About

Dana Takagi is a professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz, serving since 1987. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, earned in 1986, along with an M.A. and B.A. from UC Berkeley. Before her tenure at UCSC, she taught at UC Irvine in the program in social ecology. Her academic work is characterized by a commitment to empirically based research, theoretical innovation, and linking interdisciplinary knowledge to understanding the world as it is. Her research interests include inequality and identity, methods, race, theory, higher education, nationalism, and indigeneity, with a particular focus on Asian American studies, Buddhism, and philosophy. She has received numerous awards and honors, including serving as President of the Association for Asian American Studies and receiving the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights Outstanding Book Award. Her scholarly contributions include authoring books such as 'The Retreat from Race: Asian American Admissions and Racial Politics' and editing works on theory and Asian American society. She actively participates in academic conferences, delivering keynote addresses and presenting papers on topics related to race, identity, and social justice.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political science
• Gender studies
• History
• Criminology

Selected publications

• 7. SITUATING ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2019-12-31

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• Asian American Studies Now

  Rutgers University Press eBooks · 2019-09-03 · 8 citations

  bookSenior author

  Asian American Studies Now truly represents the enormous changes occurring in Asian American communities and the world, changes that require a reconsideration of how the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies is defined and taught. This comprehensive anthology, arranged in four parts and featuring a stellar group of contributors, summarizes and defines the current shape of this rapidly changing field, addressing topics such as transnationalism, U.S. imperialism, multiracial identity, racism, immigration, citizenship, social justice, and pedagogy. Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen have selected essays for the significance of their contribution to the field and their clarity, brevity, and accessibility to readers with little to no prior knowledge of Asian American studies. Featuring both reprints of seminal articles and groundbreaking texts, as well as bold new scholarship, Asian American Studies Now addresses the new circumstances, new communities, and new concerns that are reconstituting Asian America.

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• First Precepts for Democracy and Research Practices in Ethnic Studies

  Culture Studies &#x2194 Critical Methodologies · 2015-01-12 · 15 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Recent discussions by leading scholars in interdisciplinary fields, notably cultural studies, suggest the limitations of critique for producing intelligent practices for social change and have called for thinking anew about the practices of intellectual labor. In this essay, I call attention to research methodology as a form of intellectual labor and examine the importance of explicit methodological and critical research practices in interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies. I suggest that method in ethnic studies, currently an admixture of conventions from disciplines adapted for interdisciplinary research, would be strengthened with a more holistic methodological framework. I explore the potential for a more holistic framework by drawing on the philosophical underpinnings, and not simply the technique, of participatory action research (PAR). I examine the pragmatist origins of PAR and explore the potential for drawing on three methodological precepts—iteration, collaboration, and reflections—which are highly resonant with ethnic studies scholars’ desired aims at transformative scholarship.

  PublisherDOI

• On Disciplinary Change : For Professor Fujimoto (ESSAYS IN COMMEMORATION OF THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF PROFESSOR FUJIMOTO TETSUYA)

  法學新報 · 2011-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• On disciplinary change: for Professor Fujimoto

  法学新報 · 2011-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Form and Emptiness: Globalization, Liberalism, and Buddhism in the West

  Amerasia Journal · 2008-01-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In this essay, I explore Buddhism in the West in the context of the world-as-it-is, in particular, under the current the conditions of liberalism and globalization. I lay out rough tracks for examining religious practices, which most of us think of as a matter of individual choice in the domain of private as already deeply immersed in the public domain, conventionally seen as locus of less personal macroprocesses of governance, politics, and economy. In my view, the balance of research in Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and related fields is heavily tilted toward a politics about religion. There does not exist in the recent past a commensurate body of literature focused on theorizing the politics of religion that is not also already deeply embedded in a politics about religion. Discourses already committed to a politics about religion, say in the form of pro-faith-based or anti-Christian faith, though politically compelling, leave important theoretical questions unanswered. It is inaccurate to presu...

