race & ethnicity theoretical overview

Race & Ethnicity

Structural Inequalities• What percentage of population? • Approx 10%• Educational disadvantage –African

Caribbean, Bangladeshi, Pakistani• Unemployment rates 2 or 3 times that of

white group – even when well qualified• More likely to live in social housing, and in

poor over-crowded conditions.

Race & Ethnicity• ‘Race’: 'socially defined but on the basis of

physical criteria.‘

• Ethnicity: 'socially defined but on the basis of cultural criteria' Van den Berghe, 1967: 9 in Goldberg, 1992, 553

• ‘For social boundaries to be actively maintained, they need to be continually validated, and this requires regular interaction with members of out groups’ (Frederick Barth, 1969, Ethnic Groups and Social Boundaries)

Race – ‘shifting signifier’

• Race – said to be a social invention• does not have a fixed referent • At different times has been associated

with species divide, religious belief, class, nation, citizenship, culture, ethnicity

• Consider notions of ‘breeding’ and eugenicist views

Instrumental or Primordial?

• Ethnicity as a resource to be used in times of competition.

• Ethnicity and race as deep-seated and relatively fixed

Marxism & Race• Marx recognised that racism – the divide and

rule of colonialism prevented a united working class opposing the bourgeoisie

• Race is not a primary category of analysis• But serves as a convenient tool of capitalism

which will wither away when economic reality is recognised,

• or a mask which serves to obscure true relations of power in a society, which are, in fact, class-based.

Neo-Weberian

• Rational Choice theory – • ‘race relations’ approach - the work of

John Rex and Michael Banton • Complex matrix of factors – class, status,

economic and cultural factors, patterns of consumption, stereotypes, forms of representation etc…

Neo-Marxists • 1. Relative Autonomy Model (Hall, 1980)• class and ‘race’ should be examined together.• 2. Autonomy Model (Gabriel and Ben-Tovim,

1979)• racism cannot be reduced to class conflict • 3. Migrant Labour Model (Miles & Phizacklea• “Race is an idea which should be explicitly and

consistently confined to the dustbin of analytically useless terms.”(Miles, 1984:42 in Solomos p8).

Pierre Bourdieu• concept of 'habitus', grounded in material

conditions and experience• struggle for ‘symbolic dominance’ • the habitus is a reflexive, generative

structure • a useful tool to look at cases of inter-ethnic

differences, alienation, and conflict• which are in a state of constant

adjustment and negotiation.

Black Feminism

• Historically profound connection between gender, sexuality and race

• Sojourner Truth: “...aint I a woman?” highlights the ‘double burden’ : sexism and racism

• Feminism recognised processes which are equally applicable to racialised groups:

• Erasure, Denial, Invisibility, Tokenism• critique of White feminism

Postmodernism & Race

• End of ‘grand narratives’ of history• Advent of Identity politics • Depoliticised, factionalised • Focus on representation rather than

ideology• Relativism and ‘differences’ rather than

universalism and ‘equal’ rights

Genocide and Postmodernism

Race & Media

slave figure Clown figuresRising Middle class non-threatening

blaxploitation genre

Race & Television

Four Key Themes in Racial Representation

• exotic • dangerous • humorous • pitied • (Alvarado et al. 1987: 153)

The Circuit of Culture

• Production • Consumption• Identity• Regulation• Representation

Dominant white discourses: Romantic, Anthropological, Literary and Racist

An imagined indigenous idyll

The reality is often life in harsh and squalid urban camps – as below in Darwin

Moral Panics

• described as a condition, episode, person or group of persons which emerge to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests (Cohen, 1972, p.9).

• 1970s the image of the black mugger • 1980s – image of rioter • 1990s – gangsta, gun crimes etc• 2000s – Media focus shifts to Muslims

Politics and Race

Multiculturalism

• What does it mean?• Ideal state – integration around a dominant

culture – or complex negotiation between many cultures?

• Trevor Philips of CRE recent reversal over multiculturalism

• ‘Sleepwalking towards segregation.’• Relativism V Universalism arguments• Identity Politics V struggle against inequality

+

+= MULTICULTURALISM

Steel Bands

Samosas Saris

Identity politics

• Criticised by left-leaning analysts as capitulation to cultural criticism

• in place of analysis of the material roots of oppression

• factionalizing and depoliticizing • dominance of symbolic over material

Too Diverse? Multicultural Debate

• Kenan Malik responds:• “the real problem is not a surfeit of strangers in

our midst but the abandonment over the past two decades of ideologically based politics for a politics of identity...

• The result has been the fragmentation of society as different groups assert their particular identities - and the creation of a well of resentment within white working class communities who feel left out.”

Bibliography

• Bronowski, J (1973) The Ascent of Man, BBC books• Goldberg D. T. and Solomos J.(eds) 2002, A Companion to racial and ethnic studies, Oxford, Blackwell• Goldberg D.T. (1993) Racist Culture, Blackwell• Goldberg D.T. (Ed) 1994, Multiculturalism, a Critical Reader, Blackwell.• Goodhart, David ‘Too diverse’ February 2004 Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/jjrinst/DavidGoodhart-

Immigration-Prospect.htm• Hall, S (2000) The Multicultural Question, Political Economy Research Centre, Lecture, transcript available on -

http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/perc/lectures/Hall.html) • Hall, S. et al. (1978), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, Macmillan, London. • Jenkins R (1997) Rethinking Ethnicity : arguments and explorations, Sage• Loomba A (1998) Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Routledge• Malik, K (1996) The Meaning of Race, Macmillan• Malik, K (2002) Race, pluralism and the meaning of difference, ( paper in New Formations, no33 (Spring 1998)

Available online at : http://www.kenanmalik.com/papers/new_formations.html• Malik, K (2002) Against Multiculturalism first appeared in the New Humanist (Summer 2002).

http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/against_mc.html• Malik, K (2004) Too Diverse: A Response to David Goodhart•  Muecke, S. (1982) ‘Available Discourses’ in Botsman, P. d (1982) Theoretical Strategies, Sydney, Local

Consumption Press. • PARIAH website (People Against Racism In Australian Homelands) managed by Mick Lambe (Better a Pariah

than a Liar) http://www.country-liberal-party.com/pages/incarc_p5.htm• Spencer, S (2006) Race and Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation, Routledge