A unique collection of essays with surprising twists on multiculturalism, social science, and scholarship covering different societies.

Dutch Racism is the first comprehensive study of its kind. The approach is unique, not comparative but relational, in unraveling the legacy of racism in the Netherlands and the (former) colonies. Authors contribute to identifying the complex ways in which racism operates in and beyond the national borders, shaped by European and global influences, and intersecting with other systems of domination. Contrary to common sense beliefs it appears that old-fashioned biological notions of “race” never disappeared. At the same time the Netherlands echoes, if not leads, a wider European trend, where offensive statements about Muslims are an everyday phenomenon. Dutch Racism challenges readers to question what happens when the moral rejection of racism looses ground. The volume captures the layered nature of Dutch racism through a plurality of registers, methods, and disciplinary approaches: from sociology and history to literary analysis, art history and psychoanalysis, all different elements competing for relevance, truth value, and explanatory power. This range of voices and visions offers illuminating insights in the two closely related questions that organize this book: what factors contribute to the complexity of Dutch racism? And why is the concept of racism so intensely contested? The volume will speak to audiences across the humanities and social sciences and can be used as textbook in undergraduate as well as graduate courses. Philomena Essed is professor of Critical Race, Gender and Leadership studies, Antioch University (USA), PhD in Leadership and Change Program. Her books and edited volumes include Everyday Racism; Understanding Everyday Racism, Race Critical Theories; A Companion to Gender Studies (“outstanding” 2005 CHOICE award); and, Clones, Fakes and Posthumans: Cultures of Replication. Isabel Hoving is diversity officer at the Leiden University and affiliated with the Department of Film and Literary Studies of Leiden University. Her books include In Praise of New Travellers, Veranderingen van het alledaagse, and several other volumes on migration, Caribbean literatures, African literature and art. In addition to her academic work, she is an awarded youth writer.

"Slavery is never past in the way that we usually think it is: it is present both materially and psychologically in the lives of descendant communities, and it is an institution that persists internationally. Consequently, it is imperative that we fully understand the impacts and mechanisms of enslavement in the past so that we can help to dismantle them in the present. In recent years, researchers have used archaeological, sociological, and historical data to examine the lives of enslaved people. Using data not only from archaeological, sociological, and historical sources, but also original osteological, archaeological, and oral historical data, the author weaves stories about the lives of enslaved people that are personal and meaningful, and that take into account both the physical and psychological effects of enslavement"--

An impression has prevailed—and has gained credence at some times and in some places, that, in his later years, and in the presence of a society differently organized from that which he found at home, the ardor of his love of country was quenched:—that he became less an American as he saw more of other lands. What is it to be an American? The definition may vary, in different regions. What was it, always, with him? If to be an American means merely to be successful in a large and worldly way—whether in politics, or in business, or in letters; to out-talk, out-spend, out-bid, out-invent others; to drive faster; to travel farther; to push harder; to build bigger houses; to found more richly endowed Universities; to construct greater Observatories; to establish more and larger public libraries:—if to do these and similar things is all that goes to make an American—the charge is true. In such sense, Mr. Lowell was not so good an American as some others. But, in the larger and truer sense:—in striving for all that goes to make a people more noble in aim, more humane, more intelligent, more peace-loving, more free, more self-respecting, more artistic, in short more fully men and women of the best type,—Mr. Lowell may well be accepted as the representative American, of whom we should all be proud. It was his rare fortune to be Minister of the United States to Great Britain during a most interesting period. The serious troubles which had grown out of the wrong we had suffered at her hands during the civil war had been happily ended. The era of reconciliation had begun. In what light should we stand before the world, after winning the great verdict in the Alabama case:—as a community of sharp traders, condoning a great national wrong for a petty sum of money?—or as a people striving chiefly for the maintenance of the true principles of national honor and international comity? Mr. Lowell, perhaps more than any one in America, was the man who, by training, by culture, by scholarship, by attainments in the world of letters, by unsullied character, was fitted to present to the English people an embodiment of Americanism, in its best expression. More than that:—he was eminently fitted to illustrate that idea, and give it weight, dignity and authority. In all his intercourse with the aristocratic representatives of privileged countries, he—the plain, untitled representative of a democratic government—proud to stand for a people with whom liberty and equality were supreme terms—more than held his own in every trial of intellect, of courtesy, of wit, of all that wins in society and the world. So, at last, no circle was complete without him:—to claim him as guest was matter of emulation. Some of these things are, in a certain sense, of small account. Yet in a society so largely conventional as all diplomatic society is, and of necessity must be, it is much that an American should, by common consent, stand at the head, even in matters of ceremonial. It reveals a quickness and versatility of mind which is not common. A certain native, spontaneous grace, both of words and manner, characterized all Mr. Lowell’s utterances; and it was so truly genuine that it could not fail to charm, when the mere external imitation was sure to repel. The record which this little book gives of his unstudied speeches and letters in England shows how thoroughly imbued he was with the American idea. It also shows how strenuously he used every occasion to try to bring about a higher and truer friendship between the two great countries whose mission it seems to be to uphold and extend regulated liberty throughout the world. Some of these speeches were made while he was still accredited Minister to Great Britain: others, after he had ceased to hold the title, though he remained in reality the true American representative to that people. There is, perhaps, no other instance of a citizen of the United States holding such position, with ever increasing regard, for years after he had ceased to be titular representative. The honors bestowed on him by the Universities were more than out-done by the honor in which he was held by the people. The one was a tribute to scholarship and attainments:—the other, a recognition of manhood and integrity.

