Sociological Theory: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism

Working across a broad range of disciplines, Gilroy has argued that racial identities are historically constructed, formed by colonization, slavery, nationalist philosophies, and consumer capitalism. Paul Williams introduces Gilroy's key themes and ideas, including: the essential concepts, including ethnic absolutism, civilizationism, postcolonial melancholia, iconization, and the 'black Atlantic' analysis of Gilroy's broad-ranging cultural references.

An interdisciplinary consideration of Paul Gilroy's contributions to cultural theory and understandings of modernity.

This interdisciplinary collection addresses the position of minorities in democratic societies, with a particular focus on minority rights and recognition. For the first time, it brings together leading international authorities on ethnicity, nationalism and minority rights from both social and political theory, with the specific aim of fostering further debate between the disciplines. In their introduction, the editors explore the ways in which politics and sociology can complement each other in unravelling the many contradictory aspects of complex phenomena. Topics addressed include the constructed nature of ethnicity, its relation to class and to 'new racism', different forms of nationalism, self determination and indigenous politics, the politics of recognition versus the politics of redistribution, and the re-emergence of cosmopolitanism. This book is essential reading for all those involved in the study of ethnicity, nationalism and minority rights.

The story of the rise of radicalism in the early nineteenth century has often been simplified into a fable about progressive social change. The diverse social movements of the era—religious, political, regional, national, antislavery, and protemperance—are presented as mere strands in a unified tapestry of labor and democratic mobilization. Taking aim at this flawed view of radicalism as simply the extreme end of a single dimension of progress, Craig Calhoun emphasizes the coexistence of different kinds of radicalism, their tensions, and their implications.   The Roots of Radicalism reveals the importance of radicalism’s links to preindustrial culture and attachments to place and local communities, as well the ways in which journalists who had been pushed out of “respectable” politics connected to artisans and other workers. Calhoun shows how much public recognition mattered to radical movements and how religious, cultural, and directly political—as well as economic—concerns motivated people to join up. Reflecting two decades of research into social movement theory and the history of protest, The Roots of Radicalism offers compelling insights into the past that can tell us much about the present, from American right-wing populism to democratic upheavals in North Africa.