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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... relationships.This innovative book: providesa critical review of key themes for the multidisciplinary literature on whiteness; utilisesabalanced combination of theory, existing empirical dataandnew fieldworktodemonstrate howpolitical ...
... relationships referredto as racism. Since then, after conducting qualitative research, and through reading through and talking aroundissuesthat using whiteness throws up, I have realised that whenwe talkaboutthis topicwedoso from points ...
... argumentispresented inthree sections of the book. Chapters 1–4 dealwiththe waysin whichwhiteness has been theorised and appliedto social relationships sofar. Sincethe predominant academic production of work on whiteness has emanated from.
... relationships. A number ofstudies of minorities began to constitute the corpus.It was notuntil thelate 1970s thata seriousattempt was made to theorise therelationship betweenthe state,the dominant majorityand the minoritiesintheUK (Hall ...
... thistext with the idea that any attempt touse whiteness inother contextsispotentially dangerous, I encourage you to bearwith me. Whatstrikes memost about using whitenessto understand aspects of social relationships is how it might impact ...