Racialized consciousness and class mobilizations

This piece considers the implications of the analysis offered in Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider for an understanding of anti-racist mobilizations through and alongside the trade union movement in our time.     

“Where do I even start?” Recommendations for faculty diversifying syllabi in ecology,evolution, and the life sciences

Diversifying curricula is of increasing interest in higher education, including in ecology and evolution and allied fields. Yet, many educators may not know where to start. Here we provide a framework for meeting standard curriculum goals while enacting anti-racist and anti-colonial syllabi that is grounded in the development of a sustainable network of educators. In addition to highlighting this professional learning process and sharing the list of resources our group has developed, we provide suggestions to help educators highlight contributions of minoritized groups, explore multiple ways of knowing, and perform critical assessments of foundational views of life and environmental science fields. We further discuss the key classroom dynamics that affect the success of such anti-racist and anti-colonial initiatives. The retention and success of minoritized students in ecology and evolution depends on whether we address injustices in our fields. Our hope is that our fellow educators will use this paper to catalyze their own efforts to diversify their courses.     

The struggle that cannot be named: violence,space and the re-articulation of anti-racism in post-Duggan Britain

The history of black struggles in Britain has often centred on spaces of violence and resistance. While there has been significant attention paid to how racism is articulated through particular places, less has been said about anti-racism being communicated through its associations with space and place. Using Tottenham (north London) as a case study, I draw on ethnographic observations at demonstrations and public meetings, in addition to semi-structured interviews with anti-racist activists resisting policing in post-2011 London. This paper argues that, over time, racist metonyms describing places racialised as black have led to the rise of a metonymic anti-racism. Metonymic anti-racism is used alongside more overt anti-racist language, and has profound implications for understanding struggles against police racism in Britain. The paper analyses these implications, contextualizing them historically, in light of neoliberalised racial discourses and how anti-racist metonyms shape articulations of black struggle against policing in post-2011 Tottenham.     

Books received,August 1st to October 31st 1989

Abstract

This article focuses on two important questions. First, how can we explain changes in the employment position of England's racialized minority groups over the past three decades? And second, why have these changes taken place at a different pace for different minority groups? It is argued that much of the increase in Asian self-employment represents working-class accommodation to the inferior conditions of employment available under neo-liberal modernity rather than evidence of upward social mobility as current orthodoxy claims. It is also contended that the growing representation of minorities in junior non-manual work was driven by anti-racist activism around a racialized ‘black’ identity and confirms the continuing significance of ‘race’ in the English labour market. By unravelling the complex relationship between the geographical distribution of different minority groups, their educational qualifications, anti-racist activism, and racism, the study establishes why such employment change has taken place at a different pace for different minority groups.     

Outsiders and insiders: changing boundaries of radicalism,racism and class

Virdee's book adds enormously to our understanding of two interconnected processes: the ways in which racism and nationalism in England/Britain became totally intertwined and embedded in working-class views of the world, and how at certain key moments those racially cast out from that depressing maelstrom may become the champions of an anti-racist internationalism. I am fractionally less negative than the author about the seemingly total hold of racism/nationalism on the whole working class, and less certain about racialized ‘outing’ as the key to the DNA of universalist anti-racists. Using the Garibaldi mobilizations of 1862–64, I suggest he may have underestimated the potential and reasons for ‘insider’ working-class resistance to racism/nationalism, and suggest greater caution in arguing an association between ‘racialized outsiders’ and internationalist views.     

Opening a dialogue on race,class and national belonging

In this essay, I respond to the reviewers of my book, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider, including Bhattacharrya, Frost, Jefferys, Meer, Roediger and van der Linden. In particular, I elaborate further on the epistemological foundations of the book, including my aim to stretch the concept of working class to accommodate both ethnic diversity, and the significance of racism and anti-racism within it. Then, I state the case for how the concept of the racialized outsider can help transform our understanding of the key signposts of English working-class history. The significance of the anti-racist accomplishments of the 1970s and 1980s are also given further consideration alongside the relevance of the book and its arguments to the present environment – a period where those accomplishments have started to be reversed.     

