Racial Theories

Thoroughly revised edition of classic book on racial theories and their successors.

Michael Banton (Author)

9780521629454, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 April 1998

264 pages
22.6 x 15.1 x 1.7 cm, 0.42 kg

"Banton has written an excellent book. He traces the history of thinking on race and the evolution of the discipline of race or ethnic relations with considerable erudition and skill. His discussion of the different theories is invariably fair and perceptive, and clears up a good deal of muddle." Bhikhu Parekh, New Society

This thoroughly revised and updated edition of Michael Banton's classic book reviews historical theories of racial and ethnic relations and contemporary struggles to supersede them. It shows how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts of race attempted to explain human difference in terms of race as a permanent type and how these were followed by social scientific conceptions of race as a form of status. In a new concluding chapter, 'Race as social construct', Michael Banton makes the case for a historically sensitive social scientific understanding of racial and ethnic groupings which operates within a more general theory of collective action and is, therefore, able to replace racial explanations as effectively as they have been replaced in biological science. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand contemporary debates about racial and ethnic conflict.

1. Race as designation
2. Race as lineage
3. Race as type
4. Race as subspecies
5. Race as status
6. Race as class
7. Race as social construct.

Subject Areas: Ethnic studies [JFSL]