Race, Class, and Gender

This paper argues that capitalist accumulation requires imperialist expansion, and that this expansion creates a “raced” surplus laboring population. The argument proceeds in seven parts: that Marx’s assertion in chapter 25 of Capital that capitalism produces an ever-increasing relative surplus population is tenable in all but the longest of time frames; that imperial expansion played an important role in the transition to capitalism, though not for the reasons traditionally given; that overinvestment rather than the increasing organic composition of capital best explains imperial expansion in the capitalist era; that the uneven development of capitalism produces at the same time an uneven development of the surplus laboring population; that race has served as a mark of membership in the surplus laboring population; that by intertwining itself with the surplus laboring population, race serves to perpetuate itself despite its contradictions; and that despite this resilience, the contradictions of race also set in process conflicts that make it possible to overcome imperialism.

This research investigated the changing image of blacks in advertisements in Ebony magazine from late 1950 to late 1980. Content analysis of paired samples from three decades revealed significant differences in the mix of products advertised as well as in the aesthetic qualities of models used in the ads. This research also found that while the Black Revolt of the 1960s “blackened” Ebony's ads, the fair-skinned, Eurocentric model had begun to reassert itself as the somatic norm for Ebony advertising by the late 1980s.

Immigrant groups’ adaptations into dominant culture may differ from each other for a number of causes, containing the social and economic structure of the society they move in. There are many major existing theories related to the historical processes, the outcomes of adaptation of immigrants, and their children in the United States. In order to articulate the issues concerning the acculturation and assimilation processes of second generation Americans I use straight line theory, second generation revolt, segmented assimilation theory, and its variants.

Beah Richards is not a name that immediately comes to mind when one thinks of feminist theorists of the twentieth century. Yet, her 1951 poem A Black Woman Speaks of White Womanhood, of White Supremacy, of Peace contains unmistakable theoretical assertions about the simultaneity of race, gender and class oppression that predates multiracial feminist theorizing that emerged in the academy during the late twentieth century. This analysis examines the epistemological assumptions and theoretical assertions articulated in A Black Woman Speaks, exploring the ways in which the poem exemplifies an intercategorical, praxis-intersectionality approach and integrates group-centered, process-centered, and system-centered analytical varieties. The author argues that collectively remembering and reclaiming the genius of Beah Richards opens up an opportunity to reaffirm the radical political roots of an intersectionality approach, which often are forgotten in the depoliticized and commodified economic and cultural landscape of academia in the twenty-first century.

This research investigated the changing image of blacks in advertisements in Ebony magazine from late 1950 to late 1980. Content analysis of paired samples from three decades revealed significant differences in the mix of products advertised as well as in the aesthetic qualities of models used in the ads. This research also found that while the Black Revolt of the 1960s “blackened” Ebony's ads, the fair-skinned, Eurocentric model had begun to reassert itself as the somatic norm for Ebony advertising by the late 1980s.

This collection of contemporary postcolonial plays demonstrates the extraordinary vitality of a body of work that is currently influencing the shape of contemporary world theatre. This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Caribbean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history. Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such as: *globalization * political corruption * race and class relations *slavery *gender and sexuality *media representation *nationalism

There are different forms of othering in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre:  one which results from Jane’s ambiguous position in terms of class hierarchies and another generated by Bertha’s presence as a colonized subject. In both cases, femininity amplifies gender-specific repercussions in these othering processes. However, while Brontë creates a female character in Jane who triumphs over the challenges posed by Victorian society’s class and gender hierarchies, i.e., the status as other of governesses and women, problematic as it is in its final solidification of the status quo, Bertha reflects the dominant, Eurocentric ideologies of nineteenth century England concerning race and the racial other. She is the colonized and racial other, a madwoman who threatens British men as embodied in Mr. Rochester, and women embodied as in Jane, and her final self-destruction for Jane’s sake are poignant plot devices to this end.  This paper offers a comparative reading of two female characters’ othered status in Victorian British society in relation to the dominant ideologies of the era concerning gender, class and race. I argue that whereas Brontë, following a feminist reading of her novel, fictively assuages the othered status of British women in the characterization of Jane, who triumphs in resisting society’s rigid class boundaries and women’s subordinate position in terms of legal and financial matters, does not grant a similarly fictive emancipatory view to Bertha as the colonized and racial other. This is an obvious and clear indication of Brontë’s limitations concerning feminist activism and inclusiveness as her implication in advancing the dominant, imperialist discourse.

