Search

Taking the example of ‘Studies in black and white’, a genre of photographs taken around the end of the nineteenth century by Methodist missionaries in the Pacific, this article seeks to go beyond conventional analyses that scrutinize colonial photography for forms of domination. I argue that these photographs, and the context in which some of them were published, reveal a complex interplay between two contradictory principles: on the one hand, a Christian humanism, articulating a vision of commonality and equality, and on the other, paternalism, articulating a vision of superiority and inequality . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what race has meant in and to Europe. If Europe has different, if related, histories of racial thinking, expression, imposition, and exclusion, how has it been shaped, in part, as specific region in the figure of race even as race, in the aftermath of World War II, is largely denied as a category applicable to human groups? And what today does Europe as a region, and the societies constituting it with all their internal variations, contribute, especially in the popular imaginary, to the extensions of racial meanings and to thinking critically about the racial ordering of social structure, racist exclusions, and social markings? This study is concerned with mapping the racial contours of contemporary European self-conception, historically understood, tracing the figures in the European imaginary of the European, the black, the Jew, and the Muslim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses second-generation Indo-Caribbean (West Indian of Indian descent) teenagers’ ethnic identities, through a look at their taste preferences and self assertions of identity. Both Indo-Caribbean young men and women draw from multiple influences on their identities. In terms of tastes in clothing and movies, however, girls are more interested in things Indian, and in “Indian culture”. Boys, on the other hand, choose to distance themselves from an Indian identity. Three factors explain these gender differences in choices about ethnic identity: (1) different media images for South Asian men and women; (2) a school context lending different levels of peer symbolic status to perceived Indian boys and girls; and (3) a gendered process of migration by which women maintain stronger cultural roots in the new country. The findings in this article point to the need to pay attention to gender differences when considering ethnic incorporation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a reconceptualization of racial violence in the United States. Departing from frameworks and definitions of racial violence that have been based largely on assessments of the intent and motivation of perpetrators, this approach incorporates as well the experiences and perceptions of victims and audiences of racial violence. Focusing on the racial fungibility of victims and the consequences of violence to victims makes possible a more rigorous exploration of the communicative, interpretive, and contextual nature of racial violence. I illustrate the utility of this reconceptualization with examples from my research on white supremacist skinheads, the Ku Klux Klan, and individual hate crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the suitability of the tropics for European colonization and especially settlement had been a long-standing issue, it was particularly hotly debated from the mid-nineteenth century until at least the turn of the nineteenth century, when the imperatives of expanding imperial ventures placed the issue firmly on the agenda. This article explores debates over climate and colonization in the context of New Guinea, where it was widely believed that the tropical environment was enervating and ultimately detrimental to Europeans who attempted to live there. Such beliefs led some commentators to question whether it would ever become the ‘home of the white man’ that some of the advocates of colonization had suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In all immigration societies, a social distinction between immigrant and second generations, on the one hand, and natives, on the other, is imposed by the ethnic majority and becomes a sociologically complex fault line. Building on a comparison of second-generation Mexicans in the U.S., North Africans in France, and Turks in Germany, this article argues that the concepts associated with boundary processes offer the best opportunity to understand the ramifications of this distinction. The difference between bright boundaries, which involve no ambiguity about membership, and blurred ones, which do, is hypothesized to be associated with the prospects and processes of assimilation and exclusion. The institutionalization of boundaries is examined in the key domains of citizenship, religion, language, and race. The analysis leads to the specific conclusion that blurred boundaries generally characterize the situation of Mexicans in the U.S., with race the great, albeit not well understood, exception, while bright boundaries characterize the European context for Muslim groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do claims about racial hierarchy matter? The question whether some groups are worse off than others is highly pertinent at a time when there is growing recognition of multiple forms of racisms and racial oppression. It is widely accepted that racial hierarchies are still with us today, and this concept is peppered throughout writings on "race" and racisms, but, what, exactly, are racial hierarchies, how do racial hierarchies continue to matter, and in what ways do they operate? This special issue, which focuses on the USA and Britain, also addresses the following questions: Does the concept of racial hierarchy aid us in illuminating racial inequalities and the differential experiences of groups in Western multi-ethnic societies such as the USA and Britain? What sorts of criteria are used in arguments about the place of groups along racial hierarchies? What are the political implications of claims made about racial hierarchies? