in reposone to Jeremy Freese's post: the sociological imagination

So, I'm reading this book right now, Diversity: The Invention of a Concept by Peter Wood. It's probably the most entertaining book I've picked up for my dissertation in the past year. I would love to spend a couple of hours sharpening my wit against Mr. Wood's criticisms of "diversity" and the multicultural left.

Anyhow, apart from coming up with a new metaphor for diversity (meaning the cultural approach to difference, not actual heterogeneity) - the town dump(!), Wood spends a great deal of time railing against diversicrats, diversidacts and all other manner of diversiphiles. What amusing titles! Despite the fact that I fundamental disagree with several key assumptions and, hence, the conclusions drawn, there are several moments in the text where Wood correctly points to a problem with prevailing approaches to difference.
That the ideology of diversity circumscribes what can count as a scientific explanation and, further, makes it a moral failing to do work that does not further ideological tenets (e.g. all culture is good culture) is problematic. The most critical limitation of diversity as a cultural framework is that it is designed for the university and the office - relatively impersonal spaces where social distance, interactions and norms are largely governed by institutional context. Prevailing notions of diversity provide no guidance for everyday living with difference - for life on the street.

If I ever write my dissertation, I will spend some time talking more about all this. However, seeing as I am on the sociology blacklist, it just seems pointless for me to keep working on this dissertation.