Edward Telles


Edward Telles is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. A member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Telles has reoriented the field of Sociology beyond the U.S. black-white paradigm through his research and writings on color, race and ethnicity globally, particularly in Latin America and for Latinos in the United States.

About

Formerly a professor in the sociology departments at Princeton and the University of California at Los Angeles, Telles is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Telles is a leading figure in the study of race and ethnicity in the Americas and on immigrant integration, intergenerational change and mobility among Mexican Americans. His book Race in Another America and his work at the Ford Foundation in Rio de Janeiro were instrumental to changing discourse on race in Brazil and for producing major policy changes in Brazil, including instituting affirmative action in public universities. In the United States, Telles' research reveals how Mexican Americans have been incorporated in a largely distinct way from European Americans regarding education, socioeconomic status, language, culture, segregation and politics. By spanning the social sciences and the Americas in his research, Edward Telles has helped increase understanding of how race and inequality interact." Princeton University Press, 2004

Research and publications

Focusing on race and ethnicity in Latin America, Telles' major books include Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil, published in 2004 by Princeton University Press, winner of several awards, including the Distinguished Publication Award from the American Sociological Association, and the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for the best book in social demography, as well as the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for the Best Book from the Race and Ethnic Minorities section of the American Sociological Association, the Best Book Award from the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association and the Hubert Herring Award for the Best Book in Latin American Studies from the Pacific Council for Latin American Studies. Telles is also the author of Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Skin Color in Latin America, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2014. Both books are published in Spanish and Portuguese and the former is available in Japanese. Pigmentocracies was based on random-sample surveys of race and ethnicity in several Latin American countries and conducted in conjunction with an international team of social scientists, which Telles led. He has also published in this area in leading social science journals including the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Demography.nRegarding his work on Latinos in the United States, he is best known for the following. In 2008 Telles coauthored Generations of Exclusion, Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race with UCLA sociologist Vilma Ortiz, which won the Otis Dudley Duncan Award and the Best Book Award from the Pacific Sociological Association. That book is based on a longitudinal and intergenerational study of more than 1000 Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio, who were interviewed in 1965-66 and who were mostly reinterviewed in 2000. His forthcoming book is Durable Ethnicity: Mexican Americans and the Ethnic Core from Oxford University Press, which he co-authored with Christina Sue

Reception

About Race in Another America, writing in the Journal of Social History, George Reid Andrews noted: "This is a blockbuster of a book. To a topic — Brazilian race relations — historically fraught with ambiguity, uncertainty, and disagreement, it brings clarity, logic, and lucidity, not to mention several truckloads of data. The result is the most important work on race in Brazil since Gilberto Freyre's seminal The Masters and the Slaves …The clarity and lucidity of Telles’s findings, and the wealth of data on which they are based, make this book a genuine tour de force, and the most illuminating examination of Brazilian race relations that I have ever read." Reviewing the book for the American Journal of Sociology, Melissa Nobles noted, "Edward Telles's rich and important book is the latest, and most systematic, sociological study of Brazilian race relations. As its title implies, the book is also comparative, as the significance of race in Brazil is explicitly compared with its significance in the United States and in South Africa, to a lesser extent. American race relations have, and arguably continue, to serve as the paradigmatic case against which other countries are compared and from which sociological theories are derived."

Books

Telles has received a Distinguished Publication Award from the American Sociological Association and several other awards, including the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for the best book in demography, twice, and the Distinguished Book Award from the Pacific Sociological Association. He was elected to the Sociological Research Association in 2009, elected vice president of the American Sociological Association and served in that capacity from 2010 to 2013, In 2018, Telles was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
List of Awards:
Elected and Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018
Elected to Vice President of the American Sociological Association, 2010-2013
Elected to the Sociological Research Association, 2009
Distinguished Career Award, Latino Section, American Sociological Association, 2008
Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award for the Best Book in Sociology from the American Sociological Association, 2006
Otis Dudley Duncan Award for best book in Social Demography from the Population Section of the American Sociological Association, 2009
Otis Dudley Duncan Award for best book in Social Demography from the Population Section of the American Sociological Association, 2005
Distinguished Book Award from the Pacific Sociological Association, 2009
Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for the Best Book from the Race and Ethnic Minorities section of the American Sociological Association, 2006
Best Book Award from the Latino Section of the American Sociological Association, 2009
Best Book Award from the Brazil Section of the Latin American Studies Association, 2006
Hubert Herring Award for the Best Book in Latin American Studies from the Pacific Council for Latin American Studies, 2005

