Technologies of Belonging: The Absent Presence of Race in EuropePosted in Anthropology, Articles, Europe, Media Archive, Social Science on 2014-05-22 01:04Z by Steven |
Technologies of Belonging: The Absent Presence of Race in Europe
Science Technology Human Values
Volume 39, Number 4 (July 2014)
pages 459-467
DOI: 10.1177/0162243914531149
Amade M’charek, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Katharina Schramm, Lecturer
Institute for Social Anthropology
Martin Luther Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
David Skinner, Research Convener; Reader in Sociology
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom
In many European countries, the explicit discussion of race as a biological phenomenon has long been avoided. This has not meant that race has become obsolete or irrelevant all together. Rather, it is a slippery object that keeps shifting and changing. To understand its slippery nature, we suggest that race in Europe is best viewed as an absent presence, something that oscillates between reality and nonreality, which appears on the surface and then hides underground. In this special issue, we explore how race has been configured in different practices and how race-based identities and technologies are entwined in various European settings.
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