Critical Whiteness Studies

Until relatively recently the sociology of race and ethnicity, with a few notable exceptions, has been predominantly concerned with ethnic minorities and colour-based forms of racism. However, developments across a range disciplines have seen a new attention given to the question of white ethnicity and the meaning of whiteness. This paper considers three discernable approaches to critical whiteness studies and is focused on developing a productive dialogue between the materialist, deconstructionist and psychoanalytic frameworks identified. The author argues that these repertoires differ in seeking to abolish, deconstruct or rethink the meaning of whiteness and white identities as they currently stand. It is suggested that each of these positions can inspire an interrogation of white identities capable of disturbing the more traditional focus of race enquiry to engender new theory and political practices in the field. The article concludes by pointing to some of the limits of white ethnicities research and argues for more international approaches to offset the parochial possibilities of a 'white studies' agenda. It is suggested that new geographies of whiteness can displace the construction of critical whiteness studies as a Western pursuit and open up researchers to a global interpretation and postcolonial understanding of such race markers.     

Interrogating Whiteness Within Criminology

This paper merges critical White studies with the sociological field of criminology as a means to progress understanding of criminal behavior, justice, and social control. Up to this point, criminology has largely neglected the significance of whiteness within its boundaries of study. Thankfully, a strong foundation of research and theoretical statements has been completed in the interdisciplinary field of critical White studies. The formation of criminal law can be more clearly understood through the inclusion of frameworks offered by critical White studies. Additionally, nuanced explanations of criminal behavior and hate crime among Whites can be attained through this perspective.     

Boredom: Where the Future Isn't

This article examines the experience and meaning of boredom in modern society. Boredom is understood as an experience of a lack of momentum or flow in a person's life. Boredom is conceptualized as an interactional phenomenon that is inextricably connected to social rhythm. The communication of boredom is examined with respect to its consequences in self and motive presentation. The article also describes those features of contemporary American life that appear to facilitate the experience and communication of boredom.     

Praise Is Not Enough

This article argues there is a need for a more encompassing understanding of the relationships between domestic violence and all forms of marginalisation in the Australian context. Specific attention will be given to the invisibility of class and poverty in contemporary discourse about domestic violence in the mainstream population. That there continues to be a higher prevalence of domestic violence, and more severe physical injury sustained as a result of domestic violence among population groups living with poverty, exposes the partiality of mainstream knowledges informing Australian domestic violence policy and practice. This article proposes prevention efforts must accommodate how class and the effects of poverty interlock with other aspects of social identity to shape the experience of domestic violence for people both victimised by, and perpetrating violence.     

Enough is Enough: Race,Cricket and Protest in the UK

Abstract

This piece considers ethnicity in sport from the perspective of grass roots efforts to confront racism within the quintessentially English game of cricket. Cricket has a long history of discrimination, originally predicated on the basis of class, although recent events have very publicly raised issues of race and national identity. This piece explores how and why cricket became a positive focal point for successful protest against the apartheid regime of South Africa and proceeds to trace the current expression of racism within English cricket. By contrasting the anti-racist campaigns of the late 1960s and early 1970s with a currently emerging movement, we will show that legislative change in the UK has radically altered the ability to effectively demonstrate and campaign on such causes.     

心情(英文)

亲爱的读者朋友们:心情是展现女性所想所说的一个栏目。我们热情欢迎女性读者参与本栏目。请将您的姓名、职业、照片(一兆左右).加上您想说的话.发送至wocm@vip.sina.com您将有机会出现在杂志上,向其他读者展现您的风采。     

心情(英文)

亲爱的读者朋友们:心情是展现您日常所想所说的一个栏目,我们热情欢迎您参与本栏目。请将您的姓名、职业、照片(一兆左右),加上您想说的话,发送至wocm@vip.sina.com,您将有机会出现在杂志上,向其他读者展现您的风采。     

