Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 29 No. 5 September 2006 pp. 785 796
Reflections on Michael Banton’s contribution to race and ethnic studies Rohit Barot
Abstract My association with Michael Banton and his contribution to the field of race and ethnic studies developed more than three decades ago when I bought a copy of his Race Relations (1967) at the University of California Berkeley Bookshop. At the time it was impossible to imagine that my study via Berkeley and London would take me to a lecturing post in the Department of Sociology that Michael Banton had established at the University of Bristol nor did I envisage then that I would be his colleague for the two decades leading up to his retirement. It is in this context of both professional and personal associations that this tribute offers some reflections on his intellectual biography, along with his contribution to what has come to be known as the race relations problematic, his thoughts on what was subsequently identified as the racism problematic, his critical interest in linking rational choice theory to race and ethnicity and his remarkable concern with international law and human rights.
Michael Banton: his academic and intellectual biography. Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Bristol, was born on 8th September 1926 and reaches his 80th birthday in September 2006. His academic journey began at the London School of Economics after he had served in the Royal Navy as a Sub-Lieutenant, RNVR towards the end of the Second World War. His personal tutor Edward Shils encouraged him to read The Protestant Ethic, Crime and Custom and Sex and Repression in Savage Society along with Le Suicide and Street Corner Society with readings on the Chicago school and more on Max Weber. Shils also encouraged him to do some anthropology and he did a paper called Ethnology in the LSE Anthropology Department. Shils also recommended that Banton should listen to Karl Popper, who inspired him to pursue an
# 2006 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0141-9870 print/1466-4356 online DOI: 10.1080/01419870600813827
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academic career that was committed to the advancement of knowledge. After graduating from the LSE, Banton secured a research assistantship in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, where he was eventually appointed to a new lectureship in social anthropology. Under Kenneth Little’s headship and with Nuffield Foundation grants, Banton published his three books The Coloured Quarter (1955), West African City (1957), and White and Coloured (1959) which were based on research that was conducted to study the settlement of colonial immigrants in Britain. The Policeman in the Community (1964) reported research that Banton had undertaken into police-community relations in Scotland and in three cities in the USA. With his increasing participation in the Association of Social Anthropologists and a Readership in Anthropology at Edinburgh, Banton eventually came to establish the Department of Sociology at the University of Bristol with his appointment as Professor of Sociology in 1965, a position that he held until he retired in 1992. In the early 1970s, the Social Science Research Council appointed Banton to head its Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, then located in Bristol. This development was to stimulate Banton’s interest in both theory as well as specific issues which concerned the presence of significant South Asian and African Caribbean populations in Britain. Post colonial changes in Africa presented a particular set of problems for the British state, as it had to deal with the forced migration of Kenyan Asians as well as the expulsion of Ugandan Asians who had chosen to remain British subjects and whose plight had been investigated by Mike Bristow of the Research Unit on Ethnic Relations. Popular animosity towards admission of Kenyan and Ugandan Asians saw a rise of hostility towards East African Indians and a significant growth of the National Front. It was in this somewhat dynamic political context that Banton began to pursue a challenging task of building a social science research institution which would provide a platform for better understanding of ‘race’ and ethnic issues in Britain. Recruitment of researchers (some of them reaching professorial rank in their later careers) including Robin Ward, Robert Miles, Annie Phizacklea, Roger Ballard, Avtar Kaur Brah, Peter Weinreich and Sandra Wallman constituted a group of scholars with diverse research interests and perspectives. Banton headed the Unit for a period of eight years till 1978. Subsequently the Unit was to find a home, first at Aston University and then at the University of Warwick under the new title of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. Banton’s 1959 research in police and community relations had already drawn his attention to some of the practical issues of policing a rapidly changing Britain. Issues which concerned sustaining a consensual policing and social order were explored in
