14 research outputs found
Whiteness and loss in outer East London: tracing the collective memories of diaspora space
This paper explores collective memory in Newham, East London. It addresses how remembering East London as the home of whiteness and traditional forms of community entails powerful forms of forgetting. Newham's formation through migration â its âgreat timeâ â has ensured that myths of indigeneity and whiteness have never stood still. Through engaging with young people's and youth workers' memory practices, the paper explores how phantasms of whiteness and class loss are traced over, and how this tracing reveals ambivalence and porosity, at the same time as it highlights the continued allure of race. It explores how whiteness and class loss are appropriated across ethnic boundaries and how they are mobilized to produce new forms of racial hierarchy in a âsuper-diverseâ place
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Family, community and politics: the fertile legacy of Michael Young
The Institute of Community Studies was set up by Michael Young in order to carry out research on politically relevant social issues, in a context free from direct political control. A research method was devised for it whereby researchers made their own values and objectives very explicit, while staying as close as possible in their reports to the concerns and language of respondents themselves. This method has often been criticized by professional sociologists: but it reflects quite well the nature of social knowledge. It has produced reports which help to increase public understanding of social processes, and provide useful guidance to policy makers. Professional sociology on the other hand has tried to develop a
rigorously value-free method. As a result, though, it often seems to be tied implicitly to values shared among researchers but not more universally. Arguably this makes it harder for the general public to understand,
and accept, its findings
School de-segregation and the Politics of âForced Integrationâ
Using the programme for creating the controversial school academies,
local governments in the UK have attempted to force an integration of schools
with majority white and ethnic minority pupil cohorts via new mergers. This has
largely been as a response to analystsâ fears about self-segregation and insufficient
community cohesion, following riots in northern towns in 2001 and the spectre of
radicalisation among young Muslims following 9/11 and 7/7. An examination of
school mergers in Burnley, Blackburn, Leeds and Oldham reveals how they have
amplified racial attacks on Muslim pupils and their feelings of insecurity, while
also fuelling a backlash against what is perceived by some members of the white
working class as a form of social engineering that endangers white privilege
Post-millennial local whiteness: racialism, white dis/advantage and the denial of racism
In the tumultuous early 21st century, vigorous appeals to whiteness in Britain are largely attributed to populist ethno-nationalism. This article offers a complementary critical account focusing on the use of âracialismâ as a purportedly non-invidious theoretical framework for describing racial differences and resultant societal impacts. Drawing on recent examples, especially the work of David Goodhart and Eric Kaufmann, I consider the deployment of racialism to characterise a benign white ethno-racial communalism based on âself-interestâ and a positive preference for âco-ethnicsâ sharing common values. I suggest that racialist local whiteness is used to pursue two repudiatory projects: first, politically weakening black, Asian and minority ethnic groups by constituting white disadvantage; and second, disarming accounts of pervasive and systemic racism by naturalising racial stratification. Ultimately, I argue that an understanding of racialist local whiteness guards against the racial reification of populist nationalism and illuminates the deeper entrenchment of racism