Synopses & Reviews
High profile 'mixed race' stars like Tiger Woods have brought the politics of identity into the mainstream. Jill Olumide argues that we must examine the contradictions inherent in the term "mixed race" in order to reach a fuller understanding of the variety in human experience and identity. Olumide demonstrates that there are distinctive features of mixed race experience that span time and place. By comparing contemporary experiences of mixed race, collected through interviews and workshops, with those of past populations in different parts of the world, she explains how its meaning alters with national boundary, historical context, class, gender and ethnicity. Showing how different communities are linked by social ambiguity, dependency and the denial of social space, she reveals that the underlying ideology is transformed by social, economic and political change. As mixed race groups across the world call for the right of self-definition, this book reveals that it is through understanding the plurality of the category of mixed race that we are best able to transcend the idea of 'race' and challenge the racial axes of social division. The book includes an examination of the folklore around racism and anti-racism, and the agencies through which ideologies of race are propagated, including social welfare groups, religious groups, scientific texts, and the family.
Synopsis
Investigates ideologies of race and mixed race, and the way they are constructed through social institutions and scientific texts.
Synopsis
A collection of anthropological studies which reveals the vast, overwhelming presence of security systems across modern Europe.
About the Author
Mark Maguire is Head of Anthropology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth._x000B_Catarina Frois is Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Lisbon University._x000B_Nils Zurawski is Visiting Professor in Security, Social Conflicts and Regulation at the University of Hamburg.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. A Spell to Make Them Balance: Introduction
Dangerous Knowledge
Importance of Studying Mixed Race
Divisions
The Mixed race Condition
Group Identity
A Theory of Lived Experience
Social Construction: Passing and Being Passed
Passing As...
Structure of the book
2. The Hall of Mirrors: Structures of Power
The Babalawo and the Sociologist
Ideology and State
Ideology For What?
Race and its Provenance
Religion and Race
Ethnocentricism
European Roots of Race Thinking
Spain
Classification and Race