Anthropological practice has been dominated by the so-called "great" traditions (Anglo-American, French, and German). However, processes of decolonization, along with critical interrogation of these dominant narratives, have led to greater visibility of what used to be seen as peripheral scholarship. With contributions from leading anthropologists and social scientists from different countries and anthropological traditions, this volume gives voice to scholars outside these "great" traditions. It shows the immense variety of methodologies, training, and approaches that scholars from these regions bring to anthropology and the social sciences in general, thus enriching the disciplines in important ways at an age marked by multiculturalism, globalization, and transnationalism.

Once upon a time, only the other day, when jovial King Kalakaua established a record for the kings of earth and time, there entered into his Polynesian brain as merry a scheme of international intrigue as ever might have altered the destiny of races and places. The time was 1881; the place of the intrigue, the palace of the Mikado at Tokio. The record must not be omitted, for it was none other than that for the first time in the history of kings and of the world a reigning sovereign, in his own royal person, put a girdle around the earth. The intrigue? It was certainly as international as any international intrigue could be. Also, it was equally as dark, while it was precisely in alignment with the future conflicting courses of empires. Manifest destiny was more than incidentally concerned. When the manifest destinies of two dynamic races move on ancient and immemorial lines toward each other from east to west and west to east along the same parallels of latitude, there is an inevitable point on the earth’s surface where they will collide. In this case, the races were the Anglo-Saxon (represented by the Americans), and the Mongolian (represented by the Japanese). The place was Hawaii, the lovely and lovable, beloved of countless many as “Hawaii Nei.” Kalakaua, despite his merriness, foresaw clearly, either that the United States would absorb Hawaii, or that, allied by closest marital ties to the royal house of the Rising Sun, Hawaii could be a brother kingdom in an empire. That he saw clearly, the situation to-day attests. Hawaii Nei is a territory of the United States. There are more Japanese resident in Hawaii at the present time than are resident other nationalities, not even excepting the native Hawaiians. The figures are eloquent. In round numbers, there are twenty-five thousand pure Hawaiians, twenty-five thousand various Caucasians, twenty-three thousand Portuguese, twenty-one thousand Chinese, fifteen thousand Filipinos, a sprinkling of many other breeds, an amazing complexity of intermingled breeds, and ninety thousand Japanese. And, most amazingly eloquent of all statistics are those of the race purity of the Japanese mating. In the year 1914, the Registrar General is authority for the statements that one American male and one Spanish male respectively married Japanese females, that one Japanese male married a Hapa-Haole, or Caucasian-Hawaiian female, and that three Japanese males married pure Hawaiian females. When it comes to an innate antipathy toward mongrelization, the dominant national in Hawaii, the Japanese, proves himself more jealously exclusive by far than any other national. Omitting the records of all the other nationals which go to make up the amazing mongrelization of races in this smelting pot of the races, let the record of pure-blood Americans be cited. In the same year of 1914, the Registrar General reports that of American males who intermingled their breed and seed with alien races, eleven married pure Hawaiians, twenty-five married Caucasian-Hawaiians, three married pure Chinese, four married Chinese-Hawaiians, and one married a pure Japanese. To sum the same thing up with a cross bearing: in the same year 1914, of over eighteen hundred Japanese women who married, only two married outside their race; of over eight hundred pure Caucasian women who married, over two hundred intermingled their breed and seed with races alien to their own. Reduced to decimals, of the females who went over the fence of race to secure fathers for their children, .25 of pure Caucasian women were guilty; .0014 of Japanese women were guilty—in vulgar fraction, one out of four Caucasian women; one out of one thousand Japanese women.

Waar plantages en slaven zijn, vluchten slaven van plantages. Al vrij snel na de stichting van de plantagekolonie Suriname (1651) ontsnapten Afrikaanse slaven om een menswaardig bestaan op te bouwen in het immense regenwoud. Zij vestigden zich in het labyrint van kreken en rivieren en voerden vandaar een felle guerrilla tegen de blanke planters. Een van deze groepen Marrons, zoals de gevluchte slaven in de literatuur bekend staan, is de Okanisi. Een zwarte vrijstaat in Suriname vertelt de geschiedenis van de Okanisi in de achttiende eeuw. Het is een geschiedenis van hekserij en orakels, van knechting en ontsnapping, van opsporing en oorlog. Na jaren van strijd kwam de koloniale overheid tot de conclusie dat zij de Marrons niet onderwerpen kon en bood hun in 1760 een vrede aan die door de Okanisi werd geaccepteerd. Het sluiten van de vrede tussen overheid en Okanisi was de erkenning van de eerste ‘zwarte vrijstaat’ in Suriname. De geschiedenis van de Okanisi is geschreven op basis van uniek materiaal. Dat materiaal bestaat uit verslagen van de koloniale oorlog tegen de Marrons en uit mondelinge overleveringen van de Okanisi. Een zwarte vrijstaat toont overtuigend aan dat in het verleden het heden ligt.