Published Research: Race and Racism
A major focus of my research revolves around the broader questions of “how the structure of race and racism is maintained through interactional processes?” Specifically, I look at how commonsense knowledge of and normative expectations associated with race and racism are mobilized, negotiated, reproduced, and challenged in interaction. I have published several articles along this line of research.
“Contesting Reports of Racism, Contesting the Rights to Assess.” Zhang, 2023.
Why do people sometimes find accusing racism difficult, even when they have personally experienced it? Examining online interaction among Chinese immigrants in the United States, I demonstrate how accusations of racism can be contested, which ultimately hinges upon diverging perspectives on who have the rights to assess a piece of personal experience…
“Managing neutrality, rapport, and antiracism in qualitative interviews.” Zhang & Okazawa, 2023.
Qualitative interviews are commonly used by sociologists to study people’s racist and/or anti-racist talk and ideologies.We treat interviews as a form of institutional interaction and examine interviewer’s practices in managing both institutional and societal normative expectations in conducting interviews, thereby demonstrating how racist and/or anti-racist talk are co-constructed by the interviewer and the interviewee…
“Accounting for discrimination through categorization work: An examination of the target-of-discrimination group members’ practices.” Zhang, 2022.
Why are discriminatory acts, including those along the lines of race, ethnicity, and nationality, are often not immediately problematized by people being discriminated against? Drawing upon interviews Chinese immigrants in Japan, I explicates the discursive work done by participants to make discriminations against themselves and/or their group reasonable, which display an implicit orientation to the varying moral acceptability of discrimination of various kinds…
Dissertation Project: “Asians” in the United States
My dissertation project examines the making of “Asians” from within. Utilizing three different types of interactional data, the three chapters aim to answer different questions concerning Asian members’ collaborative construction of the normative meanings associated with the category “Asian” and its relations with other ethnic/racial groups in the US context.
ANti-Asian Racism AND the US racial order
“Who are normatively expected to be the perpetrators of anti-Asian racism?” “Where do Asians stand in relative to other ethnic/racial groups in the contemporary US racial order?” This chapter explores Asian members’ own orientations towards such questions by examining interactions on Asian American subreddits.
*Published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
commonalities and diversities
Is “Asian” or “Asian American” a meaningful label for members who can be categorized as so? Drawing upon interactions from podcast self-described as about Asian American experiences, this chapter describes the practices adopted by participants to construct shared characteristics and experiences of Asians, while recognizing intra-Asian heterogeneity.
*Presented at ASA Annual Meeting (2024, Montreal) and IIEMCA (2024, Seoul).
Affirmative action in college admissions
There has been a long history of the complicated relationship between Asian Americans and race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions. By conducting focus group discussions with Asian college students, I aim to examine how common beliefs about Asian Americans and affirmative action are collaboratively reinforced and/or challenged.
*In progress.
Tianhao Zhang 