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-1965 demographic changes in the United States [US] have brought blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans into direct conflict, raising the question of how and whether law and public policy should attempt to adjudicate conflicts among racialized minority groups. I argue in this article that for the past few decades, national political leaders in the US have promoted an official multiculturalist discourse that actually discourages Americans from naming and addressing these intergroup tensions. This discourse superficially reimagines race and nation - by moving from a biracial, black-white focus to a formal acknowledgment of multiracial difference - while refusing to acknowledge the complex interminority inequalities and antagonisms generated by this new diversity. How might we refocus national attention on the serious interminority conflicts and racial justice struggles unfolding around us? I consider resurrecting the traditional notion of racial hierarchy as a counter-narrative to official multiculturalist discourse before arguing instead for one which involves a more complex notion of "racial positionality". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of Hawai'i is often held up as a "multiracial"/"multiethnic" paradise. This is not only because of Hawai'i's ethnic/racial diversity and "aloha" spirit, but because of its high rates of "interracial" marriage. Using historical material as well as an open-ended qualitative "mini-survey" of college students, I dig deeper into this myth by exploring the systems of meaning prevalent in Hawai'i concerning, "race", "ethnicity", and "culture". I argue that, historically, what Hawai'i has exhibited to a much greater degree than most places in the United States is not a "lack" of racialization, but a very complexracial/ethnic code, a very nuanced system of racial and ethnic stratification. However, this system of representation contains a strong cultural component; consequently, "cultural" symbols (i.e. about "way of life" - food, clothing, mannerisms, etc.) sometimes trump "racial" and "ethnic" symbolization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the processes involved in the creation and expression of an ethnic identity for minority groups. It uses nationally representative quantitative data from the British Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities to describe the components that make up ethnic identity for ethnic minority people in the UK and to explore how these components are patterned within and between ethnic groups. Five underlying dimensions of ethnic identity were identified using factor analysis: two related to self description, a traditional identity, participating in 'community', and being a member of a racialized group. There was considerable similarity, but also some difference, in these dimensions across the ethnic groups included. The article concludes that the structure of ethnic identity is similar across ethnic minority groups in Britain, but that there is some diversity of identity within ethnic groups; perhaps as a consequence of how the factors that structure ethnic identity vary across demographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on Michael Banton's thought-provoking essay on the state of ethnic studies, both in terms of teaching and conducting research. By focusing on the US in contrast to Banton's British emphasis, it offers a comparative reference for exploring the central points Banton makes about the need for conceptual clarification, the challenges posed by fusing scholarship and partisanship, and the desirability of expanding cross-national comparative research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the twentieth century a substantial body of objective knowledge about ethnic and racial relations was built up. A variety of academic disciples continue to contribute to its growth. University teaching synthesises new findings and existing understandings in the attempt to formulate general principles. Research workers and students are attracted by the urgency of the political problems associated with this field of study, yet, paradoxically, the further growth of knowledge is constrained by the way political interests narrow intellectual horizons. Teaching about the sociology of ethnic and racial relations pays too little attention to the ways in which the body of knowledge has been assembled, to its practical applications, and to the importance of comparative study for further advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses C. L. R. James's classic autobiographical study of cricket, Beyond a Boundary (1963/1983), to contribute to a fuller theory of the social force of sport as it pertains to race and ethnicity. Three aspects of the theoretical architecture embedded in this masterpiece of cultural criticism are highlighted: (1) the popularity and symbolic significance of sport in contemporary societies; (2) the cultural capital that sport provides for otherwise marginalized and excluded racial and ethnic minorities; and, (3) the moral structure implicit (if not always fully realized) in sporting practices such as cricket. It is argued that these points, in combination with the more critical insights developed by sport scholars in recent years, help us to better understand the complexity and significance of sport and popular culture more generally with respect to race and ethnicity in contemporary social life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The signifiers, 'race', 'culture' or 'ethnicity' are utilized in the teenage pregnancy literature (1) to highlight 'differences' in adolescent sexual and reproductive behaviour and (2) as explanatory tools. When 'white' teenagers are the focus of research, psychological explanations are usually invoked, whereas for 'black' teenagers, explanations are socio-cultural in nature. In this article, we explore how, through a process of racialization, the psychomedical literature on teenage pregnancy in South Africa contributes to the entrenchment of 'race', 'culture' and 'ethnicity' as fixed, 'natural' signifiers. We utilize Derrida's notion of différance, together with Phoenix and Woollett's adaptation - 'normalized absence/pathologized presence' - to indicate how 'black' people are cast as the Other, the pathologized presence which relies on the normalized absent trace, 'whiteness', for definition. We analyse how the notions of 'tradition' and 'culture' are deployed to sanitize or disguise the underlying racializing project. 'Black' is exoticized and rendered strange and thus open to scrutiny, monitoring and intervention. 