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Racism is a world problem. From Morocco to China, Brazil to Indonesia, racism is being debated and contested. Multiracism broadens the horizon on this global challenge, showing that racism has a diverse history with multiple roots and routes.
Drawing on examples of racism from across the globe, with particular focus on cases from Asia and Africa, Alastair Bonnett rethinks the origins of racism and the connections between racism and modernity. Arguing that plural modernities are interwoven with plural racisms, he explores the relationship of racism to history, religion, politics, and nationalism, as well as to anti-Black prejudice and discourses of whiteness. Empirically rich, with numerous in-depth case studies, Multiracism equips readers to understand racism in a multipolar world where power is no longer the sole possession of the West. It provides and provokes a new, international, and post-Western vision of racism for the twenty-first century.
List of contents
Introduction: Reframing Racisms
Chapter 1 Explaining Racisms Beyond the West: Roots and Routes
Chapter 2 History and Nostalgia: Ruptures, Racism, and the Experience of Loss
Chapter 3 Religion's Furies: Racism in Fundamentalism, Casteism, and Islamophobia
Chapter 4 Political Sites of Racist Modernity: Communism, Capitalism, and Nationalism
Chapter 5 Shifting Symbols: Whiteness in Japan and Blackness in Morocco
Conclusions
About the author
Alastair Bonnett is Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University.
Summary
Racism is a world problem. From Morocco to China, Brazil to Indonesia, racism is being debated and contested. Multiracism broadens the horizon on this global challenge, showing that racism has a diverse history with multiple roots and routes.
Drawing on examples of racism from across the globe, with particular focus on cases from Asia and Africa, Alastair Bonnett rethinks the origins of racism and the connections between racism and modernity. Arguing that plural modernities are interwoven with plural racisms, he explores the relationship of racism to history, religion, politics, and nationalism, as well as to anti-Black prejudice and discourses of whiteness. Empirically rich, with numerous in-depth case studies, Multiracism equips readers to understand racism in a multipolar world where power is no longer the sole possession of the West. It provides and provokes a new, international, and post-Western vision of racism for the twenty-first century.
Report
'Elegantly written with a breath-taking level of global reach, this highly readable account draws on a varied and engaging set of examples to articulate and elaborate the fundamental argument about global multiracism. This is a central paradigmatic challenge to mainstream positions in the field of racial and ethnic studies which fail to recognize and account for the huge range of racisms operating across the planet.'
Ian Law, University of Leeds
'Covering many non-Western societies where the binary White/non-White is absent, this book provides an incisive, insightful, and important contribution to the understanding of the specificities, practices, and consequences of "world racism". Highly recommended for specialists as well as general readers.'
Zaheer Baber, University of Toronto
