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Bodies complexioned : human variation and racism in early modern English culture, c. 1600-1750

Bodily contrasts - from the colour of hair, eyes and skin to the shape of faces and skeletons - allowed the English of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to discriminate systematically among themselves and against non-Anglophone groups. Making use of an array of sources, this book examines how early modern English people understood bodily difference. It demonstrates that individuals' distinctive features were considered innate, even as discrete populations were believed to have characteristics in common, and challenges the idea that the humoral theory of bodily composition was incompatible with visceral inequality or racism. While 'race' had not assumed its modern valence, and 'racial' ideologies were still to come, such typecasting nonetheless had mundane, lasting consequences. Grounded in humoral physiology, and Christian universalism notwithstanding, bodily prejudices inflected social stratification, domestic politics, sectarian division and international relations. -- .

Online EBSCO University Press

Racial violence in Britain 1840-1950

The state of race

What can be said of the state of race? Or more specifically what can be said about the nature of the contemporary racial state and its expression of racisms in a conjuncture which declares racism is a relic? Grappling with claims to the 'postracial' in the context of an advanced neoliberal political economy which pursues heightened securitization and militarization of society like never before, this collection reflects on forms of racism at the beginning of the 21st Century, centering on the role of the state. Focusing largely on the British racial state the contributions consider theoretical issues such as the nature of postraciality, racial neoliberalism, the state of multiculturalism and whiteness, alongside the functioning of state institutions and policy concerning the military, education, community surveillance, asylum and extradition.