Grounds for Difference is truly a jewel of a book. Through a series of essays, it casts light on major facets of the domains of ethnicity and nationalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the chapter entitled “The Return of Biology,” which will be the focus of this essay. “The Return of Biology” has a great deal to offer multiple and overlapping audiences. Readers who want to explore how claims linking race to biology have been produced or taken up in sociology in the last decade will be hard-pressed to find a comparable text covering so much ground in such concise fashion. Similarly, the chapter is a terrific teaching resource because it provides a brief yet comprehensive overview of key domains where notions of race and biology are being hashed out today: biomedicine, forensics, genealogy, and the politics of belonging. In my view, however, the chapter’s greatest contribution is its ending manifesto: the list of recommendations that Brubaker makes for “a constructivist response” to what he perceives as the return or rise of objectivist notions of race as biology. Every student of sociology should become familiar with it. Having said that, there are aspects of both his description of scholarly debate about race and his recommendations for a response to which I would like to add.

中文翻译：

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学术辩论及其社会背景

差异理由确实是一本书的瑰宝。通过一系列论文，它阐明了种族和民族主义领域的主要方面。在标题为“生物学的回归”的章节中，没有什么比这更明显了。“生物学的回归”为众多和重叠的受众提供了大量帮助。想要探索在过去十年中如何产生或将种族与生物学联系起来的主张的读者将很难找到以这样简洁的方式涵盖这么多领域的可比文本。同样，本章也是很棒的教学资源，因为它简要概述了当今种族和生物学概念的主要领域：生物医学，法医学，家谱和归属政治。但是我认为 本章的最大贡献是其结尾宣言：布鲁贝克提出的关于他认为是生物学的客观主义观念的回归或兴起的“建构主义反应”的建议清单。每个社会学的学生都应该熟悉它。话虽如此，他对种族问题的学术辩论的描述和他对回应的建议中都有一些方面，我想补充一下。