In the course of its television lifetime, "Sesame Street" has taught alphabet-related skills to hundreds of thousands of preschool children. But the program may have attracted more of its regular viewers from relatively affluent homes in which the parents were better educated. Analyzing and reevaluating data drawn from several sources, principally the Educational Testing Service's evaluations of "Sesame Street," the authors of this book open fresh lines of inquiry into how much economically disadvantaged children learned from viewing the series for six months and into whether the program is widening the gap that separates the academic achievement of disadvantaged preschoolers from that of their more affluent counterparts.  The authors define as acute dilemma currently facing educational policymakers: what positive results are achieved when a large number of children learn some skills at a younger age if this absolute increase in knowledge is associated with an increase in the difference between social groups?

THOMAS D. COOK is Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair of Ethics and Justice and professor of sociology, psychology, and education and social policy at Northwestern University.

Liberal democracies are based on principles of inclusion and tolerance. But how does the principle of tolerance work in practice in countries such as Germany, France, India, South Africa, and the United States, where an increasingly wide range of cultural groups holds often contradictory beliefs about appropriate social and family life practices? As these democracies expand to include peoples of vastly different cultural backgrounds, the limits of tolerance are being tested as never before. Engaging Cultural Differences explores how liberal democracies respond socially and legally to differences in the cultural and religious practices of their minority groups.

Building on such examples, the contributors examine the role of tolerance in practical encounters between state officials and immigrants, and between members of longstanding majority groups and increasing numbers of minority groups. The volume also considers the theoretical implications of expanding the realm of tolerance. Some contributors are reluctant to broaden the scope of tolerance, while others insist that the notion of "tolerance" is itself potentially confining and demeaning and that modern nations should aspire to celebrate cultural differences.

Coming to terms with ethnic diversity and cultural differences has become a major public policy concern in contemporary liberal democracies, as they struggle to adjust to burgeoning immigrant populations. Engaging Cultural Differences provides a compelling examination of the challenges of multiculturalism and reveals a deep understanding of the challenges democracies face as they seek to accommodate their citizens' diverse beliefs and practices.

RICHARD A. SHWEDER, an anthropologist, is professor of human development at the University of Chicago.

MARTHA MINOW is professor of law at Harvard University.

HAZEL R. MARKUS is professor of psychology at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Richard A. Shweder, Martha Minow, Hazel Rose Markus, Caroline Bledsoe, David L. Chambers, Jane Maslow Cohen, Joanna Davidson, Arthur N. Eisenberg, Karen Engle, Katherine Pratt Ewing, Heejung S. Kim, Corinne A. Kratz, Maivân Clech Lâm, Usha Menon, Victoria C. Plaut, Alison Dundes Renteln, Lloyd I. Rudolph, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Lawrence G. Sager, Austin Sarat, Claude M. Steele, Dorothy M. Steele, Nomi Stolzenberg, Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, and Unni Wikan.
 

Educators and policymakers who share the goal of equal opportunity in schools often hold differing notions of what entails a just school in multicultural America. Some emphasize the importance of integration and uniform treatment for all, while others point to the benefits of honoring cultural diversity in ways that make minority students feel at home. In Just Schools, noted legal scholars, educators, and social scientists examine schools with widely divergent methods of fostering equality in order to explore the possibilities and limits of equal education today.