Current political movements have raised the issue of the problematic diversity of forms of domination and oppression, as well as strategies to counter them, in the way black feminism has signaled the importance of intersectionality. This questioning has also reached Brazilian anarchism in an effort to combat inequalities within the organization of the movement itself. This endeavor can exacerbate internal conflicts, when factors such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age and other markers of difference are called into question. So, in situations of mutual support across such different perspectives, methods of attenuating conflict may be used. That is the (strange) case of astrology, which some anarchists have informally deployed to reduce tensions within their collective force, a kind of "spectral counterpower" (David Graeber).

This paper examines the debates surrounding prostitution by white women in Salisbury’s Pioneer Street in the first two decades of the 20th century. The prostitution of white women in early twentieth century Southern Africa would appear at first to constitute a classic case of imperial deviance: European prostitutes not only flouted bourgeois codes of feminine respectability; by taking Africa clients they transgressed the racial boundaries that structured settler society. By making their sexual availability public, moreover, white prostitutes presented to all in Salisbury the very visible manifestation of degraded white prestige. And yet, the colonial government (in the form of the British South Africa Company) adopted a position in favour of continued white female prostitution. The colonial state preferred to supervise rather than eliminate sexual deviance: after an almost-decade long wrangle, the argument in favour of continued prostitution was won. This paper argues that the state’s position was influenced in large part by its determination to keep in check a yet more grievous form of deviance: that is, sex between white men and African women. The essay challenges, then, what has become a now-settled historical consensus: that inter-racial sex involving white women presented a far more heinous transgression than that involving white men. To be sure, the underlying interests at stake remained those of racial patriarchy; but as Southern Rhodesia emerged as an embryonic settler-state it was the emergence of respectable manhood that trumped all other concerns.

For over 100 years, but particularly since the 1980s, scholars have
heavily relied on images of race, class, and gender as "intersecting" and "interlocking" forms of oppression and disempowerment. This imagery has helped feminists develop the empirically grounded theoretical premises that (1) race, class,
and gender are social structural locations, (2) structural locations shape perspectives, (3) no individual is all-oppressed or all-oppressing, (4) the meanings of race, class, and gender are localized, and (5) race, class, and gender depend on and (6)
mutually constitute each other. In this article I synthesize these premises to reveal some opportunities for theoretical development that may inspire a new generation of race-class-gender scholarship. I argue that while intersection is fairly limited as a
conceptual image, the interlocking imagery can help us identify how the relationships among these structures of oppression have become institutionalized.

David Graeber and David Wengrow's new book The Dawn of Everything is energetic, committed and kaleidoscopic, but also flawed. We suggest an alternative way of understanding the emergence of equality in social evolution, and the emergence of gendered inequality in class societies.

Reprinted as: Cheliotis, L. K. and A. Liebling (2014, forthcoming) 'Race Matters in British Prisons: Towards a Research Agenda', in C. Phillips (ed.) Race and Crime, Volume III. London: Routledge.

Drawing on surveys of 4,860 prisoners’ perceptions of the quality of prison life in 49 establishments in England and Wales, this paper examines the extent to which prisoners viewed race relations in prison as problematic. Emphasis was placed upon how aspects of race relations were rated by different ethnic groups, and in individual prisons. Significant differences were found between prisons of the same security category. The findings support those of previous studies in that they raise concerns about the treatment of ethnic minority prisoners, particularly in some prisons. Attention was also paid to the role of gender, age and the security category of the prison. Ethnic minority prisoners tended to rate the quality of race relations in prison more poorly than their White counterparts. Large proportions amongst all ethnic minority groups felt that they were subject to unfair treatment compared to the White majority. On the whole, female prisoners were more likely than males to rate the quality of race relations more favourably, as were adult prisoners in comparison to their young counterparts. Gender and age had a considerable impact on the views of ethnic minority prisoners on the quality of race relations in the establishment. Perceived quality of race relations was significantly associated with prisoners’ views on more general aspects of their treatment in prison, such as respect, humanity, fairness, relationships with staff and safety. Neither the ethnic composition of each prison’s population nor the respective ratio of White to ethnic minority staff had a significant impact on how prisoners viewed the quality of race relations. These results suggest, amongst other things, that perceptions of the legitimacy of penal practices differ significantly between age and ethnic groups, and that attempts to reduce discrimination work more effectively in relation to distributive practices than in relation to attitudes and general treatment.

