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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... Whiteness isanessential purchase forstudents of Sociology, History, Politics and Cultural Studies studying topics relating to Race and Ethnicity and Whiteness Studies. Steve GarnerisSenior Lecturer in Sociology atthe University of the ...
... whiteness'. Wendy Shaw notes that'... researchonwhiteness has tendedtosuffer from guilt bydiscursive association with the bulk ofWhiteness Studies' (2006: 854). This guilt derives, first,fromthe perceived dangersinvolved in giving ...
... whiteness studies wilfully displaces theargument fromthe complexity ofgroup relations to the focus on responses to racism. Studying whiteness links the realmof individual prejudices withthesystemic patterns of discrimination thatbegan ...
... whiteness, 'as a concept honed byacademics and activists' in the introduction to his cultural analysisof white people (Hartigan2005: 1).'Whiteness ... studies texts in the field, Richard Dyer'sWhite (1997), was published. The objective was to ...
... studies in whiteness should alwaysberacism and racialisation. How do these relationships become embodied in real people in real places at specific times? If analysis becomes solely the dissection of fine distinctions between various ...