A Checkerboard of Ethnoracial Violence

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Author:
Loïc Wacquant Professor, University of California, USA loic@berkeley.edu

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/cont.2023.110205
Keywords:
colonial society; ethnic classification; racial domination; state; violence
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Abstract

Ethnoracial violence is a dynamic and multilayered phenomenon whose definition is at stake not only in academe but also in reality itself. It comes in two varieties, expressive and instrumental, when it serves to buttress the other four elementary forms of racial domination, namely, categorization, discrimination, segregation, and seclusion. I point out that the phenomenon is relatively rare and burdened with heavy moral baggage. I introduce distinctions based on directionality (vertical, horizontal), scale of the actors involved (individual, group, or state), degree of spectacularization, and type of ethnic classification system (categorical, gradational). The imperial domain offers an especially fruitful terrain for the comparative investigation and theoretical elaboration of the dynamics of racialization, violence, and the state. Students of human brutality in history should join hands with comparative scholars of race to throw new light on their explosive intersection.

Contributor Notes

Loïc Wacquant is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and researcher at the Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique, Paris. His work deals with comparative urban inequality, ethnoracial domination, the penal state, the body, and social theory. His books include Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (expanded anniversary edition, 2022), The Invention of the “Underclass”: A Study in the Politics of Knowledge (2022), Bourdieu in the City: Challenging Urban Theory (2023), and Racial Domination (forthcoming). Email: loic@berkeley.edu

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Contention

The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest

Cover Contention
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
14
Keywords:
colonial society; ethnic classification; racial domination; state; violence
Print Publication Date:
01 Dec 2023
Online Publication Date:
01 Dec 2023
Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2023

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