心情

亲爱的读者朋友们:心情是展现女性所想所说的一个栏目。我们热情欢迎女性读者参与本栏目。请将您的姓名、职业、照片(一兆左右),加上您想说的话,发送至panda_beauty@yahoo.com.cn您将有机会出现在杂志上.向其他读者展现您的风采。     

Just imagine

不管什么地方,出去旅行一阵子,就目清心爽。几年前读到这段话时,我恰好正在旅途,第一次阅读日本古代散文。写作的人名叫吉田兼好,他的生卒年月已不详,人们猜测是弘安六年(1283年)出生的。     

心情(英文)

亲爱的读者朋友们:心情是展现您日常所想所说的一个栏目,我们热情欢迎您参与本栏目。请将您的姓名、职业、照片(一兆左右),加上您想说的话,发送至wocm@vip.sina.com,您将有机会出现在杂志上,向其他读者展现您的风采。     

心情

Editor's Note:This column is especially for those who want to share their thoughts and opinions with Women of China's readers.Please e-mail your name,occupation,photo(about 1MB) and your comments to wocm@vip.sina.com for consideration.亲爱的读者朋友们:心情是展现您日常所想所说的一个栏目,我们热情欢迎您参与本栏目。请将您的姓名、职业、照片(一兆左右),加上您想说的话,发送至wocm@vip.sina.com,您将有机会出现在杂志上,向其他读者展现您的风采。     

Whiteness Studies and the Erasure of Gender

In recent years, the study of race and ethnicity has expanded, and there is now a growing field of research that examines whiteness and racial privilege. This article provides an overview of theories of privilege and whiteness studies, and argues that these analyses should incorporate an intersectional approach. Intersectional theories argue that race and gender are intertwined, and neither can be fully comprehended on its own. An intersectional approach sees race and gender as interacting and inseparable. Two specific contemporary racial projects are examined: the ideology of color blindness, and organized white supremacist discourse, and argues that gender is essential to understanding both. Finally, the consequences of the erasure of gender from our analyses of whiteness are examined.     

On Becoming a Good Enough Stepmother

Studies have shown that conflict over parent–child relationships are frequently at the root of stepfamily dissolution and that the stepmother/daughter relationship is the most problematic stepfamily relationship. This paper explores the stepmother–daughter relationship in the family where the biological mother is an active parent and discusses the unique challenges and internal conflicts that the stepmother confronts on entry into the family and its web of preexisting relationships and transferences. “An internal parental stance” which underlies “good enough” stepmothering is conceptualized and the complex psychological processes which underlie this achievement are explored in this paper along with implications for clinical strategies. The term good enough stepmothering is a play on Winnicott’s concept of the good-enough mother—the maternal figure whose attunement to her child enables her to adapt appropriately to her child’s stage of life thus allowing an optimal environment for the child’s development.     

The Globality of Whiteness in Post-Racial Visual Culture

This essay examines the spatial contours of post-racial visual culture. It argues that the ‘post-racial’ names the conditions under which racism operates flexibly within and beyond the logics of the colour line, while routinely disavowing its properly racial character through the symbolic deployment of multicultural humanitarianism. Even as it works through the figure of the ‘post-racial’ to bracket an engagement with the racialized rationale for the ‘nongeneralizability of human value’, the current US racial order has renovated the social structures that shore up whiteness as the privileged form humanity takes. The essay's point of departure is the iconic HOPE poster, produced by Shepard Fairey in 2008. It locates the poster's public display within a visual field subjected to neoliberal processes central to the constitution of a post-racial whiteness. It identifies two key moments in these processes. The first moment abstracts historical practices of materialist antiracism, such that racism becomes visualized as a manifestly individual subjective affair. In the second moment, post-racial visual culture repackages the visual logic of racial reference by displacing anti-black racism into morally benevolent categories suitable for humanitarian intervention, whose additional dematerialization is propped up by its migration to a digital terrain. To make this argument, the essay first offers a genealogy of the HOPE poster as it emerges from street art practices of commodity activism that obscure the structures of racial capitalism. It then treats the poster's central role in the ‘KONY 2012’ campaign, which redeployed this abstraction to recode the power of sight as a privileged form of US humanitarian violence. It concludes by considering the refusals by activists in the Occupy Wall Street movement to countenance a revised HOPE poster, even as the post-racial figure of ‘the protestor’ was lauded in corporate media.     

