Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America by Dianne Harris (review)

Abstract

respect for nature” that Hou attributes to the “city natural,” versus the celebration of American “scientifi c, artistic, economic, and technological power” (p. 4) that she ascribes to the City Beautiful. To suggest that Hou’s “city natural” elides dimensions of the past even while it illuminates others is, however, merely to acknowledge one of the fundamental paradoxes of all intellectual work: as social scientists Geoff rey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star point out, the act of classifi cation has consequences, yet “to classify is human” (1999, 1). Indeed, the contributors to Garden and Forest were likewise engaged in a collective attempt to make sense of their complicated and confusing world, and they also did so by inventing, deploying, and challenging conceptual categories. Hou’s City Natural reminds us that we have much to learn from their eff orts to reconcile both the material and the conceptual confl icts that arise between humans and non-human nature. We also have much to learn from the ways in which they created a discursive space that upheld the possibility of such reconciliation. Toward that end, The City Natural provides a valuable starting point.