Bookbeat: April 2004
Publications from CLAS faculty.
White Men on Race: Power, Privilege, and the Shaping of Cultural Consciousness
by Joe Feagin, Department of Sociology and
Eileen O'Brien,
(Beacon Press, 2004)
Available through Amazon
With 15 books published in the area of race since 1991, Sociology Professor Joe Feagin has still managed to find untouched territory with his latest publication, White Men on Race. The book looks at how upper class white men view race and their encounters with minority groups—a field Feagin says has never been written about. "Countless interviews and surveys have been conducted, but nothing specific as to how elite white men view race," he says. "This book now provides the insight to what these men think about race."
The book is based on the interviews and surveys of about 100 upper-class white men. Feagin, and co-author Eileen O'Brien from the State University of New York Brockport, utilized college students to interview upper-middle-class men in financial and corporate fields from various regions of the country. More than 200 men were questioned, though only 100 were used for the book. The findings reveal how these men view a range of topics including racial conflicts, black families, affirmative action, immigration, crime and expectations for the country's future.
Feagin
says one of the more interesting findings of the research was that most of
these men have relatively few personal interactions with African Americans.
The few interactions that some of these men do recall are from growing up
with maids or servants. In addition, those who attended public schools associate
African Americans with athletics and remember "playing ball" with
a few black youngsters. "This 'white bubble' of segregation, where whites
seldom interact with minorities on an equal footing, causes elite white males
to underestimate the effects of discrimination," explains Feagin. "And
while overt racism is rare, among the group there is a pattern of stereotyping
and subtle bias that is seen." This pattern is part of what the authors
term a "collective white consciousness."
Feagin, who is regarded by many as the most published scholar in the field of race and racism, says he will begin using the book as the text for a course, Black and White Americans, he will teach at Texas A&M University in the fall. "Understanding the consciousness of elite white men is critical as this group has the most power," Feagin says, "This information is important for the present and future to maintain, or change, race relations."
—Kimberly A. Lopez
Shea Butter Republic
by Brenda
Chalfin, Department
of Anthropology
(Routledge, 2004)
Available through Amazon
Indigenous to the savanna zone of West Africa, and central to the livelihoods of rural women in the region, shea has, for more than a century, circulated on the world market as a low priced and little-noticed industrial raw material. In Shea Butter Republic, Chalfin presents an ethnographic study that traces the history of shea from a pre- to a post-industrial commodity with the aim of providing a deeper understanding of emerging trends in tropical commodification, cosmopolitan consumption, global economic restructuring, and rural livelihoods. Chalfin challenges the assumption that globalization makes state institutions and authority unnecessary and undercuts the neo-liberal argument that streamlining state operations yields greater efficiency and accountability. She also explores how state authority, during both the colonial and post-colonial periods, is sustained through various projects of market building.
— Publisher
Renouncing the World Yet Leading the Church: The Monk Bishop in Late Antiquity
by Andrea
Sterk, Department
of History
(Harvard University Press, 2004)
Available through Amazon
Although an ascetic ideal of leadership had both classical and biblical roots, it found particularly fertile soil in the monastic fervor of the fourth through sixth centuries. Church officials were increasingly recruited from monastic communities, and the monk-bishop became the dominant model of ecclesiastical leadership in the Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantium. In an interesting paradox, Sterk explains that "from the world-rejecting monasteries and desert hermitages of the east came many of the most powerful leaders in the church and civil society as a whole." She explores the social, political, intellectual, and theological grounding for this development. Focusing on four foundational figures—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom—she traces the emergence of a new ideal of ecclesiastical leadership: the merging of ascetic and episcopal authority embodied in the monk-bishop.
— Publisher
Photo:
Jane Gibson
