Multiracism: Rethinking Racism in Global Context

by Alastair Bonnett

Racism is a world problem. From Morocco to China, Brazil to Indonesia, racism is being debated and contested. Multiracism broadens the horizon on this global challenge, showing that racism has a diverse history with multiple roots and routes.

Drawing on examples of racism from across the globe, with particular focus on cases from Asia and Africa, Alastair Bonnett rethinks the origins of racism and the connections between racism and modernity. Arguing that plural modernities are interwoven with plural racisms, he explores the relationship of racism to history, religion, politics, and nationalism, as well as to anti-Black prejudice and discourses of whiteness. Empirically rich, with numerous in-depth case studies, Multiracism equips readers to understand racism in a multipolar world where power is no longer the sole possession of the West. It provides and provokes a new, international, and post-Western vision of racism for the twenty-first century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

195 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 25, 2021

About the author

Alastair Bonnett is a professor of social geography at Newcastle University. He is the author of several books, including What Is Geography?, How to Argue, Left in the Past, and The Idea of the West. He has also contributed to history and current affairs magazines on a wide variety of topics.

Reviews

[Shaneen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this on display in the IR library and only picked it up because of the multichrome cover. But, after reading the summary, I was surprised to find that it was a piece of scholarship on something I've only ever heard articulated in conversations, but never in academia--the existence and interplay of different kinds of racism around the world. This is probably the case simply because I haven't read much scholarship on global racism and am not, in fact, an IR major. Despite this, multiracism was quite readable. It has an extordinarily broad scope and as a result, there are a few errors (in the facts about Pakistan and Ahmadis that I was able to pick out, so I imagine there are others). If these were fixed I'd say it should probably be required reading in some capacity.