Synopses & Reviews
Kamari Maxine Clarke and Deborah A. Thomas argue that a firm grasp of globalization requires an understanding of how race has constituted, and been constituted by, global transformations. Focusing attention on race as an analytic category, this state-of-the-art collection of essays explores the changing meanings of blackness in the context of globalization. It illuminates the connections between contemporary global processes of racialization and transnational circulations set in motion by imperialism and slavery; between popular culture and global conceptions of blackness; and between the work of anthropologists, policymakers, religious revivalists, and activists and the solidification and globalization of racial categories.
A number of the essays bring to light the formative but not unproblematic influence of African American identity on other populations within the black diaspora. Among these are an examination of the impact of andldquo;black Americaandrdquo; on racial identity and politics in mid-twentieth-century Liverpool and an inquiry into the distinctive experiences of blacks in Canada. Contributors investigate concepts of race and space in early-twenty-first century Harlem, the experiences of trafficked Nigerian sex workers in Italy, and the persistence of race in the purportedly non-racial language of the andldquo;New South Africa.andrdquo; They highlight how blackness is consumed and expressed in Cuban timba music, in West Indian adolescent girlsandrsquo; fascination with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and in the incorporation of American rap music into black London culture. Connecting race to ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, and religion, these essays reveal how new class economies, ideologies of belonging, and constructions of social difference are emerging from ongoing global transformations.
Contributors. Robert L. Adams, Lee D. Baker, Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Tina M. Campt, Kamari Maxine Clarke, Raymond Codrington, Grant Farred, Kesha Fikes, Isar Godreau, Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, John L. Jackson Jr., Oneka LaBennett, Naomi Pabst, Lena Sawyer, Deborah A. Thomas
Review
andldquo;Globalization and Race will be an invaluable resource for courses on diaspora, anthropology, and cultural studies. The keen attention to subjectivities created through discourses and practices that figure race, gender, class, national, and continental differences in global contexts makes this volume distinctive.andrdquo;andmdash;Paulla A. Ebron, author of Performing Africa
Review
andldquo;Contrary to the glib forecasts of many academic and journalistic pundits, race is not going away; rather it is energetically reorganizing itself and working through new global divisions. Globalization and Race examines this new context by inquiring into the various ways that emerging global processes are fundamentally reshaping the way people of African descent experience and theorize racial identity.andrdquo;andmdash;David Scott, author of Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment
Review
andldquo;Globalization and Race is an invaluable resource for anyone in the humanities or the social sciences who wants to understand how the contemporary politics of race is being re-conceptualized. The essays cover a wide range of topics and provide new theoretical vocabularies not only for understanding the globalizing forces of capital, labor, and technologies, but for the new hierarchies of racial ordering which emerge in their wake. This will quickly become the standard work in the field.andrdquo;andmdash;Hazel V. Carby, author of Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America
Review
andldquo;An interesting and useful book that will undoubtedly appear on many reading lists, this volume is welcome for its explicit aim of paying close attention to global processes in the construction of race.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Focusing attention on race as an analytic category, this collection of essays explores the changing meanings of blackness in the context of globalization. It illuminates the connections between contemporary global processes of racialisation and trans-national circulations set in motion by imperialism and slavery.
Synopsis
A collection that theorizes how global political and economic changes have influenced the ways in which people of African descent represent and contemplate their identities.
About the Author
“Globalization and Race will be an invaluable resource for courses on diaspora, anthropology, and cultural studies. The keen attention to subjectivities created through discourses and practices that figure race, gender, class, national, and continental differences in global contexts makes this volume distinctive.”—Paulla A. Ebron, author of Performing Africa“Contrary to the glib forecasts of many academic and journalistic pundits, race is not going away; rather it is energetically reorganizing itself and working through new global divisions. Globalization and Race examines this new context by inquiring into the various ways that emerging global processes are fundamentally reshaping the way people of African descent experience and theorize racial identity.”—David Scott, author of Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment“Globalization and Race is an invaluable resource for anyone in the humanities or the social sciences who wants to understand how the contemporary politics of race is being re-conceptualized. The essays cover a wide range of topics and provide new theoretical vocabularies not only for understanding the globalizing forces of capital, labor, and technologies, but for the new hierarchies of racial ordering which emerge in their wake. This will quickly become the standard work in the field.”—Hazel V. Carby, author of Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Globalization and the Transformations of Race / Deborah A. Thomas and Kamari Maxine Clarke 1
Part I. Diasporic Movements, Missions and Modernities
Missionary Positions / Lee D. Baker 37
History at the Crossroads: Vodu and the Modernization of the Dominican Borderlands / Robert L. Adams 55
Diaspora and Desire: Gendering andldquo;Black Americaandrdquo; in Black Liverpool / Jacqueline Nassy Brown 73
Diaspora Space, Ethnographic Space: Writing History Between the Lines / Tina M. Campt 93
andldquo;Mama, Iandrsquo;m Walking to Canadaandrdquo;: Black Geopolitics and Invisible Empires / Naomi Pabst 112
Part II. Geograpies of Racial Belonging
Mapping Transnationality: Roots Tourism and the Institutionalization of Ethnic Heritage / Kamari Maxine Clarke 133
Emigration and the Spatial Production of Difference from Cape Verde / Kesha Fikes 154
Folkloric andldquo;Othersandrdquo;: Blanqueamiento and the Celebration of Blackness as an Exception in Puerto Rico / Isar P. Godreau 171
Gentrification, Globalization, and Georaciality / John L. Jackson Jr. 188
Recasting andldquo;Black Venusandrdquo; in the andldquo;Newandrdquo; African Dispora / Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe 206
andldquo;Shooting the White Girl Firstandrdquo;: Race in Post-aparteid South Africa / Grant Farred 226
Part III. Popular Blacknesses, andldquo;Authenticity,andrdquo; and New Measures of Legitimacy
Havanaandrsquo;s Timba: A Macho Sound for Black Sex / Ariana Hernandez-Reguant 249
Reading Buffy and andldquo;Looking Properandrdquo;: Race, Gender, and Consumption among West Indian Girls in Brooklyn / Oneka Labennett 279
The Homegrown: Rap, Race, and Class in London / Raymond Codrington 299
Racialization, Gender, and the Negotiation of Power in Stockholmandrsquo;s African Dance Courses / Lena Sawyer 316
Modern Blackness: Progress, andldquo;America,andrdquo; and the Politics of Popular Culture in Jamaica / Deborah A. Thomas 335
Bibliography 355
Contributors 391
Index 395