File spoon-archives/seminar-12.archive/transl-asia_1997/seminar-12.9704, message 34


Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 10:35:14 +0100
To: v.kalra-AT-man.ac.uk
From: Martin Bulmer <M.Bulmer-AT-surrey.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Annual Lecture


>Can you please send me details of the one day conference to be held to
>celebrate the anniversary of Racial and ethnic studies to be held in
>London on the 16/5/97. Is there a registration fee or is entrance by
>invitation.
>
>Thankyou
>
>V. S. Kalra

The ERS Lecture by John STone is on Thursday 15th at 5.30 p.m. at LSE and
is free. If you email me your postal address I will send you an invitation.

The conference on Friday 16h May is by advance booking only and there is a
registration fee of fifty pounds. Details follow. Closing date for
bookings, May 2nd.




Ethnic and Racial Studies Twentieth Anniversary Conference

(Sponsored by the British Academy and Routledge)


RETHINKING ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES

=46riday May 16th 1997, Central London, 9.30 am to 5.30 p.m.  Six papers

There will be a discussant for each paper, and general discussion of each
paper.


Abstracts

Paul Gilroy
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
Race Ends Here

It is impossible to deny that we are living through a crisis in the way
that the word "race" is understood and acted upon. There are many
dimensions to this situation and not all of them involve bad news. I want
to argue that this crisis has created an important opportunity for critical
reflection on "race" racism and ethnicity. Above all, this period offers a
precious chance to break away from the dangerous and destructive patterns
that were established when the absurdity of "race" was elevated into a
central political, cultural and economic concept and endowed with a power
to both determine and explain the unfolding of history. I will present an
explanation of this through a discussion of the ideas of scale that define
the boundaries within which modern notions of "race" make sense. Rather
than being too celebratory of the new possibilities this situation has
created, I'll note that the effects of racial discourses have become more
unpredictable as the quality of their claims upon the world has changed. In
particular, I'll address the rise of new gene-oriented or genomic
constructions of "race" and their evident distance from anything that fits
with older versions of racialogy produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.

T. N. Madan
(Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi)
Coping with Ethnicity in South Asia

Divisions that might have been said to be based on the primordial bonds of
race, language, religion etc are today often labelled as ethnic divisions.
What is it that the notion of ethnicity enables us to capture and analyse
that the earlier terminology does not? It would seem that conflict with the
state is the crucial thing; the state is seen as the antagonist in the
context of emergent subnationalisms. The second thing is the emphasis on
process as against substance. The cases of Bangladesh and Punjab will be
discussed. The former highlights the choice of alternate symbols or masks,
vis. religion and language. In the Sikh case the gradual shaping of the
territorial dimension of ethnicity will be discussed. Finally, the Kashmiri
case will be discussed to highlight the use of the same identity by
competing groups for divergent purposes.

Nazli Kibria
(Boston University)
Rethinking Assimilation: The Case of Second-Generation Chinese and Korean
Americans

This paper explores notions of assimilation and their relevance for
racially marked groups in the U.S. I focus in particular on the case of
second-generation Chinese and Korean Americans, drawing on materials from a
qualitative study. In the U.S. today, Chinese and Korean Americans as well
as Asian Americans more generally, are widely viewed as racial minorities
that have been relatively successful in their integration into U.S.
society. The experiences of these groups may thus highlight some of the
forms and processes of assimilation that operate for racial minorities
within a relatively favorable context of integration. The paper begins with
an exploration of experiences of race and racism for second-generation
Chinese and Korean Americans, and the implications of these experiences for
assimilation. Among the specific topics to be explored here are the
dynamics of Asian "lumping" (i.e. the assumption that persons of
Asian-origin are "the same"), racialized images of Asian sexuality, as well
as the stereotypes of Asians as "the model minority" and "the foreigner". I
argue that these dynamics are expressive of the racial positioning of
Asians as "a middle group" within the racial hierarchy of the U.S. The
second part of the paper looks at how institutions and processes associated
with globalization and the pan-Asian American movement work to mediate the
dynamics of race and assimilation.


Patricia Hill Collins
(University of Cincinnati)
The Tie that Binds: African-Americans, Intersectionality and Violence