The Victorian era, which refers to the nineteenth century in the British history, was the period of industrial revolution, which gave birth to many changes in the British politics, economy and culture. It was in this period of time that class and gender were mostly on the foreground. And it was the women who suffered more than men from these class and gender-based cultural norms. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre revolves around the title character's struggle against class and gender oppressions as an orphan from her childhood till her adulthood. The protagonist is born into the Victorian society with double disadvantages as a female orphan. However, she does not fit into the Victorian concept of "the Angel in the House". While creating this kind of character, Brontë draws contrast between her protagonist and the other female characters throughout the novel. Jane's cousins Eliza and Georgiana and her aunt Mrs. ÖZ Britanya tarihinde on dokuzuncu yüzyıl olan Viktorya Çağı, Britanya siyaseti, ekonomisi ve kültüründe birçok değişime yol açan endüstri devrimi dönemidir. Sınıf ve toplumsal cinsiyet bu dönemde çoğunlukla ön plandadır. Bu sınıf ve toplumsal cinsiyete dayalı kültürel normlardan erkeklere nazaran kadınlar daha çok çekmiştir. Charlotte Brontë'nin Jane Eyre romanı, çocukluğundan yetişkinliğine kadar sınıf ve toplumsal cinsiyet baskılarına karşı mücadele eden başlık karakteri etrafında döner. Başkahraman dişi bir yetim olarak çifte dezavantajla Viktorya toplumunda dünyaya gelmiştir. Fakat, kendisi, Viktorya döneminin "Evdeki Melek" kavramına uymaz. Bu türde bir karakter yaratırken, Brontë, roman boyunca baş kahramanı ve diğer dişi karakterler arasında zıtlık kurar. Jane'nin Gateshead'deki kuzenleri Eliza ve Georgiana ve halası Bayan Reed; Lowood'daki Bayan Temple ve Helen; Thornfield'daki Adele ve Blanche Ingram; Marsh End'deki kuzenleri Mary ve Diana, Viktorya döneminin 'kadın' kavramını temsil etmektedir. Ayrıca, Jane, gittiği yerlerin her birinde, ister orta sınıf olsun isterse üst sınıf, ataerkilliği temsil eden bir erkekle karşılaşır. Gateshead'deki kuzeni John Reed, Lowood'daki Bay Brocklehurst, Thornfield'daki Bay Rochester ve Marsh End'deki Bay Rivers, hepsi, ataerkilliği temsil etmektedir. Gateshead, Lowood, Thornfield, Marsh End'den Ferndean'a olan yolculuğunda, Jane, döneminin tabiatına karşı çıkar. Sınıflar ve erdemler arasında yanlış bir ilişkilendirme olduğunu fark eder. En sonunda, dipten zirveye tırmanıp, Ferndean'da sınıf ve toplumsal cinsiyet sınırlarını aşmayı başarmış olur. Böylece, bu çalışmanın amacı dönemin sınıf ve toplumsal cinsiyet kavramlarını göz önüne alarak Jane Eyre'in romandaki Viktoryan modellere zıt olarak ilerleyişini incelemektir.

It is widely recognised that over the last thirty years in the United Kingdom there has been a distinct movement towards neo-liberal politics, public and social policy. The argument that Britain has become a progressive one vision polity since 1979 with the election of Margaret Thatcher followed by 18 years of conservative neo-liberalism, ensued by 13 years of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way New Labour’  became more robust during the general election result in May 2010. With what appeared to be a further move to the right when the Conservative Party joined with the Liberal Democrat Party to form a coalition government after New Labour’s election defeat. Although 2010 is a clear and distinctive point in mapping where the UK currently sits socially, politically, and economically, the experiences of suffering, disadvantage, and real hardships have always been a significant part of the story for the British working class. Inequalities and social class disadvantage are embedded in the political and social history of Britain as demonstrated in the works of Friedrich Engels, E. P Thomson, George Orwell, Richard Hoggart, Richard Titmuss, and Peter Townsend to name only a few of the social historians, political commentators and sociologists who have been concerned about the condition of the British working class over many generations.

