A look at the politics of race in Britain over the last 50 years

A lively and informative set of perspectives on the key themes that shape modern Britain.

Taking a comparative approach this book examines the evolution of anti-racial discrimination law from a socio-legal perspective. The book focuses primarily on Great Britain and Germany but also demonstrates how national politics feeds into EU policy.

Race, Ethnicity and Social Theory provides a critical analysis of the main areas of scholarly research and debate about racial and ethnic relations over the past few decades. The book covers substantive areas of scholarly debate in this fast-changing field, including race and social relations, identities and the construction of the racial other, feminism and race, the relationship between race and nationalism, antisemitism, the evolution of new forms of racism, race and political representation and, more generally, the changing debates about race and ethnicity in our global environment. The book argues that there is a need for more dialogue across national and conceptual boundaries about how to develop the theoretical tools needed to understand both the historical roots of contemporary forms of racialised social and political relations and the contemporary forms through which race is made and re-made. A key argument that runs through the book is the need to develop conceptual frameworks that can help us to make sense of the changing forms of racial and ethnic relations in contemporary societies. This means developing more dialogue across national research cultures as well as empirical research that seeks to engage with the key issues raised by contemporary theoretical debates. The book will be of interest to both students wanting to develop a deeper understanding of this area of scholarship and to researchers of race, ethnicity and migration working in various national and disciplinary environments.

This volume contends that British social work education has not fully acknowledged the evolution of structural and institutionalized racism in the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Tracing the ways in which racism toward Britain's ethnic minority groups has changed, the contributors—many of them key practitioners in the field—argue that social work training should fully integrate anti-racist practices that reflect contemporary realities. In doing so, they assert the importance of social work in addressing racism toward groups including Eastern European migrants, Roma people, and asylum seekers.

How did social, cultural and political events in Britain during the 1950s shape modern British fiction? As Britain emerged from the shadow of war into the new decade of the 1950s, the seeds of profound social change were being sown. Exploring the full range of fiction in the 1950s, this volume surveys the ways in which these changes were reflected in British culture. Chapters cover the rise of the 'Angry Young Men', an emerging youth culture and vivid new voices from immigrant and feminist writers. A major critical re-evaluation of the decade, the book covers such writers as Margery Allingham, Kingsley Amis, E. R. Braithwaite, Rodney Garland, Martyn Goff, Attia Hosain, George Lamming, Marghanita Laski, Doris Lessing, Colin MacInnes, Naomi Mitchison, V. S. Naipaul, Barbara Pym, Mary Renault, Sam Selvon, Alan Sillitoe, John Sommerfield, Muriel Spark, J. R. R. Tolkien, Angus Wilson and John Wyndham.

In recent years geographers interested in ethnicity, 'race' and racism have extended their focus from examining geographies of segregation and racism to exploring cultural politics, social practice and everyday geographies of identity and experience. This edited collection illustrates this new work and includes research on youth and new ethnicities; the contested politics of 'race' and racism; intersections of ethnicity, religion and 'race' and the theorisation and interrogation of whiteness. Case studies from the UK and Ireland focus on the intersections of 'race' and nation and the specificities of place in discourses of racilisation and identity. A key feature of the book is its engagement with a range of methodological approaches to examining the significance of race including ethnography, visual methodologies and historical analysis.

This book examines how South Asian women’s collective agency is operationalized through civic organizations in the UK. Drawing on black feminist theory and third world feminism, it shows the complexity of political agency and its relationship to identity and subjectivity, and uses empirical research to demonstrate how women are empowered to resist domination. The historically racialized image of the South Asian woman as lacking in political agency is challenged through their long history of activism on the Indian subcontinent. The creation of "critical spaces" by South Asian women in the diaspora places them as active agents who have successfully influenced social policy on important issues such as forced marriage, domestic violence and sexuality. The engagement with the empirical data demonstrates the significance and impact of race, racism, sexism and religion on the lives of the women. The book brings to the fore the pursuit of equality, rights and justice, including multiculturalism and the often debated emancipatory role of religion.

"A conceptually power-packed volume that is at once erudite and accessible, expansive and focused, true to sociological traditions yet stimulatingly exploratory. Scholars and students will be served very well by this absorbing, far-reaching enquiry into ethnicity and race." - Raymond Taras, Tulane University "This concise, profound, and beautifully written book offers a tour de force across the landscape of race and ethnicity by a young author who masters them all." - Per Mouritsen, Aarhus University This book offers an accessible discussion of both foundational and novel concepts in the study of race and ethnicity. Each account will help readers become familiar with how long standing and contemporary arguments within race and ethnicity studies contribute to our understanding of social and political life more broadly. Providing an excellent starting point with which to understand the contemporary relevance of these concepts, Nasar Meer offers an up-to-date and engaging consideration of everyday examples from around the world. This is an indispensable guide for both students and established researchers interested in the study of race and ethnicity.

The book explores the complex interconnections between media, political organisation and society. This is particularly important in a period when politics seems to be in crisis. This 'crisis' can be seen in problems of trust affecting political institutions and politicians, the apparently widespread political cynicism and apathy of audiences and citizens, and the perception that processes of globalisation are undermining the bases of contemporary democracy and public discussion. Old cherished views and ideals seem dead and there appears to be no clear vision of the future. This pessimistic view has been expressed, most cogently and explicitly, in the 'end of politics' thesis. Rather than taking this view the book investigates in detail how the use of media and new technology affects politics and how the consequences vary across national societies and regions. It focuses in particular on the way new technology poses problems, but also offers potentialities and solutions, for political actors of all sorts. To this end particular attention is paid to various political uses of the internet. The book closely analyses how political parties, pressure groups, governments and social movements explore and develop the range of media forms and rhetorics and assesses the aggregate consequences this has for political life. The book argues that key versions of the 'end of politics' thesis are simply too pessimistic about what we can hope for from the future and imply an unrealistic nostalgia about the past. Rather it puts the media-politics relationship into the broader context of a culturally complex and changing contemporary information society..