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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... problematic has particular limits and advantages, but is not a groundbreaking panacea. Imake no claims forits application outside the fieldof the socialsciences, and have nowish touseitas an excuse to focus solely ontheways white people ...
... problematic isawaste of energyinthe fight against racism,you willnotbeon this spectrum at all. Yet if you have read this far, you mightstillbe interested inwhere we aregoingwith this. While'abolishing whiteness' hasa pleasing ringtoit ...
... problematic. In zooming in on the distinctions at that end, the overarching framegoes out of focus. Pitfall5: Assumingthat analysingwhiteness is an anti racist procedureperse This could in some ways be seen as a synthesis of the first ...
... problematic –a setofconceptual frameworks – and a collection of rival perspectives about the effects of power. I decided to group the mainstream approaches deployed into five themes (Garner 2006), which, with revisions, providethe ...
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