Michael Hanchard | Democracy, Racial Regimes & Inequality

From ancient Athens to contemporary times, explore how regimes of racial and ethno-national hierarchy have functioned as modalities for political membership and exclusion in societies ranging  from ancient Athens to nation-states in the modern and contemporary world. Rather than treating racial and ethno-national regimes as anomalous to democratic practice, my research suggests that racial and ethno-national regimes have been constitued in and by the very practice of demcocracy.

Michael Hanchard is a Professor of Africana Studies. A scholar of comparative politics specializing in nationalism, social movements, racial hierarachy, and citizenship. Hanchard taught previously ay Northwestern University, where he was a professor of political science and African American studies as well as director of the school's institute for Diasporic Studies. His books include Orpheus and Power: Afro-Brazilian Social Movements in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil, 1945-1988 (1994) and Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought (2006). Hanchard has done fieldwork in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Cuba, Colombia, Ghana, Italy, and Jamaica, and has been the recipient of grants from the Ford, MacArthur, and Mellon foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Hanchard holds a BA in International Relations from Tufts University, an MA from the New School for Social Research, and a political science Ph.D. from Princeton University.