Search

Reviews the book "Ethnic Minorities in the Modern Nation State: Working Papers in the Theory of Multi-Culturalism And Political Integration," by John Rex.

Reviews three books. "Frederick Douglass: New Literary and Historical Essays," by Eric J. Sundquist; "The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society," by Judith Stein; "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.," vol. 1, "Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951," edited by Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, and Penny A. Russell.

Reviews the book "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Symbol of the Movement January 1957-December 1958," Volume IV, edited by Clayborne Carson, Susan Carson, Adrienne Clay, Virginia Sharon and Kieran Taylor.

2021 marks the 50th anniversary of Bernard Coard's path-breaking book How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System (1971a), a piece celebrated in filmmaker Steve McQueen's recent award-winning television series, Small Axe (2020). In considering the enduring relevance of How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal, this paper offers a critical analysis of the contemporary educational experiences and outcomes of Black Caribbean young people in English schools. We examine the historical and contemporary institutional factors that shape the persistent educational disadvantage Black Caribbean young people experience in England, particularly in secondary schools. We focus specifically on academic tracking, teacher diversity and expectations, and school discipline in order to demonstrate how Coard's findings remain prescient today and to highlight the urgent need to transform the structure and culture of English schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews two books. "Group Rights in International Law," by Natan Lerner; "Selected Papers: 1946-1989," by J.J. Cremona.

Drawing from David Goldberg’s attentiveness to racism and ‘postraciality’, I read the role of racial violence and terror in the making of Palestine and the Palestinians. The paper shows how Goldberg’s book unsettles racialized convictions of postraciality, and deconstructs the uncompromising global narrative of race. Following Goldberg’s analysis, this paper challenges racialized Zionist ideologies by considering how we might understand the marking of Palestinian homes, bodies, and lives that have become sites of racialized incarceration and brutality through the process of Israeli settler colonialism. I suggest that there is a need to pay close attention to mundane, everyday modes of suffering in order to understand the postraciality of racial suffering in the context of Palestine. I explore how the equation of Palestinians with non-humans requires them either to disappear or submit to racialized exercises of power. These questions allow us to critically analyze postraciality in the context of those living at the limits of humanity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Foregrounding the voices of minority women in England, Scotland and France, Minority Women and Austerity provides a rich and compelling account of austerity’s lived effects. Through its intersectional analyses and historically attendant frame, the book locates minority women’s experiences of austerity not as fundamentally “new” but rather as an extension and sharpening of conditions of “routinized crisis” and inequality. In doing so it compels its readers to ask: whose crisis counts? In this review paper, I summarize the book’s key contributions. In particular, I discuss the book’s theorizations of “political racelessness” to critique the erasure of minority women’s experiences and activism. I reflect on what this means for those researching austerity and its deleterious effects, and for those participating in anti-austerity activism. I end by discussing the analytical tools that the book offers for interrogating the Left’s response to on-going austerity within a post-Brexit Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alba and Foner’s volume is an important contribution to the transatlantic dialog. In the paper I especially focus on the presented labour market outcomes in the first generation and the accomplishments of the second generation in education. What do these outcomes tell us about integration and assimilation patterns across countries? Alba and Foner’s overall conclusion is that neither the theory of national integration models nor the theory of settler versus non-settler societies can explain the differences or similarities in outcomes across the six assessed countries. These theories, according to Alba and Foner, are debunked when empirically tested. I try to formulate what alternative explanations can be formulated based on the empirical data. Differences in historical institutional arrangements in education and the labour market can more accurately predict outcomes. Also differences in the dynamics between the mainstream population and immigrant groups in North America versus Western Europe are important. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I will critically engage those aspects of Goldberg’sAre We All Postracial Yetthat I found to be particularly generative for thinking about contemporary racisms. These foci include the place of post-racial mystification vis-à-vis liberal market capitalism, animalization and synchronic global relationalities. A case will be made for post-race being best understood in terms of how it both incorporates as well as exceeds the explanatory terrain already serviced by the concept of ‘Cultural Racism’ and/or ‘New Racism’. A unique connection to Chamayou’s recentManhuntswill also be advanced. I will read contemporary processes of post-racial animalization via Chamayou’s key contention that Power is always about who is to be theobjectof force, who shall do theenforcingandhowis it to be enforced – a historically contingent force that results in particular technologies of classification, hunting, surveillance, internment, killing and fortification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper expands upon some of Goldberg’s initial reflections regarding the new type of ‘subject’ that is at the heart of post-raciality. A particular attention is paid to the connection with religion, as many of the current conflicts in Europe have been articulated through the grammar of secularism and religion, especially in relationship to Islam. This observation invites us to consider how this ‘racialization of religion’ figures as a reminder of the central role of this politico-theological question in the demarcation of who counts as a proper (political) subject, and how the current debates about Islam figure as a reminder of that. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This review ofThe Scholar Deniedby Aldon D. Morris emphasizes the importance of DuBois for the start of American empirical social research. A.D. Morris correctly shows why W.E.B. DuBois was rejected, forgotten and suppressed by white sociologists for almost 100 years. Racial prejudices and scientific racism among American sociological elites prevented both Du Bois and his work from receiving the attention they rightly deserve. But my paper accentuates the role of Du Bois in the development of sociology as an empirical social science discipline. He created and published a programme of research on the African-American population. Publishing ‘The Philadelphia Negro’, he provided an excellent example of how to do such research. He also headed the first school of sociology on the American continent at the Atlanta University from 1898 to 1910. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores Virdee’s account of how racialized minorities in socialist movements ‘played an instrumental role in trying to align struggles against racism with those against class exploitation’ (p. 164). In so doing, Virdee makes an important intervention at a time when popular historians and other ideologues are colluding in the elevation of myths and – no doubt in their view – noble lies that preclude these stories. Moving through theoretical debates concerning the relationships between race and class, the nature and form of sociologies of ‘outsiders’, to political issues of mobilization, Virdee’s book successfully brings in from the margins an account the multi-ethnic character of the working class in England from the very moment of its inception. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are few sociology texts that acquire truly seminal status. This brief paper, however, reflects on one of the most celebrated and often cited works in British urban sociology. It seeks to explain: (1) the book's initial impact on debates and research in the field of ‘race and ethnic relations’; (2) the key controversies sparked by its theoretical positioning; and (3) why, and in what ways, it remains of relevance almost half a century after it was written. It concludes that there are two reasons for its continued appeal and significance. First, it placed housing firmly at the centre of debates about the position of Britain's migrant communities; second, it illustrates the potential of sociological research. At a time when controversies rage about ‘impact’, here is a work that not only contributed to our theoretical understanding of contemporary society, but also illustrated the value of ‘public sociology’ by engaging with the polity to bring about social change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]