit Arabs after 9/11, Citizenship and Crisis argues that contemporary Arab American citizenship and identity have been shaped by the chronic tension between social inclusion and exclusion that has been central to this population’s experience in America.

According to the landmark Detroit Arab American Study, which surveyed more than 1,000 Arab Americans and is the focus of this book, Arabs express pride in being American at rates higher than the general population. In nine wide-ranging essays, the authors of Citizenship and Crisis argue that the 9/11 backlash did not substantially transform the Arab community in Detroit, nor did it alter the identities that prevail there. The city’s Arabs are now receiving more mainstream institutional, educational, and political support than ever before, but they remain a constituency defined as essentially foreign. The authors explore the role of religion in cultural integration and identity formation, showing that Arab Muslims feel more alienated from the mainstream than Arab Christians do. Arab Americans adhere more strongly to traditional values than do other Detroit residents, regardless of religion. Active participants in the religious and cultural life of the Arab American community attain higher levels of education and income, yet assimilation to the American mainstream remains important for achieving enduring social and political gains. The contradictions and dangers of being Arab and American are keenly felt in Detroit, but even when Arab Americans oppose U.S. policies, they express more confidence in U.S. institutions than do non-Arabs in the general population.

The Arabs of greater Detroit, whether native-born, naturalized, or permanent residents, are part of a political and historical landscape that limits how, when, and to what extent they can call themselves American. When analyzed against this complex backdrop, the results of The Detroit Arab American Study demonstrate that the pervasive notion in American society that Arabs are not like “us” is simply inaccurate. Citizenship and Crisis makes a rigorous and impassioned argument for putting to rest this exhausted cultural and political stereotype.

The Detroit Arab American Study is a collaboration between the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Dearborn, and an advisory panel of community representatives from more than twenty secular, religious, and social service organizations. The group is led by WAYNE BAKER, SALLY HOWELL, ANN CHIH LIN, ANDREW SHRYOCK, and MARK TESSLER of the University of Michigan; AMANEY JAMAL of Princeton University; and RON STOCKTON of the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

In the aftermath of 9/11, many Arab and Muslim Americans came under intense scrutiny by federal and local authorities, as well as their own neighbors, on the chance that they might know, support, or actually be terrorists. As Louise Cainkar observes, even U.S.-born Arabs and Muslims were portrayed as outsiders, an image that was amplified in the months after the attacks. She argues that 9/11 did not create anti-Arab and anti-Muslim suspicion; rather, their socially constructed images and social and political exclusion long before these attacks created an environment in which misunderstanding and hostility could thrive and the government could defend its use of profiling. Combining analysis and ethnography, Homeland Insecurity provides an intimate view of what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim in a country set on edge by the worst terrorist attack in its history.

Focusing on the metropolitan Chicago area, Cainkar conducted more than a hundred research interviews and five in-depth oral histories. In this, the most comprehensive ethnographic study of the post-9/11 period for American Arabs and Muslims, native-born and immigrant Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, and others speak candidly about their lives as well as their experiences with government, public mistrust, discrimination, and harassment after 9/11. The book reveals that Arab Muslims were more likely to be attacked in certain spatial contexts than others and that Muslim women wearing the hijab were more vulnerable to assault than men, as their head scarves were interpreted by some as a rejection of American culture. Even as the 9/11 Commission never found any evidence that members of Arab- or Muslim-American communities were involved in the attacks, respondents discuss their feelings of insecurity—a heightened sense of physical vulnerability and exclusion from the guarantees of citizenship afforded other Americans.

Yet the vast majority of those interviewed for Homeland Insecurity report feeling optimistic about the future of Arab and Muslim life in the United States. Most of the respondents talked about their increased interest in the teachings of Islam, whether to counter anti-Muslim slurs or to better educate themselves. Governmental and popular hostility proved to be a springboard for heightened social and civic engagement. Immigrant organizations, religious leaders, civil rights advocates, community organizers, and others defended Arabs and Muslims and built networks with their organizations. Local roundtables between Arab and Muslim leaders, law enforcement, and homeland security agencies developed better understanding of Arab and Muslim communities. These post-9/11 changes have given way to stronger ties and greater inclusion in American social and political life.

Will the United States extend its values of freedom and inclusion beyond the politics of “us” and “them” stirred up after 9/11? The answer is still not clear. Homeland Insecurity is keenly observed and adds Arab and Muslim American voices to this still-unfolding period in American history.

LOUISE A. CAINKAR is assistant professor of sociology and social justice at Marquette University.

Separation of church and state is a bedrock principal of American democracy, and so, too, is active citizen engagement. Since evangelicals comprise one of the largest and most vocal voting blocs in the United States, tensions and questions naturally arise. In the two-volume Evangelicals and Democracy in America, editors Steven Brint and Jean Reith Schroedel have assembled an authoritative collection of studies of the evangelical movement in America. Religion and Politics, the second volume of the set, focuses on the role of religious conservatives in party politics, the rhetoric evangelicals use to mobilize politically, and what the history of the evangelical movement reveals about where it may be going.

