IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amsocr/v89y2024i1p31-59.html

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Author

Listed:
  • Clayton Childress
  • Jaishree Nayyar
  • Ikee Gibson

Abstract

Research on tokenism has mostly focused on negative experiences and career outcomes for individuals who are tokenized. Yet tokenism as a structural system that excludes larger populations, and the meso-level cultural foundations under which tokenism occurs, are comparatively understudied. We focus on these additional dimensions of tokenism using original data on the creation and long-term retention of postcolonial literature. In an institutional environment in which the British publishing industry was consolidating the production of non-U.S. global literatures written in English, and readers were beginning to convey status through openness in cultural tastes, the conditions for tokenism emerged. Using data on the emergence of postcolonial literature as a category organized through the Booker Prize for Fiction, we test and find for non-white authors (1) evidence of tokenism, (2) unequal treatment of those under consideration for tokenization, and (3) long-term retention consequences for those who were not chosen. We close with a call for more holistic work across multiple dimensions of tokenism, analyses that address inequality across and within groups, and a reconsideration of tokenism within a broader suite of practices that have grown ascendent across arenas of social life.

Suggested Citation

  • Clayton Childress & Jaishree Nayyar & Ikee Gibson, 2024. "Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field," American Sociological Review, , vol. 89(1), pages 31-59, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:89:y:2024:i:1:p:31-59
    DOI: 10.1177/00031224231214288
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00031224231214288
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00031224231214288?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fabien Accominotti & Shamus R. Khan & Adam Storer, 2018. "How Cultural Capital Emerged in Gilded Age America : Musical Purification and Cross-Class Inclusion at the New York Philharmonic," Post-Print hal-04742802, HAL.
    2. Lucien Karpik, 2010. "Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9215, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David M. Waguespack & Robert Salomon, 2016. "Quality, Subjectivity, and Sustained Superior Performance at the Olympic Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 286-300, January.
    2. Tinglong Dai & Sridhar Tayur, 2022. "Designing AI‐augmented healthcare delivery systems for physician buy‐in and patient acceptance," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4443-4451, December.
    3. Mariagiulia Mariani & François Casabianca & Claire Cerdan & Iuri Peri, 2021. "Protecting Food Cultural Biodiversity: From Theory to Practice. Challenging the Geographical Indications and the Slow Food Models," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-22, May.
    4. Isabelle Bouty & Marie-Léandre Gomez & Carole Drucker-Godard, 2013. "Maintaining an Institution : The Institutional Work of Michelin in Haute Cuisine around the World," Working Papers hal-00782455, HAL.
    5. Jason Potts & John Hartley, 2015. "How the Social Economy Produces Innovation," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 73(3), pages 263-282, September.
    6. Liesbeth Strooper & Erwin Dekker, 2024. "Why the Impressionists did not create Impressionism," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 48(2), pages 171-198, June.
    7. Pollock, Neil & D’Adderio, Luciana, 2012. "Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 565-586.
    8. Boedker, Christina & Chong, Kar-Ming & Mouritsen, Jan, 2020. "The counter-performativity of calculative practices: Mobilising rankings of intellectual capital," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    9. Gerhard Rainer, 2021. "Geographies of qualification in the global fine wine market," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(1), pages 95-112, February.
    10. Gernot Grabher, 2018. "Marginality as strategy: Leveraging peripherality for creativity," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(8), pages 1785-1794, November.
    11. Fabien Eloire & Jean Finez, 2023. "Prices as social facts: A sociological approach to price setting," Post-Print hal-03816307, HAL.
    12. Julian Hamann & Frerk Blome & Anna Kosmützky, 2022. "Devices of evaluation: Institutionalization and impact—Introduction to the special issue," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(4), pages 423-428.
    13. Ana, Daniela, 2024. "Nature’s value: Evidencing a Moldovan terroir through scientific infrastructures," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 89(2), pages 237-252.
    14. Jean-Marc Touzard & Yuna Chiffoleau & Camille Maffezzoli, 2016. "What Is Local or Global about Wine? An Attempt to Objectivize a Social Construction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-20, April.
    15. Beckert, Jens & Rössel, Jörg & Schenk, Patrick, 2014. "Wine as a cultural product: Symbolic capital and price formation in the wine field," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    16. David A. Harper, 2021. "Entrepreneurial aesthetics," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 55-80, March.
    17. Sam Dallyn, 2017. "Cryptocurrencies as market singularities: the strange case of Bitcoin," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(5), pages 462-473, September.
    18. Simon Borel & Valérie Guillard & Dominique Roux, 2016. "Ce qui circule entre nous en ligne," Post-Print hal-02022173, HAL.
    19. repec:hal:journl:hal-00782455 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/5fb16v625i8vdbgdiskfbht5i5 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Shailendra Gurjar & Usha Ananthakumar, 2023. "The economics of art: price determinants and returns on investment in Indian paintings," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 50(6), pages 839-859, January.
    22. Mears, Ashley, 2013. "Working it in the fashion market," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 15(1), pages 22-28.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amsocr:v:89:y:2024:i:1:p:31-59. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.