The contributors to Just Schools combine empirical research with rich ethnographic accounts to paint a vivid picture of the quest for justice in classrooms around the nation. Legal scholar Martha Minow considers the impact of school choice reforms on equal educational opportunities. Psychologist Hazel Rose Markus examines culturally sensitive programs where students exhibit superior performance on standardized tests and feel safer and more interested in school than those in color-blind programs. Anthropologist Heather Lindkvist reports on how Somali Muslims in Lewiston, Maine, invoked the American ideal of inclusiveness in winning dress-code exemptions and accommodations for Islamic rituals in the local public school.  Political scientist Austin Sarat looks at a school system in which everyone endorses multiculturalism but holds conflicting views on the extent to which culturally sensitive practices should enter into the academic curriculum. Anthropologist Barnaby Riedel investigates how a private Muslim school in Chicago aspires to universalist ideals, and education scholar James Banks argues that schools have a responsibility to prepare students for citizenship in a multicultural society. Anthropologist John Bowen offers a nuanced interpretation of educational commitments in France and the headscarf controversy in French schools. Anthropologist Richard Shweder concludes the volume by connecting debates about diversity in schools with a broader conflict between national assimilation and cultural autonomy.

As America’s schools strive to accommodate new students from around the world, Just Schools provides a provocative and insightful look at the different ways we define and promote justice in schools and in society at large.

MARTHA MINOW is Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

RICHARD A. SHWEDER is William Claude Reavis Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago.

HAZEL ROSE MARKUS is Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences in the Department of Psychology and director of the Research Institute of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

CONTRIBUTORS: James A. Banks, John R. Bowen, Heather L. Lindkvist, Barnaby Riedel, Austin Sarat. 

Owning a home has always been central to the American dream. For the more than one million Muslims in the United States, this is no exception. However, the Qur'an forbids the payment of interest, which places conventional home financing out of reach for observant Muslims. To meet the growing Muslim demand for home purchases, a market for home financing that would be halal, or permissible under Islamic law, has emerged. In Pious Property, anthropologist William Maurer profiles the emergence of this new religiously based financial service and explores the ways it reflects the influence of Muslim practices on American economic life and vice versa.

Pious Property charts the development of Islamic mortgages in America, starting with Islamic interpretations of the prohibition against riba—literally translated as "increase" but interpreted as "usury" or "interest." Maurer then explores the different practices that have emerged as permissible options for Islamic homebuyers—such as lease-to-own arrangements, profit-loss sharing, and cost-plus contracts—and explains how they have gained acceptance in the Islamic community by relying on payment schemes that avoid standard interest rate payments. Using interviews with Muslim homebuyers and financiers, and in-depth analysis of two companies that provide mortgage alternatives to Muslims, Maurer discovers an interesting paradox: progressive Muslims tend to use financial contracts that seemingly comply better with the prohibition against interest, while traditional Muslims seem more inclined to take on financing very similar to interest-based mortgages. Maurer finds that Muslims make their decisions about using Islamic mortgage alternatives based not only on the views of religious scholars, but also on their conceptions of how business is supposed to be conducted in America. While one form of Islamic financing is seemingly more congruent with the prohibition against riba, the other exhibits more of the qualities of American mortgages—anonymity and standardized forms. The appearance that an Islamic financing instrument is legal and professional leaves many Muslim homebuyers with the impression that it is halal, revealing the influence of American capitalism on Muslim Americans’ understanding of their religious rules.

The market for halal financial products exists at the intersection of American and Islamic culture and is emblematic of the way that, for centuries, America's newcomers have adapted to and changed the fabric of American life. In Pious Property, William Maurer explores this rapidly growing economic phenomenon with historical perspective and scholarly insight.

BILL MAURER is associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine.
 

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, instantly transformed many ordinary Muslim and Arab Americans into suspected terrorists. In the weeks and months following the attacks, Muslims in the United States faced a frighteningly altered social climate consisting of heightened surveillance, interrogation, and harassment. In the long run, however, the backlash has been more complicated. In Being and Belonging, Katherine Pratt Ewing leads a group of anthropologists, sociologists, and cultural studies experts in exploring how the events of September 11th have affected the quest for belonging and identity among Muslims in America—for better and for worse.

