Whiteness: An IntroductionWhat is whiteness? Why is it worth using as a tool in the social sciences? Making sociological sense of the idea of whiteness, this book skilfully argues how this concept can help us understand contemporary societies. If one of sociology's objectives is to make the familiar unfamiliar in order to gain heightened understanding, then whiteness offers a perfect opportunity to do so. Leaning firstly on the North American corpus, this key book critically engages with writings on the formation of white identities in Britain, Ireland and the Americas, using multidisciplinary sources. Empirical work done in the UK, including the author's own, is developed in order to suggest how whiteness functions in Britain. Bringing an emphasis on empirical work to a heavily theorized area, this important text synthesizes and reviews existing work, incorporates multidisciplinary sources of interest to those outside the sociology sphere, and features concise chapters which will engage undergraduates. Garner deftly argues that whiteness is a multifaceted, contingent and fluid identity, and that it must be incorporated into any contemporary understandings of racism as a system of power relationships in both its local and global forms. |
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... Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis eLibrary, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf ...
... group is invalid. One commentator expresses hisunderstanding thus: 'The essence ofthe discipline canbe summed up in two words: Hating Whitey'. 2This representation ofthethrust of whiteness studies wilfully displaces theargument fromthe ...
... group recognised ashaving biological and culturallinks across time andspace. The 'white race' perse,asa transnational homogenous bloc, isnotmentioned untilthe mid nineteenth century,although white had beenusedtodescribe groups of people ...
... groups of white people, then we are moving away from thisethostowards studies of class, gender, sexuality per se.Theyare fine, butarenot directly of concernto us in an introduction to whiteness. Jesse Daniels (1997), for example, shows ...
... groups. These claims canonly make sense ifthecenturieslong ideological labour establishing theidea that white people are superior in terms of civilisation is acknowledged. A person racialised as white can be ideologically exiled from ...