Part I of Religion and Politics explores the role of evangelicals in electoral politics. Contributor Pippa Norris looks at evangelicals around the globe and finds that religiosity is a strong predictor of ideological leanings in industrialized countries. But the United States remains one of only a handful of post-industrial societies where religion plays a significant role in partisan politics. Other chapters look at voting trends, especially the growing number of higher-income evangelicals among Republican ranks, how voting is influenced both by “values” and race, and the management of the symbols and networks behind the electoral system of moral-values politics. Part II of the volume focuses on the mobilizing rhetoric of the Christian Right. Nathaniel Klemp and Stephen Macedo show how the rhetorical strategies of the Christian Right create powerful mobilizing narratives, but frequently fail to build broad enough coalitions to prevail in the pluralistic marketplace of ideas. Part III analyzes the cycles and evolution of the Christian Right. Kimberly Conger looks at the specific circumstances that have allowed evangelicals to become dominant in some Republican state party committees but not in others. D. Michael Lindsay examines the “elastic orthodoxy” that has allowed evangelicals to evolve into a formidable social and political force. The final chapter by Clyde Wilcox presents a new framework for understanding the relationship between the Christian Right and the GOP based on the ecological metaphor of co-evolution.

With its companion volume on religion and society, this second volume of Evangelicals and Democracy in America offers the most complete examination yet of the social circumstances and political influence of the millions of Americans who are white evangelical Protestants. Understanding their history and prospects for the future is essential to forming a comprehensive picture of America today.

STEVEN BRINT is professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 study, and associate dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

JEAN REITH SCHROEDEL is dean of the School of Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Steven Brint, Jean Reith Schroedel, Seth Abrutyn, Wayne Baker, Connie J. Boudens, Kimberly H. Conger, Andrew Greeley, Peter Dobkin Hall, Michael Hout, Julie Ingersoll, Nathaniel Klemp, D. Michael Lindsay, Stephen Macedo, Pippa Norris, Clyde Wilcox, and Rhys H. Williams.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the vast majority of U.S. churches were evangelical in outlook and practice. America’s turn toward modernism and embrace of science in the early twentieth century threatened evangelicalism’s cultural prominence. But as confidence in modern secularism wavered in the 1960s and 1970s, evangelicalism had another great awakening. The two volumes of Evangelicals and Democracy in America trace the development and current role of evangelicalism in American social and political life. Volume I focuses on who evangelicals are today, how they relate to other groups, and what role they play in U.S. social institutions.

Part I of Religion and Society examines evangelicals’ identity and activism. Contributor Robert Wuthnow explores the identity built around the centrality of Jesus, church and community service, and the born-again experience. Philip Gorski explores the features of American evangelicalism and society that explain the recurring mobilization of conservative Protestants in American history. Part II looks at how evangelicals relate to other key groups in American society. Individual chapters delve into evangelicals’ relationship to other conservative religious groups, women and gays, African Americans, and mainline Protestants. These chapters show sources of both solidarity and dissension within the “traditionalist alliance” and the hidden strengths of mainline Protestants’ moral discourse. Part III examines religious conservatives’ influence on American social institutions outside of politics. W. Bradford Wilcox, David Sikkink, Gabriel Rossman, and Rogers Smith investigate evangelicals’ influence on families, schools, popular culture, and the courts, respectively. What emerges is a picture of American society as a consumer marketplace with a secular legal structure and an arena of pluralistic competition interpreting what constitutes the public good. These chapters show that religious conservatives have been shaped by these realities more than they have been able to shape them.

Evangelicals and Democracy in America, Volume I is one of the most comprehensive examinations ever of this important current in American life and serves as a corrective to erroneous popular representations. These meticulously balanced studies not only clarify the religious and social origins of evangelical mobilization, but also detail both the scope and limits of evangelicals’ influence in our society. This volume is the perfect complement to its companion in this landmark series, Evangelicals and Democracy in America, Volume II: Religion and Politics.

STEVEN BRINT is professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 study, and associate dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

JEAN REITH SCHROEDEL is dean of the School of Politics and Policy at Claremont Graduate University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Steven Brint, Jean Reith Schroedel, Nancy T. Ammerman, Prudence L. Carter, John H. Evans, John C. Green, Philip S. Gorski, Michèle Lamont, Paul Lichterman, Jennifer Merolla, Gabriel Rossman, David Sikkink, Rogers M. Smith, Scott Waller, W. Bradford Wilcox, Robert Wuthnow.

Focusing on issues of particular importance to black people, and confronting the rich variety and the complexity of the black experience, the many contributors demonstrate the broad diversity of research interests and strategies among black psychologists, from the traditional to the innovative. Topics covered include studies of motivation, cognitive development, life-span development, and cultural difference versus deficit theories. Many of the studies directly refute previous conceptions of the psychological functioning of blacks and offer alternative models and formulations.

