Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil

by Anthony W. Marx

Overview

Why and how has race become a central aspect of politics during this century? This book addresses this pressing question by comparing South African apartheid and resistance to it, the United States Jim Crow law and protests against it, and the myth of racial democracy in Brazil. Anthony Marx argues that these divergent experiences had roots in the history of slavery, colonialism, miscegenation and culture, but were fundamentally shaped by impediments and efforts to build national unity. In South Africa and the United States, ethnic or regional conflicts among whites were resolved by unifying whites and excluding blacks, while Brazil's longer established national unity required no such legal racial crutch. Race was thus central to projects of nation-building, and nationalism shaped uses of race. Professor Marx extends this argument to explain popular protest and the current salience of issues of race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781139930505
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/28/1997
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	649 KB

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; Part I. Historical and Cultural Legacies: 2. Trajectories from colonialism; 3. Lessons from slavery; 4. The uncertain legacy of miscegenation; Implications; Part II. Racial Domination and the Nation-State: 5. 'Wee for thee, South Africa': the racial state; 6. 'To bind up the nation's wounds': the United States after the Civil War; 7. 'Order and progress': inclusive nation-state building in Brazil; Comparative racial domination: an overview; Part III. Race Making from Below: 8. 'We are a rock': Black racial identity, mobilization and the new South Africa; 9. Burying Jim Crow: Black racial identity, mobilization and reform in the United States; 10. Breaching Brazil's pact of silence; 11. Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Anthony Marx has brought off a bold comparison among South Africa, Brazil, and the United States, showing how state policy and racial categorization interact. He offers a remarkable combination of comparative history, political theory, and sociological interpretation. To cover so much intellectual and geographic space so coherently amounts to a tour de force. -- Charles Tilly, Columbia University

Charles Tilly

"In Making Race and Nation Anthony Marx draws out distinctions that have not been captured by other scholars who have examined race relations in the United States, South Africa and Brazil. This remarkable and original book will certainly influence theory building in race and ethnic relations. It will also be widely cited by social scientists who are interested in the social, economic and political conditions that enhance racial antagonisms." William Julius Wilson, Harvard University

"Through strategic juxtaposition of three racially divided societies, Marx is able to blow apart many popular myths about the causes and consequences of racial domination. For Marx, states make race, albeit not precisely the way their governing elites envisioned. This compelling treatise not only makes a significant contribution to the social theory of race, but due to its clear and lively style, should be of great interest to the general public." David Laitin, University of Chicago

"Anthony Marx has brought off a bold comparison among South Africa, Brazil, and the United States, showing how state policy and racial categorization interact....He offers a remarkable combination of comparative history, political theory, and sociological interpretation...To cover so much intellectual and geographic space so coherently amounts to a tour de force." Charles Tilly, Columbia University

"...Marx has done an extraordinary job of buttressing his analysis with good history....A rich body of footnotes is included. Of interest to general readers and all academic libraries." Choice

"This book will profoundly change how we understand state and race. It will launch many progeny and imitations but few, I expect, with its largeness of conception or with the sweep of its historical comparison." James C. Scott, Yale University

"Making Race and Nation is a superb book: stunning in its sweep, remarkable in its documentation, masterful in its theoretical statement. The elegant interweaving of the contingent concept of race, the nature of the state, and the form assumed by the text of nationhood in these three polities is rich in insight and persuasive in argument. No one interested in racial formation, identity politics, or state theory can afford to ignore this major contribution." M. Crawford Young, University of Wisconsin

"The argument is intriguing, and the evidence persuasively marshaled." Robert H. Bates, Harvard University

"This is a carefully constructed and lucidly argued work of scholarship." Donald L. Horowitz, Duke University

"...impressive...." Robert M. Levine

"This comparative study of racial politics in three nations and of the links between the political production of ‘race' and nation building is an intriguing and thought-provoking read. Anthony Marx has made an important contribution to our understanding of the complexities of racism and raised new questins about the work that needs to be done to dismantle these systems. He writes in a clear, accessible, and compelling style and documents his work exhaustively." Jennifer J. Yanco, Int Jrnl of African Hist Soc

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