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The Arena of Racism
First Edition
- Michel Wieviorka - EHESS, France, Director of the Foundation Maison des sciences de l'homme, Professor, EHESS, France, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and CADIS
176 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
This translation of Michel Wieviorka's L'espace du racisme is the most important addition to the sociological literature on racism published thus far. Although The Arena of Racism presents a detailed and revisionary analysis of the "vocabulary" of racism (prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and violence), Wieviorka argues that racism is not reducible to these "elementary forms." He uses the experiences of institutionalized racism in America and antisemitism in Europe to situate an analysis of the complex transition from race to racism. Wieviorka has written an essential analyticalùrather than simply historicalùstudy of racism. He argues that racism has to be understood as an action related to factors fixed in the dislocation between the social and the communal. As the social relations defined by industrial capitalism are in decline, so too are ideas of progress and universality. It is in this context, of postmodern social and economic flux, that Wieviorka sculpts a definition of racism.
Wieviorka has referred to his work as "an integrated set of analytical instruments." Faculty and scholars in the areas of sociology, cultural studies, race relations, and political science will find The Arena of Racism to be one of the key texts to be published on the sociology of racism in the last 10 years.
PART ONE: FROM RACE TO RACISM
Introduction
Race as Explanatory Principle
Race Relations
Prejudice and Personality
Racism as Ideology
Conclusion
PART TWO: THE ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RACISM
Introduction
Levels and Logics of Racism
Prejudice
Segregation, Discrimination
Racist Violence
Conclusion
PART THREE: THE UNITY OF RACISM
Introduction
Social Movements and Racism
Two Patterns of Racism
Communal Identity and Racism
Conclusion
`Michel Wieviorka is one of France's leading sociologists. Strongly influenced by the theoretical perspectives of Touraine, he is nevertheless a distinctive voice and his writing on several different subjects is original and provocative. Responding to the new expression of racism in France over the past decade or more, with this book, he has stimulated a debate about the meaning and scope of the concept of racism which articulates with the writing of other leading French sociologists and philosophers. But Wieviorka's concerns and focus are not just with France but with the nature and effects of racism in the late twentieth century and it therefore warrants wide attention' - Professor Robert Miles, University of Glasgow