'Culture' and 'tradition' appeal to the myth of origin, thus providing pseudohistorical explanations which essentialize and naturalize racialized collectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I investigate the extent to which interviewers and respondents in a 1995 national survey consistently classify race in Brazil, overall and in particular contexts. Overall, classification as white, brown or black is consistent 79 per cent of the time. However, persons at the light end of the colour continuum tend to be consistently classified, whereas ambiguity is greater for those at the darker end. Based on statistical estimation, the findings also reveal that consistency varies from 20 to 100 per cent depending on one's education, age, sex and local racial composition. Inconsistencies are in the direction of both "whitening" and "darkening", depending on whether the reference is interviewer or respondent. For example, interviewers "whitened" the classification of higher educated persons who self-identified as brown, especially in mostly non-white regions. Finally, I discuss the role of the Brazilian state in constructing race and the implications of these findings for survey research and comparative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this Research Note is to offer an analysis of the goals and achievements of former President Clinton's Initiative on Race from its announcement in June 1997 through spring 2000. This Initiative was the first attempt in nearly thirty years by a United States' President to seriously and systematically address the issue of "race". Three conclusions emerge: first, the Clinton Race Initiative accomplished more than most social scientists and the public are aware of; second, the Initiative is incomplete because the President has not released his own proposed book-length analysis on race; and, third, a number of structural and political factors significantly limited the "success" of the Initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents evidence from a detailed qualitative study to demonstrate the significance of personal knowledge to black people's understanding of police/black relations. It explains how the stories told by respondents to illustrate their views revealed that previous explanations of the relationship have over-stressed the role of the black community and underplayed the importance of personal experiences in helping to form the perspectives of black people. The article outlines three central assumed truths contained within the stories, each of which leads to the conclusion that policing is irrefutably racialized. It is argued that the stories are underpinned by a dominant narrative of racialized policing which has grave implications for efforts to address the mistrust of the police evident among the black population. In highlighting the social role of stories, the article draws attention to their analytical significance in sociological analysis. It also draws attention to the importance of increasing the focus on the experiences and views of those on the receiving end of criminal justice in order to improve our understanding of everyday processes of racialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that segregation interacts with a variety of structural transformations in society to determine the spatial concentration of poverty. Based on this argument, we then specify a statistical model overcoming methodological problems that have hampered earlier work. Estimates based on US data confirm that racial, ethnic segregation interacts with structural shifts in society to concentrate poverty. By 1990, a powerful interaction between residential segregation and income inequality had emerged to spatially isolate the poor, an interaction the effects of which were buttressed by weaker interactions between segregation, rising class segregation, and stagnating mean incomes. Our analysis reveals how underlying shifts in socio-economic structure can have very different effects on the concentration of poverty experienced by different groups, depending on the degree of racial/ethnic segregation they experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study highlights some of the main arguments raised in my latest book, When Work Disappears (19%), and discusses their implications for understanding issues related to race and urban poverty in Britain and other European countries. I emphasize that public understanding of these issues has been hindered by two pernicious effects of racial ideology in America: (1) a tendency among those on both the left and the right to disassociate the high inner-city jobless and welfare receipt rates from the impact of changes in the global economy, and (2) weak support for government programmes to alleviate economic distress in the inner city. I argue for a vision that acknowledges racially distinct problems and the need for certain race-specific remedies, but at the same time emphasizes the importance of transracial solutions to share problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on explanations of housing inequality in relation to key social divisions such as `race' 1 and ethnicity. Much of the recent debate about these issues, both in the academic literature and in the sphere of politics (especially within the European Union) has been framed in terms of `social exclusion'. It is argued that the term is used in a number of distinct senses, which leads to considerable confusion at a conceptual level and obscures rather than clarifies key theoretical issues. Its use also leads to oversimplified accounts of complex processes, and can in extremis lead to the pathologization of communities. In the latter case, its dangers minor those of related concepts such as the `underclass'. Illuminating the theoretical arguments in the current literature by reference to British data, the article concludes that the `paradigm of social exclusion' should be jettisoned by social scientists in favour of a return to a serious analysis of social divisions within a context of debates about structure and agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an interview-based case-study of twenty interracial families of mixed Anglo-Australian and Indo-Asian backgrounds. The study draws theoretical models from post-colonial, feminist and critical race theory, raising the issue of how visible racial difference might influence how families define themselves and their everyday experiences in white- dominated societies. The interviews focused on families' narrative accounts of community and family reactions to their marriage, how they negotiate divergent cultural beliefs and