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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... tothe people mentioned inthe acknowledgements page of RIE, and then to the ESRC, and especially the Programme Director MargieWetherell, for allher constructive criticism and support.Mywork never reallygets going without aseriesof ...
... tothe level playing field of contemporary colourblind western democracies. Indeed, seeing 'race' atallisoften imagined as beingracistin itself. Likegender ('Surely womenare nowequal to men?'),andclass ('Surely that is adivisive ...
... tothe social. Yetthe critiqueismore widelypertinent than this.The obviousthingtosay is thattheUSmodel ofblacknessand whiteness isnot applicable in toto to other contexts, but how andwhyis moreinteresting. Soif you come to thistext with ...
... to the point of representing a choice. 'Race' is just one trope like others. The element of cultural choiceis emphasised tothe exclusion of the material (or structural) parameters on people's agency, to give the idea of people optingin ...
... to the functioningofthe Federal Housing Authority (FHA), setup in 1934, whichlent virtually exclusively to white families ... tothe suburbs, thisprocess was uneven. Inthe1960– 1977 period, 0.5million AfricanAmericans and 4 millionwhite ...