‘White UK, White Other, whatever…: notes on

unsettlement in provincial England’

Steve Garner, School of Sociology, UWE Bristol

Steve.Garner@uwe.ac.uk

‘

The Future of Multicultural Britain’University of Surrey, 15.6.05

Argument Map

• White is not an ethnic group:

construction -should be critically framed

• The category white is riven with distinctions; inter alia classed ones• Revealed in talking

about and ‘doing’ community

White

Vast US literature:

1. Terror 2. Cultural

capital3. Absence –

invisibility4. Contingent

hierarchies

•i.e. no single way to view whiteness

without oversimplification•Borders - internal

and external

Some UK-based work on whiteness

• Bonnett: Historical overviews

• Hoggett – Jealousies & Loss• Back: Dividing lines - inter-ethnic

alliances • Nayak: Distinctions

within w-c cultures

Asylum: catalyst for whiteness

• Grillo (2005)• South Coast – relatively wealthy

community• Expressions of antipathy; security,

safety, effect on house prices, drain on

resources.• Vehemently deny being racist: (BNP) – resistance to State

and particular type of Others

‘Keep them Out’ (2004)• Violation (rape

and theft).• Contamination (HIV and foreign illnesses)

• Cultural degradation (dilution)

• Usurpation (taking over our territory)• - Beleaguered,

unlistened-to community

Ongoing work

• Research project: community in S-W

• Classed expressions of opposition: MC (defending space, values, tradition,

ways of being); WC - economic

competition –hierarchy of

entitlement is racialised

White ‘Others’ I•Historically – the

Other of the British was a white catholic European.

•Tradition of ‘anthropologising’

the white w-c•Now too white -pathologised as

uneducated racists

White ‘Others’ II

• Whites have white ‘Others’;

Young people

Drug-dealers,

Binge-drinkers,

Chavs, etc.

• Fear of this in estates and m-c residential areas.

Structure - Policy• Some structural

parameters; e.g. changing work

patterns; housing – prices and ‘right-to-buy’; local economic investment; asylum.

• Ramifications of policy on asylum?

• Is there a limit to rationality?

Conclusions• ‘White’ cannot be used as an

explanatory & predictive category

• Whiteness suspends classed fears: relocates them within constructed subjects: e.g.

asylum-seeker

• Policy-making requires more understanding of what drives

insecurities

• ‘Racism’ might require some reworking in the light of

changing modes of expression