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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... Politics and Cultural Studies studying topics relating to Race and Ethnicity and Whiteness Studies. Steve GarnerisSenior Lecturer in Sociology atthe University of the West of England, Bristol. He haspublished on racism, immigration ...
... political identifications, the structure of discrimination means that the option of identifying as white in particularsocial and political contextsremains open and rewarding.Thinking ofyourself as'white', asthewhiteness problematic ...
... politics based onwhite victimhood to be given credence. A constant refrainin whatmight be describedas the 'backlash ... political correctness'. The problem forsocial scientists interested in theracialisation ofwhite identitiesis how to ...
... political scienceshave accompanied sociologists, ethnologists and anthropologistsin this enterprise. This all means that when someone asks me 'what is the definition of whiteness?' I find it impossible to answer directly. You may as ...
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