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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... that the bestway to understand whiteness is to think both relationally and comparatively,and second, thatifwhat we are doing is not a contributionto antiracist scholarship thenweshould stopdoing it immediately. There are two main ...
... thatthe privilege accruedis actually masking far more harmful inequalities affecting thevastmajority of white people ... that the option of identifying as white in particularsocial and political contextsremains open and rewarding ...
... that the focus of research can shift to the details of whiteidentities. I arguethat the fociof studies in whiteness should alwaysberacism and racialisation. How do these relationships become embodied in real people in real places at ...
... thatthe costsof capitalism includechild mortality and poverty that disproportionately impacts on them: When white terroristsbomba black church and kill black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deploredbymost segments ...
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