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The Arena of Racism
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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


August 1996 | 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
The Unity of Racism

 

`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

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Paperback
ISBN: 9780803978812
$74.00