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his The Policeman in the Community (1964). Besides his services to Bristol as a Justice of the Peace (1966 92), Banton also remained active in what many would describe as a policy field. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Civil Disorders in Bermuda in 1978 and took an active part as a member of the UK Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure in 1978 81. He also served on Home Office Committees concerned with race relations research and police training in race relations. The most important position that he held was as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. He was a Chairman of the Committee from 1996 98 and Rapporteur from 1990 96 and from 1998 2001. I explore this aspect of his work later in relation to the development of his intellectual ideas but it is sufficient to note here that this interest was to see publication of two books, International Action against Racial Discrimination in 1996 and The International Politics of Race in 2002. Race Relations Problematic Even before theories of racial and cultural purity had led to the dehumanisation of minorities and the horrors of the Holocaust, Huxley and Haddon had already expressed more than a sense of discomfort with the scientific concept of race (1935). Soon after the Second World War, although the UNESCO statement on race had denied the scientific basis of concept of race (UNESCO 1968), the language of race had become a prominent feature of the world before and after the Second World War, especially in response to the Holocaust but also to apartheid in South Africa and the post-war struggle for equality in the US as well as in the UK. During the British colonial and imperial times, ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ had become ways of describing and analysing relations which were seen to arise out of the perception of physical and cultural differences between populations. Therefore it was not particularly unusual that a whole range of scholars should use ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ as a basis for their account of visible physical differences between categories of people. Scholars like Michael Banton and John Rex were no exception to this more general pattern in the immediate post war period. As the presence of Commonwealth immigration became an issue in politics, sociologists also focused on theories and concepts which would improve understanding of what was seen to be the question of ‘race relations in Britain’. Sami Zubaida’s edited book based upon a BSA conference, Race and Racialism (1970) had a number of essays on the concepts of race and racism. Both Banton and Rex contributed chapters to this volume. Along with others, these chapters not only provided a focus for differences in perspectives and argument about
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‘race relations’ but also created a theoretical debate that was to last from the early 1970s right up to the beginning of the 1990s. Banton and Rex were the key figures to start with, until Robert Miles book Racism and Migrant Labour offered a critique of ‘race relations’ approach and brought about a shift in the ideology of racism as a key variable in any analysis of ‘race relations’. In order to outline the critique that Miles offered, first of all it is necessary to set out briefly how Banton and Rex approached the question of ‘race relations’ in Britain. Micro and Macro Sociological Explanations As Professor of Sociology in the University of Bristol, Banton had entitled his inaugural lecture ‘Race as a Social Category’, showing how physical features were used as signs of roles which were assigned to individuals or which they adopted for themselves. In his book Roles (1965) Banton connected his interests in race to theories of symbolic intereactionism. When Banton was invited to offer a brief summary of his main argument for a multiple review of his work in Current Anthropology, he highlighted the idea of race as a role sign which indicated the ways in which actors will utilise differences in physical appearance to draw boundaries between themselves and others. Although Banton’s perspective had stressed the importance of perceived physical differences, he did not see the perception of such differences as being grounded in objective physical differences between groups. The nature of the connection between physical characteristics and their social significance constitutes an important dimension to six orders of race relations which Banton outlined in Race Relations (1967:68 76). These orders refer to peripheral contact, institutionalised contact, acculturation, domination, paternalism, integration and pluralism. As his discussion suggests, racial orders combine consciousness of race and the nature of power relations between different groups in a wide range of societies such as the United States, South Africa and Brazil. In examining social order in different societies, Banton deployed a comparative perspective which was to have a lasting influence in his writing. Although Banton’s six orders of race relations outlined macrosociological pressures, it was not easy to relate them to the use of race in interpersonal relations. Was it better to start from the macro processes and work downwards or from the micro processes and work upwards? Banton’s solution was to start from the micro. He followed Max Gluckman in maintaining that the macro forces can be revealed in the analysis of micro situations. He tried to exemplify this in Racial Minorities (1972) which he regarded as a posthumous tribute to Gluckman’s stimulating research. However, it should be stressed that the methodological distinction between micro and macro was not