From Chicago to Detroit to San Francisco, Being and Belonging takes readers on an extensive tour of Muslim America—inside mosques, through high school hallways, and along inner city streets.  Jen’nan Ghazal Read compares the experiences of Arab Muslims and Arab Christians in Houston and finds that the events of 9/11 created a “cultural wedge” dividing Arab Americans along religious lines. While Arab Christians highlighted their religious affiliation as a means of distancing themselves from the perceived terrorist sympathies of Islam, Muslims quickly found that their religious affiliation served as a barrier, rather than a bridge, to social and political integration. Katherine Pratt Ewing and Marguerite Hoyler document the way South Asian Muslim youth in Raleigh, North Carolina, actively contested the prevailing notion that one cannot be both Muslim and American by asserting their religious identities more powerfully than they might have before the terrorist acts, while still identifying themselves as fully American. Sally Howell and Amaney Jamal distinguish between national and local responses to terrorism. In striking contrast to the erosion of civil rights, ethnic profiling, and surveillance set into motion by the federal government, well-established Muslim community leaders in Detroit used their influence in law enforcement, media, and social services to empower the community and protect civil rights. Craig Joseph and Barnaby Riedel analyze how an Islamic private school in Chicago responded to both September 11 and the increasing ethnic diversity of its student body by adopting a secular character education program to instruct children in universal values rather than religious doctrine. In a series of poignant interviews, the school’s students articulate a clear understanding that while 9/11 left deep wounds on their community, it also created a valuable opportunity to teach the nation about Islam.

The rich ethnographies in this volume link 9/11 and its effects to the experiences of a group that was struggling to be included in the American mainstream long before that fateful day. Many Muslim communities never had a chance to tell their stories after September 11. In Being and Belonging, they get that chance.

KATHERINE PRATT EWING is associate professor of cultural anthropology and religion at Duke University.

CONTRIBUTORS: Melissa J. K. Howe, Sally Howell, Marguerite Hoyler, Amaney Jamal, Craig M. Joseph, Sunaina Maira, Bill Maurer, Jen'nan Ghazal Read, Katherine Pratt Ewing, Barnaby Riedel, Andrew Shryock, Richard A. Shweder, and Charlotte van den Hout.

Psychologists now understand that identity is not fixed, but fluid and highly dependent on environment. In times of stress, conflict, or change, people often adapt by presenting themselves in different ways and emphasizing different social affiliations. With changing demographics creating more complex social groupings, it is important to understand the costs and benefits of the way social groups are categorized, and the way individuals understand, cope with, and employ their varied social identities. Navigating the Future, edited by Geraldine Downey, Jacquelynne Eccles, and Celina Chatman, answers that call with a wealth of empirical data and expert analysis.

Navigating the Future focuses on the roles that social identities play in stressful, challenging, and transitional situations. Jason Lawrence, Jennifer Crocker, and Carol Dweck show how the prospect of being negatively stereotyped can affect the educational success of girls and African Americans, making them more cynical about school and less likely to seek help. The authors argue that these issues can be mitigated by challenging these students educationally, expressing optimism in their abilities, and emphasizing that intelligence is not fixed, but can be developed. The book also looks at the ways in which people employ social identity to their advantage. J. Nicole Shelton and her co-authors use extensive research on adolescents and college students to argue that individuals with strong, positive connections to their ethnic group exhibit greater well-being and are better able to cope with the negative impact of discrimination. Navigating the Future also discusses how the importance and value of social identity depends on context. LaRue Allen, Yael Bat-Chava, J. Lawrence Aber, and Edward Seidman find that the emotional benefit of racial pride for black adolescents is higher in predominantly black neighborhoods than in racially mixed environments.

Because most people identify with more than one group, they must grapple with varied social identities, using them to make connections with others, overcome adversity, and understand themselves. Navigating the Future brings together leading researchers in social psychology to understand the complexities of identity in a diverse social world.

GERALDINE DOWNEY is assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University.

JACQUELYNNE S. ECCLES is Wilbert McKeachie Collegiate Professor of Psychology, Women's Studies, and Education and research scientist at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

CELINA M. CHATMAN is associate director of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago.

