The Arena of Racism
- Michel Wieviorka - EHESS, France
As cultural identies are more and more fragmented in our societies, as the social relations defined by industrial capitalism are in decline, so too are ideas of progress and universality. It is in this context of postmodern social and economic flux that Wieviorka puts forward a definition of racism. He demonstrates that racism has to be understood as an action related to factors fixed in the dislocation between the social and the communal.
`Michel Wieviorka is one of France's leading sociologists. Strongly influenced by the theoretical perspectives of Touraine, he is nevertheless a distinctive voice and his writing on several different subjects is original and provocative. Responding to the new expression of racism in France over the past decade or more, with this book, he has stimulated a debate about the meaning and scope of the concept of racism which articulates with the writing of other leading French sociologists and philosophers. But Wieviorka's concerns and focus are not just with France but with the nature and effects of racism in the late twentieth century and it therefore warrants wide attention' - Professor Robert Miles, University of Glasgow