Home
Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference

Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference

Edited by Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian

Published by: Duke University Press Books

488 pages, 152.00 x 235.00 mm, 4 b&w photos

ISBN: 9780822330912
Published: May 2003

£27.99

Buy

Recommend to Library

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

How do race and nature work as terrains of power? From eighteenth-century claims that climate determined character to twentieth-century medical debates about the racial dimensions of genetic disease, concepts of race and nature are integrally connected, woven into notions of body, landscape, and nation. Yet rarely are these complex entanglements explored in relation to the contemporary cultural politics of difference. This volume takes up that challenge. Distinguished contributors chart the traffic between race and nature across sites including rainforests, colonies, and courtrooms.

Synthesizing a number of fields—anthropology, cultural studies, and critical race, feminist, and postcolonial theory—this collection analyzes diverse historical, cultural, and spatial locations. Contributors draw on thinkers such as Fanon, Foucault, and Gramsci to investigate themes ranging from exclusionary notions of whiteness and wilderness in North America to linguistic purity in Germany. Some essayists focus on the racialized violence of imperial rule and evolutionary science and the biopolitics of race and class in the Guatemalan civil war. Others examine how race and nature are fused in biogenetic discourse—in the emergence of “racial diseases” such as sickle cell anemia, in a case of mistaken in vitro fertilization in which a white couple gave birth to a black child, and even in the world of North American dog breeding. Several essays tackle the politics of representation surrounding environmental justice movements, transnational sex tourism, and indigenous struggles for land and resource rights in Indonesia and Brazil.

Contributors. Bruce Braun, Giovanna Di Chiro, Paul Gilroy, Steven Gregory, Donna Haraway, Jake Kosek, Tania Murray Li, Uli Linke, Zine Magubane, Donald S. Moore, Diane Nelson, Anand Pandian, Alcida Rita Ramos, Keith Wailoo, Robyn Wiegman

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nature: Terrains of Power and Practice / Donald S. Moore, Anand Pandian, and Jake Kosek 1
Part One. Calculating Improvements 71
1. After the Great White Error . . . The Great Black Mirage / Paul Gilroy 73
2. Simians, Savages, Skulls, and Sex: Science and Colonial Militarism in Nineteenth-Century South Africa / Zine Magubane 99
3. “The More You Kill the More You Will Live”: The Maya, “Race,” and Biopolitical Hopes fro Peace in Guatemala / Diane M. Nelson 122
Part Two. Landscapes of Purity and Pollution
4. “There is a Land Where Everything is Pure": Linguistic Nationalism and Identity Politics in Germany / Uli Linke 149
5. “On the Raggedy Edge of Risk": Articulations of Race and Nature after Biology / Bruce Braun 175
6. Beyond Ecoliberal “Common Futures": Environmental Justice, Toxic Touring, and a Transcommunal Politics of Place / Giovanna Di Chiro 204
7. Inventing the Heterozygote: Molecular Biology, Racial Identity, and the Narratives of Sickle-Cell Disease, Tay-Sachs, and Cystic Fibrosis / Keith Wailoo 235
8. For the Love of a Good Dog: Webs of Action in the World of Dog Genetics / Donna Haraway 254
9. Intimate Publics: Race, Property, and Personhood / Robyn Wiegman 296
Part Four. The Politics of Representation 321
10. Men in Paradise: Sex Tourism and the Political Economy of Masculinity / Steven Gregory 323
11. Pulp Fictions of Indigenism / Alcida Ramos 356
12. Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia’s Forest Zone / Tania Murray Li 380
Bibliography 407
Contributors 461
Index 465

Donald S. Moore is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jake Kosek is a geographer and a Lang Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.

Anand Pandian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Jake Kosek is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. He is a coeditor of Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference, also published by Duke University Press.

Anand Pandian is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India.
Daud Ali is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of South Asia Studies, University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India.

“A stunning and original collection. As far as the essays here excavate the many valences of 'race' and 'nature' and the 'racisms' and 'naturalisms' that operate and mobilize them, they are cautiously hopeful, and write eloquently against the reproduction and government of life through these exclusive terms.”—Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics

"This is a pathbreaking volume on the cultural politics of race, nature, and power. A range of innovative contributions address the most pressing questions regarding the mutually mediating ‘traffic’ between the terms of nature, culture, and race. This book now sets the standard in thinking critically—that is, politically—about the racial cultures of nature, difference, and distinction."—David Theo Goldberg, author of The Racial State

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference

Related Books