‘White UK, White Other, whatever…: notes on unsettlement in provincial England’ Steve Garner,...
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Transcript of ‘White UK, White Other, whatever…: notes on unsettlement in provincial England’ Steve Garner,...
‘White UK, White Other, whatever…: notes on
unsettlement in provincial England’
Steve Garner, School of Sociology, UWE Bristol
‘
The Future of Multicultural Britain’University of Surrey, 15.6.05
Argument Map
• White is not an ethnic group:
construction -should be critically framed
• The category white is riven with distinctions; inter alia classed ones• Revealed in talking
about and ‘doing’ community
White
Vast US literature:
1. Terror 2. Cultural
capital3. Absence –
invisibility4. Contingent
hierarchies
•i.e. no single way to view whiteness
without oversimplification•Borders - internal
and external
Some UK-based work on whiteness
• Bonnett: Historical overviews
• Hoggett – Jealousies & Loss• Back: Dividing lines - inter-ethnic
alliances • Nayak: Distinctions
within w-c cultures
Asylum: catalyst for whiteness
• Grillo (2005)• South Coast – relatively wealthy
community• Expressions of antipathy; security,
safety, effect on house prices, drain on
resources.• Vehemently deny being racist: (BNP) – resistance to State
and particular type of Others
‘Keep them Out’ (2004)• Violation (rape
and theft).• Contamination (HIV and foreign illnesses)
• Cultural degradation (dilution)
• Usurpation (taking over our territory)• - Beleaguered,
unlistened-to community
Ongoing work
• Research project: community in S-W
• Classed expressions of opposition: MC (defending space, values, tradition,
ways of being); WC - economic
competition –hierarchy of
entitlement is racialised
White ‘Others’ I•Historically – the
Other of the British was a white catholic European.
•Tradition of ‘anthropologising’
the white w-c•Now too white -pathologised as
uneducated racists
White ‘Others’ II
• Whites have white ‘Others’;
Young people
Drug-dealers,
Binge-drinkers,
Chavs, etc.
• Fear of this in estates and m-c residential areas.
Structure - Policy• Some structural
parameters; e.g. changing work
patterns; housing – prices and ‘right-to-buy’; local economic investment; asylum.
• Ramifications of policy on asylum?
• Is there a limit to rationality?
Conclusions• ‘White’ cannot be used as an
explanatory & predictive category
• Whiteness suspends classed fears: relocates them within constructed subjects: e.g.
asylum-seeker
• Policy-making requires more understanding of what drives
insecurities
• ‘Racism’ might require some reworking in the light of
changing modes of expression