While violence remains central to separate systems of oppression based on
race, gender, age, nationality, social class, and sexual orientation, it
may also operate as part of the conceptual glue that binds these systems
together. Rather than viewing violence exclusively as a distinct part of
each system, violence both operates at the intersection of these systems
and may be one key mechanism that frames intersectionality itself. Using
African-American experiences with systemic violence in the United States,
this paper investigates the centrality of violence to intersecting
oppressions of race, gender and social class. My argument contains four
parts. First, I review existing approaches to intersectionality to
determine what light they shed on violence as a central mechanism for
mutually constructing systems of oppression. I suggest that violence
operates simultaneously as 1) a core essential component of multiple types
of oppression reserved for those deemed "Other"; 2) a common sense
representation deployed in constructing each system's meaning; 3) an
essential part of analogies that construct social meanings of Blackness; 4)
a constellation of practices that have specific institutional locations.
Second, using insights gained from the literature on intersectionality, I
present a preliminary definition of systemic violence that contextualises
definitions of violence in hierarchical power relations of race, gender and
social class in the United States. In this section, I suggest that
definitions of violence have little meaning in the abstract--what counts as
violence depends not only on the specifics of any given situation, but more
generally on who has the power to define what counts as violence. Third, by
reviewing the experiences of African-American men and African-American
women, I explore how groups differently positioned within hierarchical
power relations of race, class and gender participate in systemic violence.
Examining actual experiences reveals the multiple and complex
constellations of group participation in violence concerning victimisation,
access to positions of authority over the mechanisms of violence, patterns
of benefiting form violence, and group resistance traditions. Finally, I
explore the implications of intersectional analyses of systemic violence
for resistance. rethinking how violence operates as one tie that binds
systems of oppression should generate comparably complex resistance
strategies.

Ann Phoenix (Birkbeck College, University of London) Dealing with
Difference: The Recursive and the New

Socially marked differences of 'race' and ethnicity have long been used to
reproduce or challenge power imbalances and, hence, to justify constructed
exclusions and inclusions. In recent years, however, theories of difference
(partly stimulated by feminist debates) have become increasingly complex as
they have shifted away from unitary, essentialist conceptions of 'race' and
ethnicity. The concomitant problematisation of identity politics, based on
assumed unitariness within a category, difference from other constructed
groups and the privileging of experience, has stimulated debates on how
best to forge alliances across fragmentary groupings. The resulting
conceptualisations of 'race' and ethnicity (as dynamic, diverse,
constructed, intersecting with other social positions and lived through a
multiplicity of discourses) are exciting and provide invigorating new
perspectives on difference, identities, subjectivities and power relations.
As such, they have transgressive potential. At the same time, the diverse
and contradictory ways in which the couplet of difference/identity has been
taken up and/or resisted in various disciplines and by some groups have
reproduced old singular, static notions. This paper discusses some of the
ways in which concepts of racialised and ethnicised difference have been
recursive and some of the new contributions to its understanding. While
some recurrent ideas are problematic in continuing to treat difference as
free floating and abstracted from power relations, the paper argues that
there is no absolute good/bad duality between the recurrent and the new.

Michel Wieviorka
(CADIS-EHESS, Paris)
Is Multiculturalism the Solution?

Multiculturalism is a recent and confusing word. In some cases it is used
to refer to the issue of cultural diversity within society. In other cases
it is used in theoretical debates to refer to questions of difference, as
for example in recent debates within ethical and political philosophy. Yet
in other contexts it is used to refer to policies that are rooted in
specific institutions. Given this diversity of usage the question arises of
whether it is legitimate to use this notion at all. This paper will explore
both the conditions and the limits of multiculturalism, both as a
description of a problem as well as a solution. It will emphasise the need
to look at other notions, such as cultural fragmentation, subject formation
and democracy.


*************************************************
To book, please cut and paste the rest of the document into your word
processing software, complete the form, and post it with your remittance to
the address given at the end. Do NOT return the form by email. Only forms
accompanied by the remittance will be accepted.
**************************************************

ERS - ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES
TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY CONFERENCE: FRIDAY 16th MAY 1997
BOOKING FORM

Please book one place for the conference on 16th May.

Name: _________________________________

Address for corresponandance: ______________________

______________________________________________

_______________________________________________

Institutional affiliation if not show above

____________________________________

telephone number [incl international codes] __________________

fax number (if any) ______________________________________

email address (if any)  ____________________________________

TICK ONE of the two following alternatives:				____
I enclose the conference fee of =A350 including coffee, tea and lunch.  I____I

I enclose the reduced research student booking fee of =A325 including coffee,
tea and lunch, plus a photocopy of my student ID.
I____I
(a limited number of places are available at this rate).

Cheque no: payable to 'ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES'  _____________

Please indicate here any special dietary requirements (eg vegetarian)

_______________________________



PLEASE MAIL/POST (not email)  THE FORM WITH YOUR REMITTANCE TO:

Ethnic and Racial Studies (Conference), Department of Sociology, University
of Surrey, Guidlford, Surrey GU2 SXH, England







****************************************************************************
Professor Martin Bulmer                    email: ethnic-AT-soc.surrey.ac.uk
Editor, ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES          telephone:   +44(0)1483 259457

University of Surrey                       fax:         +44(0)1483 259457
Guildford,                 Please note that the ERS office is usually
Surrey GU2 5XH, UK         open to answer calls on Tuesdays and Fridays
only
****************************************************************************







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