Return to search

Modernity, racism and subjectivity

Racism, understood as the form of ideology and the set of social practices based on explicit and implicit notions of biologically determined human ‘races’, is a modern phenomenon. Other major forms of social cleavage together with the ideologies which contribute to and support them, such as those which relate to class and gender, have had a complex relationship with racism. Nevertheless racism needs to be distinguished analytically from each of these, and given its due as a relatively autonomous system. Viewed from the perspective of the systematic patterning of social life, it has institutional backing and support. In the modern West especially, it has organised, and it continues to help organise, significant areas of social domain. It has a history, which includes the history of ideas and of representations of the Other, and it is closely tied to economic production and relations. Though it may be that racism is generated primarily at the social and economic levels, it is experienced psychologically, and psychology plays a role in its reproduction. Racism, then, needs to be examined not only in terms of its social structural features, but at the same time in terms of the involvement of subjectivity in its processes.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245377
CreatorsMoran, Anthony F.
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
RightsTerms and Conditions: Copyright in works deposited in the University of Melbourne Eprints Repository (UMER) is retained by the copyright owner. The work may not be altered without permission from the copyright owner. Readers may only, download, print, and save electronic copies of whole works for their own personal non-commercial use. Any use that exceeds these limits requires permission from the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from these works., Open Access

Page generated in 0.0025 seconds