GLOBL 2 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Miscegenation, Unfree Labour, Arab Spring
Document Summary
A concept which signifies and symbolizes sociopolitical conflicts and interests in reference to different types of human bodies. Although the concept of race appeals to biologically-based human characteristics (so called phenotypes ), selection of these particular human features for purposes of racial signification is always and necessarily a social and historical process. There is no biological basis for distinguishing human groups along the lines of race , and the sociohistorical categories employed to differentiate among these groups reveal themselves, upon serious examination, to be at least imprecise if not completely arbitrary. It is not something natural, something that"s always been there. It"s a feature of the modern world, by which i mean the last few centuries. Because racism is so large and so diverse, no definition can encompass all its varieties. Basing our definition on the social and historical constructedness of race itself, we can see that racism has at least three different levels of human activity:
