Racial capitalism

Michael, Ralph; Singhal, Maya

doi:10.1007/s11186-019-09367-z

Cited by 68 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Drawing largely on Marx’s journalistic writings, they show that Marx not only discussed race, slavery, and colonialism but saw them as central for capitalism. According to this argument, Marx saw race as so crucial for capitalism that his theory saw the true proletariat as black, brown, and yellow—directly contrary to Robinson’s claim that Marxist theory only saw the white European proletariat as the true subject of history (Anderson 2010; Foster, Holleman, and Clark 2020; Ralph and Singhal 2019). If true, the racial capitalism literature is based on a “misguided reading of Marx” (Ralph and Singhal 2019:864).…”

Section: The Inadequacy Of Existing Theorymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Other scholars use the term to highlight disparities within the working class, which was one of Robinson’s (2000) concerns (see also Melamed 2015:77). Others emphasize how capitalism is presently dependent on violence and dispossession—social relations that conventional theories of capitalism such as Marx’s treat as irrelevant to the system, aberrations from it, or precursors to it (Ralph and Singhal 2019:857). Throughout these usages, the overarching point appears to be to explore and disclose the ways “racial hierarchies can be functional for capitalist social orders” and vice versa (Dawson 2018).…”

Section: Defining Racial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 2. Ralph and Singhal (2019:865) claimed similarly that Robinson needs to “clarify what he means by ‘race’” and that we must “ask why gender, sexuality, geography, and ability are not part of the explicit framework he provides for analysis” (p. 865). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism

2020

Sociological Theory

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In this essay the author assesses the relevance of scholarship on racial capitalism for sociological theory. The author highlights three tensions within the existing literature: (1) whether “race” as opposed to other forms of difference is the primary mode of differentiation in capitalism, (2) whether deficiencies in existing theory warrant the new concept “racial capitalism,” and (3) whether the connection between race and capitalism is a contingent or logical necessity. Existing discussions of racial capitalism implicitly or explicitly raise these tensions, but they do not adequately resolve them. Nonetheless, they remain important for generating further theory and research.

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Section: The Inadequacy Of Existing Theorymentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Defining Racial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism

2020

Sociological Theory

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“…How's that helping?" The client's desperation reflects a broader context in which classed and racialized structures of dispossession are central to capital accumulation and tend to fragment propertyless populations (Kasmir and Carbonella 2008;Ralph and Singhal 2019). Since the 1980s, credit markets expanded significantly due in part to Thatcher's removal of the cap on interest rates (Deville 2015).…”

Section: "Everyday Authoritarianism" On Two Housing Estatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Everyday Authoritarianism: Class and Coercion on Housing Estates in Neoliberal Britain

Davey

Koch

2021

PoLAR

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In Britain, especially in the 2010s, neoliberal reform involved an extension of legal coercion into the domestic and community lives of marginalized citizens. On two postindustrial housing estates in Britain, working-class residents experience this "everyday authoritarianism" in areas that the liberal state typically constructs as private and purports to leave alone: the home and the intimate relations that frame it. Residents engage this legal coercion by adopting responses that range from defensive avoidance to co-opting officials to acts of vigilantism. By doing so, they negotiate the presence of an authority that is often out of sync with their own expectations for protection, and in some cases actively undermines their efforts to remain safe. Their pluralism can be framed neither in terms of an acceptance of state authority nor as a straightforward refusal to be governed. Rather, it reveals the contradictory ways in which marginalized citizens define their relationship to the state under contemporary conditions of class fragmentation. By adding detail on everyday life to meta-narratives of an authoritarian turn, this article theorizes the political potential and limits of people's daily engagements with the state for contesting the latter's authority. [class, coercion, liberal governance] Despite its ambitions of universal freedom, liberal governance has historically featured limits where it interfaces with authoritarian forms of rule. This is especially the case for those people deemed to lack the capacity for self-governance (Bennett, Dodsworth, and Joyce 2007). In Britain, class marks one such limit, along with-and intersecting with-gender and race. Liberal democracy not only historically enfranchised the propertyowning classes but also monitored, policed, and controlled working-class people in ways not known to their middle-class counterparts (Joyce 2013). Our fieldwork was conducted in the 2010s, with our focus on the recent period of British governance known as neoliberalism. In Britain, neoliberalism is generally seen as commencing in 1979 with the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister and her policies of privatization, welfare retrenchment, and accumulation by dispossession. During this time, the state came to subject many working-class people to evermore open forms of coercion (

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“…Rooted in the objectification of the slave in which she or he “becomes a non‐person” (Kopytoff 1986: 65), under the conditions of racial capitalism, the body is objectified (Sharp 2016) and rendered as capital. Ralph and Singhal (2019) have noted “how different forms of death manifest in different sorts of social consequences” (p. 873). Extending that, I would argue that different forms of debility, disability, and illness also manifest in the context of neoliberal expectations of bodily sacrifice, which allow the government to extract value from its citizens without guarantees.…”

Section: Activationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plantation Politics, Paranoia, and Public Health on the Frontlines of America's COVID‐19 Response

Oyarzun

2020

Med Anthropol Q

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Plantation politics" pervade multiple institutions in the United States, including public health. Drawing from my experience working as a volunteer at drive-thru COVID testing sites in the United States, I critically examine the relationship between public health, the military, and capitalism when racial slavery serves as the sociopolitical backdrop of everyday life. I ponder what it means for Black people to toil for a country, in the midst of an emergent communicable disease outbreak, that would weeks later launch into protests for and debates about their entitlements to freedom, safety, and security. Starting from experiences of Black women on the frontlines, I reveal complexities that underlie and undermine notions of care as altruistic, natural, or ethical "in the wake" of chattel slavery and in the midst of racial capitalism. [plantation politics, COVID-19, public health workers, racism, racial paranoia]

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Racial capitalism

Cited by 68 publications

References 51 publications

Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism

Three Tensions in the Theory of Racial Capitalism

Everyday Authoritarianism: Class and Coercion on Housing Estates in Neoliberal Britain

Plantation Politics, Paranoia, and Public Health on the Frontlines of America's COVID‐19 Response

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