practices, and their views on childrearing and their children's futures. Four key themes emerged from these accounts: the significance of place and locality in how families identify themselves; the interaction of social class and ethnic identity; the blending of cultural practices and beliefs within families; and the reconstruction of gendered roles and practices. The authors conclude that interracial families are key sites where new forms of cultural, social class and gender identity are being reconstructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Touristic ethnicity is increasingly important for understanding ethnic relations, culture and identity in the world today. Empirically, this reflects the spread and importance of the tourism industry and its many ramifications for ethnicity. Theoretically, it is argued that the study of touristic ethnicity constitutes a particularly fruitful strategy for deepening our understanding of the construction of ethnic identities and relations generally. This two-pronged empirical and theoretical argument is developed in relation to three phenomena: 1) tourism as a form of ethnic relations; 2) the development of touristic ethnic cultures, in which interaction with tourism becomes an integral part of the construction of ethnic identity; and 3) the dedifferentiation of the tourist realm, such that touristic modes of visualization and experience become characteristics of the expression and consumption of ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a theoretical model that attempts to explain the persistence, emergence, or disappearance of ethnic group movements using the primordial approach or the circumstantial approach. Primordial attachments are personalized social relationships, such as kinship relationships, relationships based on regional bonds and friendship. The primordial approach describes these strong ethnic attachments and this approach is needed to completely explain ethnic solidarity. Primordial sentiments occur due to circumstances and the most common circumstance is when members of an ethnic group face opposition on the basis of their ethnic distinctiveness. Edward Splicer, propounded the oppositional approach theory, which integrates the primordial and the circumstantial approach. This model explains ethnic situations better than any other approach and involves two concepts. These concepts are the persistent identity system and the oppositional process. Persistent identity system refers to ethnic groups that have survived over long periods in different cultural settings. The oppositional process frequently produces intense collective consciousness and a high degree of internal solidarity. According to Splicer, it is the responsiveness of identity systems to their environment that gives ethnic groups the ability to persist. The greater the opposition perceived by the ethnic group, the greater the degree to which its historical sense of distinctiveness will be aroused. A diagram is presented depicting the oppositional model of ethnic solidarity.

Ambiguity and ambivalence is typical of black/non-black relations in Afro-Latin America and it has its roots in a number of factors, principal among which is the weakness of a politically oriented black consciousness which is prepared to anatomize and publicize mechanisms of racial discrimination that exist. This weakness is in turn based, firstly, on the presence of a black-white continuum, as opposed to the North American black-white division, which allows mulattoes to dissociate themselves from Blacks and be accepted as socially distinct and which permits some of them to marry up racially and, secondly, on the absence of the very overt and aggressive state-enforced discrimination typified by the Jim Crow era of the U.S. which oppressed a clearly defined category of Black people and thus set conditions for a politicized reaction by that category. However, it is also the case that sociological studies of race relations in Afro-Latin America have not helped to dispel this ambiguity and contrariness about the nature of race in the area.

The author of this article examines respective adaptations of two diverse groups of emigrants. Barbadians who settled in the city of Pôrto Velho in the Brazilian Amazon and Cape Verdeans who settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Both people differed culturally and linguistically from inhabitants of nations to which they immigrated. Both groups also differed racially from their hosts, since both were mostly of African descent, whereas their hosts were not. Cape Verdeans in New England are an ethnic group with a repertoire of behaviors, sentiments and aspirations that set them off from other groups and the mainstream of society in the U.S. Initially, they were poor, uneducated, illiterate, Creole-speaking peasants. In contrast, Barbadians and other West Indians in Pôrto Velho and the Brazilian Amazon, although there for a shorter period than Cape Verdeans have been in the U.S., have become assimilated and absorbed into the local society.

This article has sought to develop a preliminary theoretical framework for the analysis of race relations on a cross-national and comparative basis. By focusing on the totality of criteria of societal organization--both structural and ideological--it has tried to demonstrate that, although race matters for the explanation of both political and social phenomena, the specific form and strength of its influence differs. In order to understand the role of race in contemporary societies it is essential to take into account the relative significance which different cultures impart to the different criteria of race, class or culture and consequences for racial differentiation. Structural conditions underlying ideologies, modes of differential incorporation and levels of political conflict are greatly influenced by characteristics of the prevailing racial tradition. Race is a variable of societal organization which cuts across and interacts with more conventional factors. Racial tradition is relevant for understanding social and political processes not only in societies which have recently experienced institutionalized inequalities such as slavery and colonialism, but also in societies which long ago passed through these phases.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including race in the U.S. and Europe, populist movements and ideas, and Aldon Morris' study of intellectual and activist W.E.B. Du Bois.