CONTRIBUTORS: J. Lawrence Aber, LaRue Allen, Susan M. Andersen, Yael Bat-Chava, Niall Bolger, Jennifer Crocker, William E. Crocker Jr., Andrea L. Dottolo, Carol S. Dweck, Andrew J. Fuligni, Diane Hughes, Jason S. Lawrence, Bonita London, Oksana Malanchuk, Tracy McLaughlin-Volpe, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Elizabeth Moje, Edward Seidman, J. Nicole Shelton, Abigail J. Stewart, Linda C. Strauss, Tom R. Tyler, Elizabeth Velilla, Niobe Way, Carol Wong, Tiffany Yip.

The police and the courts depend on the cooperation of communities to keep order. But large numbers of urban poor distrust law enforcement officials. Legitimacy and Criminal Justice explores the reasons that legal authorities are or are not seen as legitimate and trustworthy by many citizens.

Legitimacy and Criminal Justice is the first study of the perceived legitimacy of legal institutions outside the U.S. The authors investigate relations between courts, the police, and communities in the U.K., Western Europe, South Africa, Slovenia, South America, and Mexico, demonstrating the importance of social context in shaping those relations. Gorazd Meško and Goran Klemenčič examine Slovenia’s adoption of Western-style “community policing” during its transition to democracy. In the context of Slovenia’s recent Communist past—when “community policing” entailed omnipresent social and political control—citizens regarded these efforts with great suspicion, and offered little cooperation to the police. When states fail to control crime, informal methods of law can gain legitimacy. Jennifer Johnson discusses an extra-legal policing system carried out by farmers in Guerrero, Mexico—complete with sentencing guidelines and initiatives to reintegrate offenders into the community. Feeling that federal authorities were not prosecuting the crimes that plagued their province, the citizens of Guerrero strongly supported this extra-legal arrangement, and engaged in massive protests when the central government tried to suppress it. Several of the authors examine how the perceived legitimacy of the police and courts varies across social groups. Graziella Da Silva, Ignacio Cano, and Hugo Frühling show that attitudes toward the police vary greatly across social classes in harshly unequal societies like Brazil and Chile. And many of the authors find that ethnic minorities often display greater distrust toward the police, and perceive themselves to be targets of police discrimination. Indeed, Hans-Jöerg Albrecht finds evidence of bias in arrests of the foreign born in Germany, which has fueled discontent among Berlin’s Turkish youth. Sophie Body-Gendrot points out that mutual hostility between police and minority communities can lead to large-scale violence, as the Parisian banlieu riots underscored.

The case studies presented in this important new book show that fostering cooperation between law enforcement and communities requires the former to pay careful attention to the needs and attitudes of the latter. Forging a new field of comparative research, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice brings to light many of the reasons the law’s representatives succeed—or fail—in winning citizens’ hearts and minds.

ANTHONY BRAGA is a senior research associate at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice at the University of California, Berkeley.

JEFFREY FAGAN is professor of law and public health at Columbia University, and director of the Center for Crime, Community and Law at Columbia Law School.

TRACEY MEARES is professor of law at Yale Law School.

ROBERT SAMPSON is Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.

TOM R. TYLER is University Professor of Psychology at New York University.

CHRIS WINSHIP is Diker-Tishman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and also a member of the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government.

CONTRIBUTORS: Hans-Jorg Albrecht, Catrien Bijleveld, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Anthony Braga, John Braithwaite, Ignacio Cano, Jean Camaroff, John Camaroff, Jeffrey Fagan, Hugo Fruhling, Heike Goudriaan, Mike Hough, Jennifer L. Johnson, Goran Klemencic, Marijke Malsch, Tracey Meares, Gorazd Mesko, Graziella Moraes, Sebastian Roche, Robert Sampson, David J. Smith, Michael Tonry, Chris Winship.

A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Series on Trust