Tokenism and its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Abstract

Research on tokenism has mostly focused on negative experiences and career outcomes for individuals who are tokenized. Comparatively understudied are tokenism as a structural system that excludes larger populations, and the meso-level cultural foundations under which tokenism occurs. We focus on these other sides of tokenism using original data on the creation and long-term retention of postcolonial literature. In an institutional environment in which the British publishing industry was consolidating the production of non-U.S. global literatures written in English and readers were beginning to convey status through openness in cultural tastes, the conditions for tokenism emerged. Relying on data on the emergence of postcolonial literature as a category organized through the Booker Prize for Fiction, we test and find for nonwhite authors (1) evidence of tokenism, (2) unequal treatment of those under consideration for tokenization, and (3) long-term retention consequences for those who were not chosen. We close with a call for more holistic work on both sides of tokenism, analyses that address inequality across and within groups, and a reconsideration of tokenism within a broader suite of practices that have grown ascendent across arenas of social life.