Just do it?

Referring to the ongoing discussion on quality assessment and evaluative criteria in qualitative methods the article focuses especially on the grounded theory approach in the tradition of Anselm Strauss. It is argued that having its roots in the pragmatist epistemology and philosophy of science the grounded theory approach develops strategies to enhance the quality of processes and results that in some parts differ from traditional quantitative methodologies. Having elaborated on grounded theories’ pragmatist roots, the paper proceeds by presenting major strategies and techniques dedicated to quality enhancement (like dimensionalization and theoretical sampling). Subsequently, both research logic and rhetorics of evaluation criteria in grounded theory (e.g. theoretical saturation, density and groundedness) are being discussed. This leads to concluding remarks on the need for special evaluation criteria in grounded theory-based research.     

More Than Just Sex

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to identify behaviors in addition to those of an explicitly sexual or romantic nature that men and women define as unfaithful acts in the context of committed dating relationships. We also sought to identify possible gender differences in the proportions of men and women who have engaged in these unfaithful behaviors while in dating relationships. We examined 219 college men's and women's reported involvement in sexual behaviors, romantic attachments, sexual and nonsexual fantasies, sexual attraction, romantic attraction, flirting, and social participation in dyads and groups with someone other than their current or past dating partner. A sizable proportion of both men and women reported engaging in one or more of the behaviors at some point in their dating history. Proportionately more men than women indicated having engaged in sexual fantasies of various types about someone other than their primary partner and reported “hitting on” someone else while in a dating relationship. No other gender differences emerged. A unique aspect of this study is that we asked young men and women to determine what kinds of behaviors they considered to be unfaithful rather than only examining sexual and emotional behaviors as has been the case in past research. Further, the few significant gender differences we found indicates that the convergence of men's and women's attitudes about sexuality may now be show in their behavior.     

When Death Isn't Dead: Implicit Social Rationing during Resuscitative Efforts

In this paper, I address the relationship between social death and clinical-biological death during resuscitative efforts. In Western societies, resuscitative efforts are the medical intervention of choice when sudden death occurs. The widespread use of this technology puts emergency department staff in a difficult gatekeeping position. They are expected to save lives, but, at the same time–when their efforts become futile–to prepare for a dignified death. I show that certain groups of patients are much more likely to be considered socially dead regardless of their clinical viability, while others are less likely to be considered socially dead even when irreversible biological death has set in. The result is an implicit rationing of the lifesaving endeavors based on the social worth of the patient. This rationing annihilates initiatives, such as advance directives, which were instituted to empower patients. Social scientists usually suggest that the solution to the negative effects of rationing is to increase accessibility for all populations; however, resuscitative efforts are a prime example in which less access for all groups–instead of for some–might be preferable. This paper is based on observations of 112 resuscitative efforts during a fourteenth-month period and interviews with 42 health care providers.     

Appalachia and the Construction of Whiteness in the United States

The field of critical whiteness studies has made significant progress in the deconstruction of ideologies of white supremacy. In part, this has been accomplished by analyzing whiteness as a racial identity. Another step in this deconstruction has been a focus on groups of marginalized whites, 'white trash' or 'hillbillies'. Since the mid-19th Century, Appalachia has been considered the paradigmatic place for these marginalized whites in the United States. Hillbillies are simultaneously stigmatized and idealized in the national culture. Accounting for both the negative and positive representations makes visible how marginalized white identity is a space where white hegemony is both challenged and reaffirmed.