Understanding racism in physical (biological) anthropology

The mainstream of American physical anthropology began as racist and eugenical science that defended slavery, restricted “non-Nordic” immigration, and justified Jim Crow segregation. After World War II, the field became more anti-racial than anti-racist. It has continued as a study of natural influences on human variation and thus continues to evade the social histories of inequitable biological variation. Also reflecting its occupancy of white space, biological anthropology continues to deny its own racist history and marginalizes the contributions of Blacks. Critical disciplinary history and a shift toward biocultural studies might begin an anti-racist human biology.     

Post-racial futures: imagining post-racialist anti-racism(s)

Abstract

Can the theoretical insights of post-racialism contribute to the development of a progressive anti-racism? Drawing on interviews with anti-racist organizations in London, this article explores the translation of the theoretical insights of post-racialism into anti-racist praxis. Theoretically informed and empirically engaged, this article argues that post-racialism faces its own set of paradoxes and practical dilemmas complicating the process of deriving post-racialist practice(s) from post-racialist theory. The article concludes that, in spite of the challenges, the powerful questions that post-racialism raises create a much needed ethico-political space for critical reflection on the concept and category of race. Ultimately, post-racialist insights may refine understandings of the discriminatory practices performed in the name of race and point towards a methodological approach of working with and against race in anti-racism.     

The first Basmajian lecture: Reflections on John V. Basmajian: Anatomist, Electromyographer, Scientist

This first Basmajian lecture honors its namesake, a founding father of the International Society of Electrokinesiology. Basmajian's influence as an anatomist, electromyographer and clinical scientist is highlighted, and thoughts are expressed about the contributions that this outstanding leader has made and continues to make in our interdisciplinary field.     

A white side of black Britain: The concept of racial literacy

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.     

Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Anti-Racism in Latvia

My paper is a critical analysis of anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives in Latvia. First, I trace the historical and geopolitical conditions that enable the emergence of two discursive positions that are central to arguments about racism – that of liberally inclined tolerance activists and that of Latvians with politically objectionable nationalist sensibilities. Subsequently, I argue that, plagued by developmentalist thinking, anti-racist and tolerance promotion initiatives fail in their analysis of contemporary racism. They posit backward attitudes as the main hindrance to the eradication of racism and displace racism as a constitutive feature of modern political forms onto individual and collective sensibilities. Instead of the fast track diagnosis of racism that animates liberal anti-racism, I suggest that an analysis of racism should integrate attention to the common elements of modern racism across political regimes and the historical particularities that shape public and political subjectivities in concrete places.     

基于学科类别和富集分析的生物安全研究领域学科交叉研究*

随着合成生物学、基因编辑等典型两用性新兴生物技术的发展,生物安全作为一个具有显著交叉性的研究领域引起了国际各界的广泛关注。利用Web of Science数据库的论文数据,基于期刊学科类别分析了生物安全研究的学科交叉现状和时序演化,并采用富集分析方法研究了不同国家的学科交叉倾向差异。结果表明,20世纪以来,生物安全研究与其他学科的交叉融合日益广泛,动植物科学、环境和生态学、社会科学、微生物学、农业科学是其交叉融合最多的学科领域。不同国家生物安全研究的学科交融情况有所差异,欧美主要国家的学科交叉情况对我国有很好的借鉴之处。以期为生物安全特定研究领域的学科交叉研究提供一种新的方法探索,并为强化我国生物安全研究领域学科交叉和探索新的科研方向提供参考。     

Islamophobia,war and non-Muslims as victims: an analysis of online discourse on an English Defence League message board

This article analyses 845 posts across 78 threads on an English Defence League message board from 20 September 2013 to 4 October 2013 that examined how online activists construct and develop their racial prejudice. Through seeing whites as blameless victims, the posts highlighted the presence of hostility towards Islam and Muslims in a clear in-group and out-group racial binary, where racist comments were never contested or challenged. Rather, they were wholeheartedly supported with social and cultural division at the centre of the prejudice, scapegoating and stereotyping directed towards Islam and Muslims. For a movement that presents itself as anti-racist, the real-life everyday narrative indicates the reality of its most ardent supporters.     