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• Faith, Race and Nationalism

  Journal of Asian American Studies · 2004-10-01 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Faith, Race and Nationalism Dana Y. Takagi (bio) History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. Frantz Fanon (1963) The Wretched of the Earth When, for example, Aboriginal peoples strive for recognition, they are constrained to present their demands in the normative vocabulary available to them. That is, they seek recognition as 'peoples' and 'nations,' with 'sovereignty' or a 'right to 'self-determination,' even though these terms may distort or misdescribe the claim they would wish to make if it were expressed in their own languages. James Tully (1995) Strange Multiplicity Nationalism invokes tradition in order in order to assert the antagonism between irreconcilable social and cultural values. Lisa Lowe and David Lloyd (1997), The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital Recently, I learned that a small piece of Captain Cook's ship, the Endeavor, was carried into outer space on a NASA space shuttle also bearing the name, Endeavor. NASA, in capitalizing on the legacy of Cook's spirit of exploration and scientific discovery, hoped to revitalize its space program after its premier shuttle, Challenger, exploded in 1987 shortly after take-off.2 NASA's invocation of Cook's eighteenth-century voyages across the Pacific symbolizes the potency of linking "science" with "exploration" in the late twentieth century.3 In this essay, I unhook this [End Page 271] coupling and call attention to the ways in which contemporary imagery about Cook's voyaging might also ask us to consider the very antithesis of Cook's legacy of "scientific exploration"—faith. Afterall, as is frequently noted, the rationality of the Enlightenment developed in antithesis to the authority of religious doctrine in all matters of self and public. Often, the topic of "scientific exploration" calls up the imagery of "discovery" (and its affective bravery) and as well of manifest destiny at the Pacific edges of the frontier of the New World. Indeed, in contemporary popular terms, this aspect of Cook's legacy thrives three hundred years after his last voyage. The imprints of Cook's voyages are evident in mass culture—from the long-running success of the TV series, Star Trek, to the recent New York Times Bestseller by Tony Horowitz, Blue Latitudes. Alternately, travel and voyaging in the Pacific by Westerners, particularly for the purpose of "scientific investigation," is in contemporary scholarship on the Pacific thought to be a historical beginning for the progressive chain of events resulting in the colonization and domination of the Pacific by the Britain, France, and the United States. While this latter reading of "science" and "exploration" is compelling on historical grounds, my point in this essay is to complement and enhance such a reading by asking what happens when we counterpose the "rationality" and "science" associated with eighteenth- or twentieth-century explorations with its opposite—faith, which is viewed as both "unrational" and "unscientific." In my view, tucking a small piece of Cook's ship into a multi-billion dollar space shuttle was surprising. I have always thought of NASA as the quintessential institution of "science" and technological know-how in American society. The very idea of slipping a small token from a 200-year-old ship in a space in the space shuttle is a lot like carrying a rabbit's foot or some equivalent talisman. Were the engineers at NASA being superstitious or just wishing to layer icing called "luck" on science? And, since the act was in itself not a public act—that is, it was not known or publicized as part of NASA's recuperation after the Challenger disaster—the idea that this was for the show of it cannot be seriously entertained. So, I've had to rethink the polarity between rocket science on the one hand and faith on the other. Perhaps the difference between the purveyors of each is not so different. Lately, the prospect of "intelligent design" [End Page 272] hopefully strikes a compromise between evolutionary thought and god-based faith. Is there a similar compromise to be struck about Cook, NASA, and Hawaii? How lucky is it that a piece of Cook's Endeavor is launched into space some...

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• Affirmative Action and Minority Enrollments in Medical and Law Schools. By Susan Welch and John Gruhl. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. 221p. $39.50.

  American Political Science Review · 1999-09-01 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

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• Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action

  Representations · 1996-01-01 · 49 citations

  articleSenior author

  Research Article| July 01 1996 Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action Michael Omi, Michael Omi Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Dana Y. Takagi Dana Y. Takagi Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Representations (1996) 55: 155–162. https://doi.org/10.2307/3043744 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michael Omi, Dana Y. Takagi; Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action. Representations 1 July 1996; 55 155–162. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3043744 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRepresentations Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1996 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

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• Situating Asian Americans in the Political Discourse on Affirmative Action

  Representations · 1996-07-01 · 35 citations

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Frequent coauthors

• Michael Omi

  5 shared

• Yến Lê Espiritu

  3 shared

• Jean Wu

  2 shared

• Thomas F. Pettigrew

  University of California, Santa Cruz

  2 shared

• Yong Chen

  Gaochun People's Hospital

  1 shared

• Maximo P. Fabella

  Park Avenue Dermatology

  1 shared

• Vijay Prashad

  1 shared

• Helen Zia

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights: Outstanding Book Awa…
• President, Association for Asian American Studies (2002–04)
• Humanities Research Institute Fellow, UC Irvine (1997–98)