Throughout the period of legally supported segregation in the United States, practices of racial discrimination, touching every sector of American life, prevented African Americans from participating formally in professional sports. Jim Crow policies remained in place in baseball, football, and basketball until a few years before the Supreme Court struck down the separate but equal doctrine in 1954. By the late 1950s, the African American presence was felt in major sports. But this was not the case in professional golf, which continued to maintain segregation policies perpetuating the...

The extent to which modern social science continues to reflect the subjective traits of authors and the contexts in which they operate, rather than the objective facts or insights they claim to develop, remains one of the most striking features of social science research and writing. Kinloch and Mohan provide a multidisciplinary and worldwide examination of the ties between the subjective traits of social scientists, the contexts in which they affect research, and the kinds of knowledge they produce.

The essays fall into five general topic areas: major theoretical issues, research as...