1st Edition

Talking Race in Young Adulthood Race and Everyday Life in Contemporary Britain

By Bethan Harries Copyright 2018
    166 Pages
    by Routledge

    166 Pages
    by Routledge

    At a time in which race lies at the heart of so much public debate, Talking Race in Young Adulthood comes at an important moment.





    Drawing on ethnographic research with young adults in Manchester, Harries engages with ideas of the post-racial to explore how young adults make sense of their identities, relationships and new forms of racism, consequently revealing how and in what ways race remains a salient dimension of social experience. Indeed, this book presents news ways of thinking about how we live with difference, as Harries analyses the relationship between racism, generational identities and the spatial configurations of a city.



    Offering a distinct contribution to the sociology of race, this book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as Race and Ethnicity, Urban Sociology, Human Geography, Youth Studies, Cultural Studies and Social Anthropology.

    Chapter one – Introduction





    The research



    The book





    Chapter two – The Conflicted City





    Introduction



    The multi-layered city



    The city



    The ‘Other’ side of the city



    Gorton, Longsight and Moss Side



    Beyond the city



    Conclusion





     



    Chapter three - The imaginings of a ‘post-racial’ generation





    Introduction



    A ‘post-racial’ generation?



    The myth of sameness and the fantasy of non-racism



    Other times and ‘Othered’ places



    Mixing ≠ multiculture



    Conclusion





     



    Chapter four – Anticipating race: Race and the recognition of difference in encounters with diversity





    Introduction



    Expectations of difference



    No difference here



    Contrasted spaces: encountering the white working class



    Comfortable conceptions of difference



    Proximities to difference



    Learned encounters: the "unspoken code"



    Conclusion





     



     



    Chapter five – Going against the grain: resistance to identifications and the claim for multiple subjectivities





    Introduction



    Starting from the point of misrecognition



    White working-class identities



    Being ‘different’ and undermining identities of difference



    De-categorising identities



    Reworking the label: claiming a multi-faceted identity



    "I am not who I am supposed to be"



    Conclusion





    Chapter six – When is racism?





    Introduction



    The problem of racism



    Talking racism



    Racism and the weight of categorisation





    Social mixing: an inadequate counter to racism



    Naming racism, naming racists



    Conclusion





     



    Chapter seven – Conclusion





     



     



    Dedic

    Biography

    Bethan Harries is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK.

    In this lively study of young adults, race and everyday multiculture Bethan Harries explores how new generations learn to live with difference. What is produced is a vibrant, engaging and ultimately hopeful study of modern day multicultural living. Stitching together rich narrative accounts from young adults, the author highlights how new generations talk about race and, in many cases, might work towards a post-racial future in which race is no longer a primary marker of difference. Critical of governmental approaches to integration and cohesion, Talking Race offers a far more compelling and enriching account of generational change, difference and urban conviviality.

    Anoop Nayak, Professor of Social & Cultural Geography, Newcastle Unviersity, UK

    Britain’s cities are more racially, ethnically, religiously and socially diverse than ever before and are the locus of both entrenched forms of inequality and hostility and post-racial conviviality. Talking Race provides an important intervention into theories of postrace, urban space and micro-encounters as they are lived and contested at the level of the everyday. It explores the complex terrain of negotiating race through the discourses of young adults, treading an empirically rich and theoretically nuanced path through the ambivalences, tensions and possibilities of contemporary urban multiculture.

    Claire Alexander, Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester, UK