Grant awards for research and training

“Social Science Analysis of Race and Ethnicity in Latin America” 2008-2014
           Ford Foundation, New York 2008-14
Ford Foundation, Santiago and Mexico City 2009-11.
Various grants from Princeton University, 2008–13
“Examining Key Issues Affecting Workforce Development: Immigrant Workers, Other New Entrants in the Economy, and Latino and Black Relations”Ford Foundation 2006-2007
“Global Network and Conference on Ethnic, Race and Caste Discrimination and Legal Remedies in Brazil, Central Europe, India, South Africa and the United States.”, 2005.
UCLA Center for International Studies  
Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University
“The Paradox of Miscegenation. Race Relations in Brazil” Ford Foundation, 2000-2002
“Training Fellowship in Latin American Sociology” Mellon Foundation. 1995-2005.  
“Racial Classification in Brazil” National Science Foundation, 1997-1999.  
“Mexican American Study Project” :
National Institute for Child and Human Development , 1997-2000
Russell Sage Foundation, 1996–98, 2003–06
UC-MEXUS, 1993–94, 1997–98, 2002–03
Haynes Foundation, 1996–98
Rockefeller Foundation, 1996–98
Ford Foundation, 1993–94, 1995–96
California Policy Seminar, 1994–95
Numerous grants from UCLA including the Institute of American Cultures, Academic Senate, California Center for Population Research, Office of the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor for Research, Dean of Social Sciences and Office of Academic Development  
Various Brazil Research Grants
Rockefelller Foundation, 1989–90
UCLA Academic Senate, 1989–96

Some recent articles

Telles, Edward and Albert Esteve. Forthcoming. “Racial Intermarriage in the Americas” Sociological Science.
Telles, Edward and Florencia Torche. 2018 “Varieties of Indigeneity in Latin America" Social Forces.
Telles, Edward. 2018. “Race, Latinos and the U.S. Census” The Annals of The American Academy of Political and Social Science. 677: 153 - 164
Ortiz, Vilma and Edward Telles. 2017. “Third Generation Disadvantage among Mexican Americans” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3. October.
Dixon, Angela and Edward Telles. 2017. “Skin Color and Colorism: Global Research, Concepts, and Measurement” Annual Review of Sociology 43:405–24.
Telles, Edward. 2017. “Multiple Measures of Ethnoracial Classification in Latin America” Ethnic and Racial Studies 40: 2340-46
Telles, Edward, René D. Flores and Fernando Urrea-Giraldo, 2015. “Pigmentocracies: Skin Color, Census Ethnoracial Categories and Educational Inequality in Eight Latin American Countries” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 40: 39-58
Telles, Edward and Tianna Paschel. 2014. “Who is Black, White or Mixed Race? How Skin Color, Status and Nation Shape Racial Classification in Latin America” American Journal of Sociology 120 November: 864-907.
Pereira, Krista M. and Edward E. Telles. 2014. “The Color of Health: Color, Racial Classification and Discrimination in the Health of Latin Americans” Social Science and Medicine. 116: 241-250.
Telles, Edward and Denia Garcia. 2013. “Mestizaje and Public Opinion in Latin America” Latin American Research Review 48: October, 130-152
Telles, Edward and Stanley Bailey. 2013. “Understanding Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality” American Journal of Sociology 118: August, 1559-1595.
Telles, Edward E. and René Flores. 2013. “Not Just Color: Whiteness, Nation and Status in Latin America” Hispanic American Historical Review 93: March, 411-449.
Flores, René and Edward Telles. 2012. “Social Stratification in Mexico: Disentangling Color, Ethnicity and Class.” American Sociological Review 77: 486-494.