The Rule of Racialization: Class, Identity, Governance

By Steve Martinot

Book Overview

An important history of the way class formed in the US, The Rule of Racialization offers a rich new look at the invention of whiteness and how the inextricable links between race and class were formed in the seventeenth century and consolidated by custom, social relations, and eventually naturalized by the structures that organize our lives and our work. Arguing that, unlike in Europe, where class formed around the nation-state, race deeply informed how class is defined in this country and, conversely, our unique relationship to class in this country helped in some ways to invent race as a distinction in social relations. Martinot begins tracing this development in the slave plantations in 1600s colonial life. He examines how the social structures encoded there lead to a concrete development of racialization. He then takes us up to the present day, where forms of those structures still inhabit our public and economic institutions. Throughout, he engages historical and contemporary thinkers on the nature of race in the US, creating a book that at once synthesizes significant critiques of race while at the same time offers a completely original conception of how race and class have o

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566399815
• ISBN13: 9781566399814
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

A nice contribution to "whiteness studies"

>After all Martinot's analysis, the fundamental mystery still remains:<br>how can race remain so persistent, even across changes to class systems<br>and the specific forms of racialization? Its suppositional structure<br>goes a ways towards an answer, but it always feels like something is<br>missing in every explanation. This is not remotely a flaw in Martinot's<br>book, but is the very kernel that he moves us slightly closer towards<br>being able to understand.