This book is the first to present soundly designed and executed research that is emphatically linked to the perspectives and the psychological concerns of black Americans. In designing these studies, the authors aimed to ameliorate the pressing educational and social problems of blacks through a better understanding of their life conditions.

A. WADE BOYKIN is associate professor of psychology at Cornell University and associate editor of the Journal of Black Psychology.

ANDERSON J. FRANKLIN is associate professor of clinical psychology in the Graduate Center and at City College of the City University of New York.

J. FRANK YATES is associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

CONTRIBUTORS:  John D. Bacon,  W. Curtis Banks,  Oscar Barbarin, A. Wade Boykin,  Michael Cole,  O. Jackson Cole,  William Collins,  William E. Cross Jr.,  Herman W. Dorsett,  Ozzie L. Edwards,  Anderson J. Franklin,  Lenora Fulani, William S. Hall,  Algea . Harrison,  Janet L. Hubbart,  James S. Jackson,  Ronald M. Jennings,  James M. Jones,  Yvonne B. Kelley, Gregory V. McQuater, Lillian Patterson,  John Peterson,  Diane S. Pollard,  Stephen Reder,  James E. Savage,  Sandra A. Sims,  Anita D. Stearns,  Ewart A. C. Thomas,  M. Belinda Tucker, Janet Williams, Carl O. Word,  J. Frank Yates.

Does social science influence social policy? This is a topic of perennial concern among students of politics, the economy, and other social institutions. In Effective Social Science, eight prominent social researchers offer first-hand descriptions of the impact of their work on government and corporate policy.

In their own words, these noted political scientists, economists, and sociologists—among them such influential scholars as James Coleman, Joseph Pechman, and Eliz Ginzberg—tell us what it was like to become involved in the making of social policy. These rich personal narratives, derived from detailed interviews conducted by Bernard Barber (himself a veteran of the biomedical poliy arena), illuminate the role of social science in diverse areas, including school desegregation, comprehensive income taxation, military manpower utilization, transportation deregulation, and the protection of privacy.

The patterns traced in this volume indicate that social science can influence policy, but only as part of a pluralistic, political process; effective social research requires advocacy as well as a conducive social and idealogical climate. For anyone curious about the relationship between social knowledge and social action, this book provides striking illustration and fruitful analysis.

BERNARD BARBER is professor at Barnard College and the Graduate faculties at Columbia University.

The Politics of Numbers is the first major study of the social and political forces behind the nation's statistics. In more than a dozen essays, its editors and authors look at the controversies and choices embodied in key decisions about how we count—in measuring the state of the economy, for example, or enumerating ethnic groups. They also examine the implications of an expanding system of official data collection, of new computer technology, and of the shift of information resources intot he private sector.

WILLIAM ALONSO is at Harvard University.

PAUL STARR is at Princeton University.

A Volume in the RSF Census Series

Anti-immigrant sentiment reached a fever pitch after 9/11, but its origins go back much further. Public rhetoric aimed at exposing a so-called invasion of Latino immigrants has been gaining ground for more than three decades—and fueling increasingly restrictive federal immigration policy. Accompanied by a flagging U.S. economy—record-level joblessness, bankruptcy, and income inequality—as well as waning consumer confidence, these conditions signaled one of the most hostile environments for immigrants in recent memory. In Brokered Boundaries, Douglas Massey and Magaly Sánchez untangle the complex political, social, and economic conditions underlying the rise of xenophobia in U.S. society. The book draws on in-depth interviews with Latin American immigrants in metropolitan New York and Philadelphia and—in their own words and images—reveals what life is like for immigrants attempting to integrate in anti-immigrant times.

What do the social categories “Latino” and “American” actually mean to today’s immigrants? Brokered Boundaries analyzes how first- and second-generation immigrants from Central and South America and the Caribbean navigate these categories and their associated meanings as they make their way through U.S. society. Massey and Sánchez argue that the mythos of immigration, in which newcomers gradually shed their respective languages, beliefs, and cultural practices in favor of a distinctly American way of life, is, in reality, a process of negotiation between new arrivals and native-born citizens. Natives control interactions with outsiders by creating institutional, social, psychological, and spatial mechanisms that delimit immigrants’ access to material resources and even social status. Immigrants construct identities based on how they perceive and respond to these social boundaries. The authors make clear that today’s Latino immigrants are brokering boundaries in the context of unprecedented economic uncertainty, repressive anti-immigrant legislation, and a heightening fear that upward mobility for immigrants translates into downward mobility for the native-born. Despite an absolute decline in Latino immigration, immigration-related statutes have tripled in recent years, including many that further shred the safety net for legal permanent residents as well as the undocumented.

Brokered Boundaries shows that, although Latin American immigrants come from many different countries, their common reception in a hostile social environment produces an emergent Latino identity soon after arrival. During anti-immigrant times, however, the longer immigrants stay in America, the more likely they are to experience discrimination and the less likely they are to identify as Americans.

DOUGLAS S. MASSEY is Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School.

MAGALY SÁNCHEZ R. is senior researcher and visiting scholar at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University.