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treated as a watertight dichotomy in Banton’s work. For the six orders of race relations were bound to indicate that these orders could not exist for individuals without the presence of institutional realities. It is doubtful if Banton and Rex had hoped for radically different outcomes for Commonwealth immigrants who were settling in Britain. Although their common concern was welfare and inclusion of migrant population in British life, their approaches were rooted in different theoretical traditions and presuppositions. The categories which Banton used were not free from political implications, but scholarship rather than politics was the driving force of his argument. In other words, Banton held that concern with political issues should not lead to a neglect of intellectual problems. In his ‘The Concept of Race in Sociological Theory’, Rex had entitled his opening section as ‘The Political Importance of a Theoretical Problem’ which reflected Rex’s South African background and his concern for rights of those whose discrimination and exploitation he had witnessed there. His ‘race relations’ perspective was to see colonialism and history of the West as a critical feature in the emergence of race relations in class-based stratification of urban systems in modern societies. While history and politics were more implicit in Banton’s formulation, they emerge as major dimensions in the conception of ‘race relations’ that Rex developed. The first paragraph of his essay also emphasizes a notion of conflict as he says, ‘. . . in the pattern of international history that is being woven for our future, the overriding theme seems to be that of race war’ (1970: 35). This statement was significant given the struggle for freedom and emancipation in South Africa and former Rhodesia concerned nationalism that was geared to end white supremacy in both the states.. However, there were several issues on which both Rex and Banton held similar Weberian views. Both of them had affirmed that race as a category had no basis in science and that the question of race and race relations was primarily a matter of negative and unfavourable meaning that was attached to dark or black skin colour. While Banton took the individual as a starting point of his analysis, John Rex adopted a historical perspective that was rooted in the power of the West in creating unequal stratification systems based on the perception of race and colour. Study of ‘race relations’ in the second half of the twentieth century was increasingly under pressure from emergence of other concepts. Authors like Barth, Cohen and Moynihan were bringing in ethnicity as a major focus in their study. The influence of Marxism on the study of race relations and immigration was raising some important theoretical issues about the relationship between class and ‘race’ as demonstrated in Sivanandan’s initial writing to be followed by notable
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contributions to this debate by Stuart Hall, Annie Phizacklea and Robert Miles with scholars such as John Solomos, as it were, waiting in the wings. Both ethnicity and class were to impinge on debates on ‘race’ relations. In addition, publication of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses combined with the effects of the first Gulf War was already raising issues which were going to make an impact on Muslims in Europe and America, leading to the conception of Islamophobia, an idea which became an important feature of the debate especially after events of 9/11, followed by invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Intellectual and political concern with diaspora was rapidly advancing in history and sociology. Among these various threads, theoretical ideas about the emergence of ethnicity and Marxism were going to make an impact on study of what had been designated as ‘race relations’ for past decades. Racism Problematic Marxist scholarship on race had been inspired by Oliver Cromwell Cox’s study which had argued that race was an aspect of capitalism if not just a mirror reflection of class, an argument that was to appear in different forms and with different degrees of sophistication in the 1970s and 1980s. Those who took the primacy of capitalism as a key feature of ‘race relations’ did not share common ground with those whose point of departure was the race and its significance in postcolonial societies. However a study with a Marxist perspective changed the terrain of debate when Robert Miles, who had worked with Michael Banton at the Bristol Unit for Ethnic Relations in the early 1970s, published Racism and Migrant Labour in 1982. In this publication Robert Miles offered a critique of what he identified as ‘race relations problematic’. The main burden of this critique concerned Banton and Rex use of ‘race’ as an analytical and theoretical category when evidence since the UNESCO statements on race had suggested that race did not have any foundation in science. Extending this argument to the realm of sociology of ‘race relations’, Miles suggested that there was a fundamental problem in the use of ‘race relations’ as a category when it was most likely to reify the idea of race as something that was real when it did not have a basis for discrete existence and gave credibility to those who wanted to foster the idea of race as a biological and cultural entity. In the second chapter of his book ‘Race Relations’: a mirage refracted’, Miles criticized both Banton and Rex for their focus on ‘race relations’ as if it defined a distinctive field of inquiry. Miles reasserted his argument about race as a scientific error and therefore continued use of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ as problematic and unsatisfactory. He argued that this usage was as an impediment to