Simultaneous interdisciplinary counseling in German breast/ovarian cancer families: first experiences with patient perceptions, surveillance behavior and acceptance of genetic testing

As part of a multicenter study supported by the German Mildred Scheel foundation we have established an interdisciplinary counseling setting for members of breast and/or ovarian cancer families. We offer simultaneous counseling by a team consisting of a geneticist, a gynecologist and a psycho-oncologist. Here we describe our counseling protocol and our first short-term experience with this interdisciplinary approach. Preliminary data on patient perceptions and behaviors in the context of DNA testing are reported. Overall, our counseling approach was perceived as beneficial both by the counselors and the consultants. A marked overestimation of the risk to develop breast and/or ovarian cancer was noted in the group of unaffected individuals from medium to low risk breast cancer families in contrast to an appropriate risk perception in members from high risk families. All participants shared many of the same expectations about genetic testing and counseling and appeared to base their decision-making about testing on the risk classification given by the genetic counselor. The reported participation in gynecological cancer prevention programs was high in all families at risk, but was less sufficient in unaffected as compared to affected persons. Although current data on BRCA1/BRCA2 mutation analyses render testing in medium to low risk individuals questionable, our findings emphasize the importance of genetic counseling and education in all risk categories of breast and/or ovarian cancer families.     

Building the contractile ring from the ground up: a lesson in perseverance and scientific creativity

This contribution to the Festschrift for Professor Thomas (Tom) D. Pollard focuses on his work on the elucidation of the protein organization within the cytokinetic nodes, protein assemblies, precursors to the contractile ring. In particular, this work highlights recent discoveries in the molecular organization of the proteins that make the contractile machine in fission yeast using advanced microscopy techniques. One of the main aspects of Tom’s research philosophy that marked my career as one of his trainees is his embrace of interdisciplinary approaches to research. The cost of interdisciplinary research is to be willing to step out of our technical comfort zone to learn a new set of tools. The payoff of interdisciplinary research is the expansion our realm of possibilities by bringing new creative tools and ideas to push our research program forward. The rewarding outcomes of this work under Tom’s mentorship were the molecular model of the cytokinetic node and the development of new techniques to unravel the structure of multi-protein complexes in live cells. Together, these findings open a new set of questions about the mechanism of cytokinesis and provide creative tools to address them.     

“食品卫生与检验”教学改革与食品安全复合型人才培养

介绍“食品卫生与检验”课程双语教学经验。课程教学以培养复合型食品安全检测、管理人才为目标,注重培养学生的综合能力;建立“与时俱进、复合培养、实践+双语”的教学模式,提高了学生的自主学习能力和实践能力,培养了学生的服务意识和国际视野。     

New Archaeological Evidence for an Early Human Presence at Monte Verde,Chile

Questions surrounding the chronology, place, and character of the initial human colonization of the Americas are a long-standing focus of debate. Interdisciplinary debate continues over the timing of entry, the rapidity and direction of dispersion, the variety of human responses to diverse habitats, the criteria for evaluating the validity of early sites, and the differences and similarities between colonization in North and South America. Despite recent advances in our understanding of these issues, archaeology still faces challenges in defining interdisciplinary research problems, assessing the reliability of the data, and applying new interpretative models. As the debates and challenges continue, new studies take place and previous research reexamined. Here we discuss recent exploratory excavation at and interdisciplinary data from the Monte Verde area in Chile to further our understanding of the first peopling of the Americas. New evidence of stone artifacts, faunal remains, and burned areas suggests discrete horizons of ephemeral human activity in a sandur plain setting radiocarbon and luminescence dated between at least ~18,500 and 14,500 cal BP. Based on multiple lines of evidence, including sedimentary proxies and artifact analysis, we present the probable anthropogenic origins and wider implications of this evidence. In a non-glacial cold climate environment of the south-central Andes, which is challenging for human occupation and for the preservation of hunter-gatherer sites, these horizons provide insight into an earlier context of late Pleistocene human behavior in northern Patagonia.     

Tackling the challenges of interdisciplinary bioscience

The ultimate goal for biology is to become a science that formulates our understanding of subcellular, cellular and multicellular systems in terms of quantitative, holistic models that are underpinned by the rigorous principles of the physical sciences and mathematics. This can only be achieved through interdisciplinary research that draws heavily on the expertise and technologies of the physical sciences, engineering, computation and mathematics. Here, I discuss the benefits and challenges (both intellectual and practical) of interdisciplinary bioscience.