“The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical race theory that “race” is a category without purchase before the modern era.

Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries—chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon law, statuary, illustrations, religious commentary, and architectural features—the study considers racial thinking, racial law, racial formation, and racialized behaviors and phenomena in medieval Europe before the emergence of a recognizable vocabulary of race.

One focus is how a political hermeneutics of religion—so much in play again today—enabled the positing of fundamental human differences in biopolitical and culturalist ways to create strategic essentialisms demarcating human kinds and populations. Another focus is how race figures in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe (beginning as Latin Christendom) in this time.

Part I—“Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages”—surveys the current state of race theory, and puts in conversation race studies and medieval studies, fields that exist on either side of a vast divide.

Part II—“Locations of Medieval Race”—identifies and analyzes specific concretions of medieval race, while continuing to develop the theoretical arguments of Part I.

Both Sandra Cisneros and Helena María Viramontes in their novels, The House on Mango Street and Under the Feet of Jesus, respectively, deal with the experience of growing up as a young Mexican-American woman in the United States. Both their protagonists (Esperanza in The House on Mango Street and Estrella in Under the Feet of Jesus) not only experience discrimination as Latinas at the hands of mainstream Anglo-American culture, but are also discriminated as women within Mexican culture, whose traditional gender roles leave little room for female self-identification. Both Cisneros and Viramontes show the problem of discrimination based on gender to be closely related to those of racism and classism as both Esperanza and Estrella witness the abuse and exploitation of women as part of the vicious cycle of poverty in a lower class environment. To the young protagonists (both of whom are entering puberty and about to discover their own sexuality) female sexuality, in this context, often appears threatening and dangerous, as it entraps women in dependence and poverty. Thus, both Esperanza and Estrella struggle to come to terms with their femininity and sexuality. Both eventually have to break away from the traditions they were raised in, in order to arrive at a more fluid and flexible gender identity. In that sense, both The House on Mango Street and Under the Feet of Jesus can be read as coming-of-age stories on the formation of Chicana identity.

“The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages”—a two-part article—questions the widely-held belief in critical race theory that “race” is a category without purchase before the modern era.

Surveying a variety of cultural documents from the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries—chronicles, hagiography, literature, stories, sculpture, maps, canon law, statuary, illustrations, religious commentary, and architectural features—the study considers racial thinking, racial law, racial formation, and racialized behaviors and phenomena in medieval Europe before the emergence of a recognizable vocabulary of race.

One focus is how a political hermeneutics of religion—so much in play again today—enabled the positing of fundamental human differences in biopolitical and culturalist ways to create strategic essentialisms demarcating human kinds and populations. Another focus is how race figures in the emergence of homo europaeus and the identity of Western Europe (beginning as Latin Christendom) in this time.

Part I—“Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages”—surveys the current state of race theory, and puts in conversation race studies and medieval studies, fields that exist on either side of a vast divide.

Part II—“Locations of Medieval Race”—identifies and analyzes specific concretions of medieval race, while continuing to develop the theoretical arguments of Part I.

Comparisons with animals have a long-lasting tradition in the history of social discrimination. In this context, the ape stereotype figures prominently. The transgressions of the simian character perfectly allow the amalgamation of sexism, racism, and classism. In the European imagination, corresponding narratives from the 16th century on affiliated with the image of a tropical Africa that supposedly facilitated relationships of women and apes and generated monsters. The paper follows this obsession from its Renaissance variations via its enlightened manifestations and its modern political, scientific, artistic, and literary phantasmagorias to the scientific endeavours of interbreeding humans and apes in the 20th century. In doing so, it elucidates a connection of long duration between sexist and racist as well as classist insinuations. This affiliation linked pornotropical trash to scientific designs, and produced an ideological setting in which scientists finally tried to validate the possibility of human-simian offspring. Their experimental arrangement easily outplayed the utopias of classlessness and social equality, and put centuries-old sexist and racist defamations into operation.