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a better understanding of conditions faced by visible migrant population. Following a familiar thread in Marxism, he contended that the concept of ideology was more illuminating. According to this argument, neither ‘race’ nor ‘race relations’ but the concept of racism as an ideology was likely to offer a better understanding of the range of inequalities faced by visible migrant communities. Making a distinction between phenomenal and essential aspects of reality, Miles argued that to focus on phenomenal component of ‘race and race relations’ gave credibility to the idea that relation between whites and blacks was primarily a matter of race and physical differences and thus supported false reification of race in sociology. In his criticism of Banton’s concern with ‘race and race relations issues’, Miles argued that Banton was not breaking away from the mould of ‘race relations problematic’. Intellectual heritage of ‘race and race relations’ had been too well-institutionalized to decline from the domain where ‘race’ retained a powerful influence both in theoretical writing as well as in public debates on issues like immigration. In responding to this criticism, Banton explored the terrain of differences between Marxist and non-Marxist views on the significance of race in a series of publications. In a chapter entitled ‘Epistemological assumptions in the study of racial differentiation’ (Rex and Mason, 1986) Banton traced contrasting approaches with race relations to philosophical and epistemological differences between Kant and Hegel and demonstrated how the differences between Kantian view of science and Hegelian view of history had given rise to contrasting philosophical traditions. The difference between these traditions shaped assumptions about reality and led to the distinction between value freedom and value laden knowledge. In his essay entitled ‘The Racism Problematic’ (Barot, 1996, 20 43) Banton responded to these issues and extended his argument about comparative merits and limitations of perspectives stemming from a historical and class-based approach to racism. However, he did not abandon the ‘race relations problematic’ as he argued that the notion of race lived on in perception as well as in public policy, especially through Race Relations legislations. At the same time he did not dismiss criticism of ‘race relations problematic’. To his credit, he indicated that, The race concept’s career has followed an erratic socially disruptive path, acquiring new meanings without losing most of the old ones. Among its illegitimate offspring has been the expression ‘race relations’, which has implied for many that such relations are distinctive because of the biological constitution of the parties rather than because of the social significance vested in physical differences. Those who have written of ‘race relations’ have not always handled these problems as well as they might have done.
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The changes entailed by taking racism as a starting point have been politically constructive in focusing more sharply upon prejudice and discrimination within the majority and upon the interrelations between their underlying causes (Banton, 1996, 41 emphasis added). Although Banton’s position was grounded in his Kantian methodology, he wore no blinkers and had the intellectual openness to recognize the criticism of his work as well as the contribution that this criticism made to the debate on race and race relations in sociology. In rejecting the logic of arguments based on philosophical monism and collectivism associated with Hegel and Marxists, Banton had developed a critical and comparative appraisal of what he called the ‘racism problematic’ in his contribution to this volume. He shows some of the limitations of the ‘racism problematic’ and argues that the differences between ‘race relations problematic’ and ‘racism problematic’ raise different kinds of questions depending on the perspective that an individual scholar decides to apply. However, in his quest to find a theory that would satisfy the Kantian expectation of science, Banton began exploring rational choice theory that focused on the individual as the unit of analysis in intergroup relations. In examining the propositions of rational choice, Banton was able to take account of the subjective meanings that actors brought to bear on their perception of race and culture. Although he related rational choice to race and ethnicity, these categories were not in any way an inevitable part of his theoretical framework. For he was aware that in many situations the actors may not attach any racial or ethnic meaning to their choice and this may create a basis for non-racial interaction. His concern with perception of race and ethnicity did not lead him to exclude those encounters which were free from burdens of race and ethnicity. However, his focus was on rational choice as it was influenced by subjective attribution of race and ethnicity. He concentrated on micro-sociology of how did actors make choices when they were self-conscious of physical and cultural differences. Rational Choice and its application to ‘racial’ and ethnic relations Using the study of role-relationships, Banton argued that it linked up easily with models of social behaviour as transactions between persons exchanging goods and services. Banton had picked this idea up from George Homans’s work. In 1976 he saw how it could be the foundation of a synoptic theory of racial and ethnic relations. To state this theory properly was going to be a long task, so he first published an outline as a working paper. It was entitled Rational Choice: a theory of racial and ethnic relations (1977). Choosing a name for the theory was not easy. He knew that the one he eventually chose would mislead some people
