Introduction: place and the philosophy of race

Abstract

Over drinks at a philosophy of science conference in Birmingham, Alabama, a philosopher of science who has contributed important work in the philosophy of biology and the metaphysics of human kinds asked me what considerations of social space add to philosophy of human categories. But, all things considered, what a question to ask in Birmingham! What do considerations of space add to our understanding of human categories? His question was motivated by simple and innocent curiosity, for the majority of the work in that area had simply been concerned with group intentionality, conditions for social facts, and the possibility of social reality between the subtle shades of various conceptions of nominalism. Just a few miles away from our lunch table were Kelly Ingram Park, the sixteenth street Baptist church, and the jail-cell in which Martin Luther King, on scraps of paper, penned “Letter from Birmingham City Jail.” Really, the question should be: How can we understand human categories, or even human experience, without the inclusion of social space and geography? In Birmingham, how can one talk so casually about “human kinds,” even if it is a most technical and removed notion, and not think of race and the experience of segregation? It is already incredible that we dare not remember that we are on land ethnically cleansed of its indigenous peoples. In Birmingham, in Alabama, in the US, on our planet since 1492 (at least), how can we understand race—in its earliest forms or as scientific racism—without considering place? It is no wonder that the American public pays its philosophers no heed. What could we possibly say that is worth anything if we cannot understand Birmingham amidst our philosophy? This special section of Philosophy and Geography collects six papers that in various ways bring together philosophy, race, and place. Together, these papers theorize the