The author argues that first-generation college students (FGS) have compounded challenges when they pursue graduate education. As a first-generation college student, he was not able to gather advice from family or his job supervisor, who had no experience with graduate school. Drawing from his experience and the existing FGS-related research, the author details practical advice for making a successful transition from college to graduate school. He concludes with a list of essential questions that prospective graduate students should ask themselves and their mentors when considering graduate study.

RESUMEN: En este trabajo se estudia las experiencias constitucionales de las mujeres del Sur que buscaron corregir el carácter patriarcal de las constituciones y se reflexiona sobre las propuestas de reforma constitucional en España. Se hace una breve referencia a los procesos constituyentes en América del Sur que trajeron como resultado la constitucionalización de los derechos de las mujeres. En concreto nos centramos en las constituciones de Venezuela de 1999, Ecuador de 2008 y Bolivia de 2009. Y, además, nos enfocamos en las propuestas que se viene haciendo en España a propósito de un futuro cambio constitucional con perspectiva de género. Sobre la base de este estudio nos preguntamos si es posible un diálogo entre los feminismos del Norte y del Sur que suponga la construcción un constitucionalismo otro, distinto al heredado del constitucionalismo liberal-patriarcal.

ABSTRACT: This work studies the constitutional experiences of the women of the South that intended to change the patriarchal character of their Constitutions and contemplates the proposals of constitutional change in Spain. Constituent processes in South America that resulted in the constitutionalization of women’s rights are briefly reviewed. Specifically, we center on the Constitutions of Venezuela of 1999, Ecuador of 2008 and Bolivia of 2009. Moreover, we focus on the proposals being made in Spain as to a future constitutional change of gender perspective. Based upon this study we evaluate the possibility of dialogue between North and South feminisms with which to construe a constitutionalism other, different from the liberal-patriarchal constitutionalism as inherited.

This article offers a critique of a widespread political discourse that distinguishes 'resentment' from 'ressentiment', legitimating the former and dismissing the latter. This distinction not only incorporates some reactive sentiments at the cost of the depoliticisation of others, but also obscures the conditions of political action and judgement as such. Why is it necessary to protect the socio-political order from the risk of moral corruption in these terms, and for whom? First, a historical distinction is made between three problems that play a key role in the evaluation of the reactive attitudes: those pertaining to their rationality, their authenticity, and their justness. It is then argued that the first two problems are ill-posed. These problems concern differences in degree, and are therefore prone to the relativism of what, retrospectively, can be called 'the resentment-ressentiment complex'. The true problem with retributive passions concerns a difference in kind, not between resentment and ressentiment, but between active affects and passive or reactive affects. This Nietzschean 'demoralisation' of established discourses on the reactive attitudes by means of a historico-systematic reorientation leads to the concluding claim that while moral sentiments and political actions are always entangled, only the latter constitute the ground of social justice.

Arjun Dangle’s “The Poisoned Bread: The Translation from Marathi’s Dalit Literature” discusses about the  ‘untouchables’ and ‘Dalits’  who are identified as depressed and suppressed classes and suffer social discrimination from the Brahminical tradition of casteism in the Hindu society of India. Brahmanism during pre-colonial period of India and even during colonial and post-colonial times has proved to be havoc in granting equal opportunities and rights for the developments of this marginalised section. The literary imagination of Indian authors have played in the dark the existence of dalits, whereas the dalits’ conscious representation of their miserable life in their literature introspect their metaphysical existence, therefore the literary discourse on dalits and by dalits offer not only historical, political evidences but it also encourages meditations on morality and ethics; a way of thinking about justice; a way of completing the post-modern world.
During the pre-independent era of India, the menial jobs, cleaning of filth and squalor in the cities were assigned to a class of Hindu society i.e. Shudras, who were named as Harijans by Gandhi, Untouchables by caste Christians (low caste converts, depressed class by Britishers in the British Imperial age in India, later Dalits by Mahatma Phule and by Dr. Bhimrao  Ambedkar and presently in the Constitution of India they are defined as Schedule caste and Schedule tribes. The dalits does not refer to caste, rather it denotes change and revolution; rejection of sub-human status and upper class ideologies; exploration of neglected aspects of life; search for real, lively, authentic, dignified life and desire to be free from the stigma of out-caste, downtrodden savage and backward.

Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. The spatial implications of centralized hierarchy are also questionable, employing a vertical ontology, wherein horizontal organization is deemed inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet scale represents both a theoretical dis-traction from grounded everyday particularities and a ‘master-signifier’ by providing a point de capiton, or anchoring point, that rests on the exclusion of unconsciousness–the knowledge that is not known¬. Thus the point de capiton is the (Archimedean) point at which an essentialist illusion of fixed meaning is created, as scale is unconscious of geography’s ‘hidden enfolded immensities’. The discourse of scale accordingly dismisses the openness of rhizomic politics by predetermining the political as an arborescent register. Yet the inevitable terra incognita that scalar hierarchies produce becomes a powerful resource for the oppressed, which is why anarchist direct action often proceeds outside of authority’s view. A flat ontology has significant resonance with anarchism, imparting that politics should operate horizontally rather than vertically. This ontological shift suggests that we need not wait for the emergence of a ‘greater’ class-consciousness, as one can immediately disengage capitalism by reorienting economic landscapes in alternative ways. Consequently, a human geography without hierarchy gains significant traction when we reject scale and embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

For many years, sociologists have analysed Black women’s hairstyle choices and options, and how they are informed by slavery, skin colour, sexuality, beauty, media, self-hatred, and femininity (Weitz 2004; Lake 2003; Collins 1991; Banks 2000; Rooks 1996). Black women’s hairstyles range from “relaxed/permed/straight” to “natural” to “dreadlocks” to “braids” to “cornrows” to “weaves” to “texturized” to “Jheri curl” amongst others. The two that will be dealt with in this essay, which will build upon prior studies of the intersection of race, class and gender with respect to Black women’s hair, are “straight/chemically relaxed” hairstyles and “natural/chemical free” hairstyles. It will utilize Rose Weitz’s (2001) notions of accommodation and resistance in her article Women and Their Hair: Seeking Power through Resistance and Accommodation. Weitz (2001) defines accommodation as “actions that accept subordination, by either adopting or simply not challenging the ideologies that accept subordination” (p. 670).  She refers to resistance as “actions that not only reject subordination but do so by challenging the ideologies that support that subordination” (p. 670).

This article offers an intersectional analysis of how non-elites frame neighborhood as a synecdoche for nation through tourism. In Cape Town, South Africa, white Western tourists perceive the peripheral Black townships to be more dangerous than the city's white center but also more representative of the country and thus worth visiting. Drawing from ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, I illustrate how Black women who have established home-based township accommodations iron out the tension between tourists' fear and desire. I employ Goffman's theories of impression management to demonstrate how township hostesses make Black South African space fit for Western consumption through race, class, gender, and nation. On the frontstage, women assuage tourists' inhibitions by acting as maternal African figures. On the backstage, they cover the risks borne of poverty as communal Black mothers. Their gendered production of Black place palliates post-apartheid problems and projects South Africa's stability on the global stage, which invites further Western visitation and capital.

Course Description:
Can HipHop culture help produce a more just world? If so, what theory and praxis best advance this aim? These are the questions that drive this conceptual course. Our critical interrogation of the relationship between HipHop and social justice considers the culture from its U.S. Black Power era underpinnings to its disparate contemporary “glocal” manifestations. We begin by asking what is "HipHop," what is "social justice," and what is their relationship, and proceed to consider how HipHop can be an effective force for social justice and what obstacles mitigate against this potential. These discussions will develop familiarity with important concepts in Black studies and social theory such as race and colonialism, imperialism and hegemony, structure and agency, identity and strategic essentialism. Weekly readings will typically pair writings specifically on HipHop with theory from across the humanities and social sciences including philosophy, sociology, cultural studies, and political economy. Students will participate in the selection of weekly required listening/viewing of music and videos. We will endeavor to consider the race/class/gender dimensions of our weekly topics. Students will acquire a broader familiarity with HipHop activism, and develop new conceptual tools and critical thinking skills.