Juan D. Delgado's research focuses on the comparative study of race and ethnicity in Latin America, analyzing long-term processes of social inequality, statistical invisibility, and political organization of people of African descent in Colombia and Mexico. He develops mixed-method strategies combining data from censuses and surveys, archival sources, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observations. His current work focuses on census politics and the struggles over the official categorization of Blackness. His research has received generous support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UCSD.
Welcome to the Department of Sociology! What brought you to UM?
As I was reading about post-doc opportunities, I was looking for a department that embodied a comprehensive understanding of sociology. I believe sociology is one of the most multi-paradigmatic disciplines among the human sciences. And while this might be a truism to sociologists, many departments have not institutionalized an ecumenical vision of the discipline. I was also interested in a department where I could combine a US-centered with a US-decentered view of social issues and problems. As researchers, we all have to justify our case selection at some point, but the burden of proof is often higher on those of us who do research abroad. The UM Department of Sociology has a broad understanding of the discipline, and many of its members (students and faculty) conduct research in other countries. I think it was this amplitude of analytical foci and substantive interests that ultimately brought me to UM.
What topics/courses are you most excited to teach?
I am excited to teach a comparative course on race and ethnicity in Latin America. I have taught this class in the past, and one of its goals is to put the US case into historical and continental perspective. We go back to the 16th century to explore similarities and differences across countries regarding imperial configurations and legacies. In the past, students have found it interesting to learn that the US had some of the lowest proportions of imported enslaved labor, some of the highest rates of slave survival, and some of the smallest populations of free people of color on the continent. I genuinely look forward to teaching this course at UM. I think it would be a great opportunity for UM students to reflect on the specificity of the US, but also on the particular conditions that make possible the reproduction of ethnoracial inequalities in Latin America.
What does being a LSA Postdoctoral Collegiate Fellow mean to you and your research development?
I was born in Colombia, and I did my undergraduate education there. In Colombia, “public sociology” is not a distinct form of sociology. Rather, as in many Latin American countries, sociology is a publicly engaged form of knowledge. Early in my career, I was exposed to research practices that were ethically concerned with social inequality, not only as a topic of public discussion but also as a constitutive element of the research practice itself. How to do research on persons experiencing exclusion without just extracting data and leaving their situation intact? How to work with persons subject to marginalization without reproducing intellectualist paternalisms and messianisms? I keep asking myself these never-ending questions as I try to develop forms of doing sociology that attempt to be inherently public, rigorous, and reflexive. The LSA Postdoctoral Collegiate Fellowship gives me an exceptional opportunity to advance my research along these lines.
What advice do you have for undergraduate or graduate students interested in pursuing a research based career in the liberal arts and social sciences?
My advice is to join this world wholeheartedly without forgetting to be reflexive about the social conditions that make this world possible. Sociology, in particular, and the human sciences, in general, are a privilege—in at least two senses of the word. On the one hand, it is a privilege to use (and eventually contribute to expanding) the sociological knowledge developed by great researchers on an exuberant variety of social issues that we often take for granted. It is undoubtedly a privilege to have the knowledge of the human sciences to fight against the naturalization of the arbitrariness of the social world. On the other hand, it is worth bearing in mind that privileged persons have made (and continue to build) the world of human sciences. Whether as an inheritor or a conqueror of academic skills, the process of pursuing a research career will be structured by privileges and inequalities. Although it is often difficult to separate the privileged view from the privileged position, I invite students to be attentive to the vicious cycles that reproduce their reinforcement but also the virtuous cycles that promote their disentanglement.
