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. |
From inside the book
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... racialised identitywhose precise meanings derivefrom national racial regimes. 2. Whitenessas an identity exists onlyinsofar as other racialisedidentities, such as blackness, Asianness, etc., exist. 3. Whiteness hasbeen ...
... racialised as white. It is not onlya question of being one thingrather than another, but that thesocial locations make sense only relativeto each other,and withinabroader social structure.AsMills (1997: 11)asserts, in relation ...
... racialised (ratherthanas individuals),trappedin prejudice (maybe historical),andunable to make thestep up fromtheworld of communallydefined rights and wrongs tothe level playing field of contemporary colourblind western democracies ...
... racialised communities whichit then placed in antagonistic relationships. A number ofstudies of minorities began to ... racialisation (Hoggett etal.1996, Back 1996, Phoenix 1996). It wasinthis period alsothatone of the key cultural ...
... racialised identity that has generated if not channelled oppression for centuries.Part of theargument put forward inthis book is driven bythe needtodismantle theideathat 'white' isamonolithic identity, and make itapparent thatthe ...