{"product_id":"diversity-the-invention-of-a-concept-9781594030420","title":"Diversity: The Invention of a Concept","description":"\u003cp\u003eDiversity is Americas newest cultural ideal. Corporations alter their recruitment and hiring policy in the name of a diverse workforce. Universities institute new admissions rules in the name of a diverse student body. What its proponents have in mind when they cite the compelling importance of diversity  Peter Wood argues in this elegant work  is not the dictionary meaning of the wordvariety and multiplicitybut rather a set of prescribed numerical outcomes in terms of racial and ethnic makeup. Writing with wit and erudition  Wood has undertaken in this entertaining book nothing less than the biography of a concept. Drawing on his experience as a social scientist  he traces the birth and evolution of \"diversity.\" He shows how diversity sprawls across politics  law  education  business  entertainment  personal aspiration  religion  and the arts  as an encompassing claim about human identity. It asserts the principle that people are  above all else  members of social groups and products of the historical experiences of those groups. In this sense  Wood shows  diversity is profoundly anti-individualist and at odds with Americas older ideals of liberty and equality. Wood warns that as a political ideology  diversity undercuts Americas long effort to overcome racial division. He shows how the ideology of diversity has propelled the Neo-racialists on the political Right as well as those on the multi-culturalist Left. But even if the diversity movement did not exacerbate racial and social division  he believes that it would be a questionable cultural ideal. As Wood points out  \"Our liberty and our equality demand that we hold one another to common standards and that we reject all hierarchy based on heredityeven the hierarchy that comes about when we grant present privileges to make up for past privileges denied.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45651732660277,"sku":"ByrdShop_1594030421","price":166.79,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781594030420.jpg?v=1781838542","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/diversity-the-invention-of-a-concept-9781594030420","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}