Page 218 - Contribution To Phenomenology

Chapter 9

Ethnic Studies as Multi-Discipline
and Phenomenology

Stanford M. Lyman and Lester Embree
Florida Atlantic University

Abstract Ethnic Studies is a type of academic program that
includes a multiplicity of cultural disciplines (education, ethnology,
history, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, sociology,
etc.). The history of the integrationist (or assimilationist) and the
pluralist (or multi-cultural) conceptions of race and ethnic relations
chiefly in the United States is examined first and then the attempt
is made to show how research within and philosophical reflection
upon this multi-discipline can be phenomenological.

Introduction

Ethnic Studies has been established only recently in major American
universities. There seems to be a growing need for something of the sort
elsewhere in the world. Since Phenomenology appears to offer an
approach that could be taken within the disciplines that make up this
multi-discipline, and since phenomenological philosophy is likely to benefit
from reflecting on Ethnic Studies, an entry on it from a phenomenolo-
gical perspective was desirable for The Encyclopedia of Phenomenology
(to appear from Kluwer Academic Publishers). Nothing in an exphcitly
phenomenological way has been pubhshed yet with respect to Ethnic
Studies as such, but I had a world authority on it among my colleagues,
and he agreed to try to write such an entry with me. After discussion
about how to proceed, we sat down with an outline and a tape recorder.
The transcription of what we had to say proved to be several times the
length desired for an encyclopedia entry, but it seemed to have merit
in its own right and for that reason has been revised into this double

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M. Daniel and L. Embree (eds.). Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, 211-249.
© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.