Suchergebnisse

The current article introduces the issue of race and racism in the United States of America with focus on two specific contemporary concepts that have a big attention and have formed the discussion in the last years. The first one is laissez-faire racism from Lawrence D. Bobo who stresses the reluctance of government and political parties to engage in racial questions. The second one is concept of white privilege of Peggy McIntosh who points at advantages and privileges of white race. Both concepts attempt to raise awareness about still present racial discrimination in the United States of America, although in the last years this topic has begun to be perceived as clichet and for some the problem is considered to be solved.

This paper focuses on "The Philadelphia Negro": a community study that stands at the start of American social research. This somewhat forgotten empirical study from 1899 describes the historical conditions and the economic and social causes and circumstances behind the formation and existence of the "Seventh Ward", a slum neighbourhood in Philadelphia inhabited by African-Americans. The study used survey and other methods of observation and analysis of historical, economic and social data. The study was written by the erudite Harvard University graduate William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American, and an economist, historian and sociologist. Using primary and secondary literature and archive sources this paper shows that Du Bois was the author of the first empirical social research study in the United States. It looks at his life, his research, and his opinions on racial issues. He created a programme of research on the African-American population and from 1898 to 1910 he headed the first school of sociology on the American continent at the University of Atlanta. He published the results of scientific analyses of the lives of African-Americans in the south of the United States in sixteen volumes of the Atlanta University Studies. Racial prejudices among the American sociological elites prevented both Du Bois and his work from receiving the attention they rightly deserve.

The paper focuses on the Latin American perspective on modernity, especially on the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano's notion of coloniality. Coloniality is explained as a theoret- ical framework for critical reflection of modernity with an emphasis on the forms of knowledge (episteme) and on non-Western, more specifically Latin American historical experiences and perspectives. The aim is to introduce some Latin American efforts to critically understand coloniality as the other face of modernity and to develop a distinctive critique of capitalism, globalisation and Eurocentrism in their historical dynamics, In the first part, the paper briefly introduces Latin America as a geocultural place and a object of social research in a historical perspective. Special attention is paid to the question of racial classification and authenticity. In the second part, the paper focuses on the notion of coloniality as it was conceptualised by A. Quijano and by other Latin American authors. In the third and fourth parts, the paper deals with the problem of coloniality in wider epistemic contexts of modern social sciences and in relation to the notion of alterity and to the question of decolonisation of social scientific thinking. The final discussion addresses some of inspirational and problematic points of this conception such as problems of decolonisation, intellectual dependency and critique, and the problem of conceptualisation of differences in scientific discourses.

Americans were neither victims nor perpetrators of the Holocaust. Why, then, does this horrific event occupy such a prominent place in their public life & political discourse? With the help of the works by American Jewish historians Norman Finkelstein & Peter Novick, this review article offers a tentative solution to this puzzle. Finkeistein stresses that the Holocaust has been used by the American Jewish elites & organizations for their financial, political & symbolic benefits. Novick does not deny the role of elites & of their instrumental motives but claims that sincere & profitless activities of innumerable "private" Jews & of their informal networks have played no lesser role. According to Novick, four factors contributed to the elevating of the Holocaust to the public pedestal: (1) the transformation of the general atmosphere in theAmerican society from the "integrationism" of the 1950s & 1960s to the "differentialism" of the 1970s & 1980s, (2) the ensuing competition of ethnic & racial groups for the status of the most historically aggrieved minority which motivated Jews to use the Holocaust as a trump against the claims of other groups, (3) the crisis of Jewish identity (brought about by waning religious practices) which made it possible for the Holocaust to function as an Ersatzidentity for Judaism, &, finally, (4) the overrepresentation of the Jews in the media, cultural institutions & entertainment industry which confers upon them a privileged role in the creation & reproduction of hegemonic discourses & images of the larger society. In addition, the reference to the Holocaust has proved useful in justifying tough policies of Israeli governments vis-a-vis the Palestinians & in gaining support for those policies with the American public & government. 11 References. Adapted from the source document.