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into thinking that it was a theory of rational choice only, when that was not his intention. The neo-classical economics Banton had studied at the LSE used rationality as a criterion for the analysis of behaviour, enabling the economist to calculate the costs of sub-optimal decisions. The same principle could be applied in studying the readiness of people to identify with racial or ethnic groups. Subsequently he concentrated on the theory of rational choice, most evidently so with the publication of Racial and Ethnic Competition (1983), where he indicated that he had moved from the position he had reached in Race Relations (1967). He wished to analyse issues of race and ethnicity in terms of a single theory. This was to be called ‘Rational Choice Theory of Racial and Ethnic Relations’ (1983:12) which suggested that ‘competition is the critical process shaping patterns of racial and ethnic relations’ (1983:12). The notion of rational choice seemed to undermine the primary significance of race. Instead, competition, rational choice and its consequences gained more importance in his inquiry. In other words, it was not the social significance of race that was to determine the pattern of relationships, but the rational calculation according to which the individuals would compete for goods and services in order to maximise their personal gain. As David Mason has stated, the rational choice theory ‘is self-consciously individualistic and assumes the theoretical primacy of individual actors rather than pre-existent social groups’ (1986, 1988, 16 17). Banton outlined the main propositions of rational choice theory as follows: 1 Individuals use physical and cultural differences to create groups and categories by the processes of inclusion and exclusion. Ethnic groups result from inclusive processes and racial groups from exclusive processes. 2 When groups interact, processes of change affect their boundaries in ways determined by the form and intensity of competition. In particular, when people compete as individuals, this tends to dissolve the boundaries that define the groups; when they compete as groups, this reinforces those boundaries. (Banton 1983:100 139; 1995, 478 497). Banton applied his theoretical formulation to the study of discrimination in housing to show that individual buyers and sellers would bring to bear particular preferences (including a preference for skin colour) (1979:416 426). Individuals from a visible minority population may find paying a higher price for housing, a ‘colour tax’ that could facilitate their entry into the housing market. In treating rational choice theory as a set of propositions which can be tested in a situation where actors make a particular set of choices as opposed to others,
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Banton was advancing rationality of decision making as a critical process in competition between individuals from different groups and backgrounds. Distinct from theorists whose ideals were prescriptive, Banton wanted to focus on competition in real situations to demonstrate the working of the rational choice paradigm and the effect it could have not only on constraints and exclusion but also on opportunities which could facilitate venues of economic and social mobility for migrants and their families, a theme of careful scientific examination that would have sustained Banton’s Popperian inclination. Human Rights Problematic To many scholars familiar with Banton’s work, it may seem as if his interest in human rights and international law largely stemmed from his nomination or appointment on the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in the 1990s. In a panel discussion on the ‘The Life Course’ at the British Sociological Association Conference in 2005, he observed, Looking back, I see my interest in human rights, and in racial discrimination in particular, as the development of an orientation formed before leaving school and shaped by the doctrines I studied at LSE. Although Banton asserts that he did not have a conception of human rights before he became involved in the UN, the context of his research in colonial and postcolonial Britain already had an international dimension. At the end of the imperial rule after the Second World War, Britain was already dealing with migrations from the nations of both old and new Commonwealth in what could be identified as a realm of international relations. In my assessment, his study of settlement of colonial immigrants in the 1950s clearly demonstrates this theme. Although enhanced global self consciousness of human rights as a distinctive issue may have come about in the second half of the 20th century, Chapter 10 ‘‘The Conclusions for Social Policy’’ in The Coloured Quarter, signals the emergence of concern with the welfare of colonial immigrants along with potential for legal measures against discrimination and human rights. For example, there is a reference to L. G. Green’s ‘Human Rights and the Colour problem’ (Banton 1959, p. 243) and a clear statement that ‘the writers of the United Nations memorandum on Discrimination come out unequivocally in favour of legislative action’.At the very least this indicates that such concerns, although not spelled out in global terms familiar in the last quarter of
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20th century, were already not too far from the awareness of scholars after the Second World War. Service with the UN gave Banton opportunities to explore the international dimension of racial discrimination and the tension that lead to violation of human rights. ICERD or International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965 (entered into force 1969) refers to this issue on its web page. This Convention requires countries to condemn all forms of racial discrimination, whether based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin, and to pursue a policy of eliminating racial discrimination. Countries must guarantee everyone’s right to equality before the law, and to various political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights. The ICERD recognizes that affirmative action measures may be necessary to achieve these ends. Unfortunately, the Convention does not make any specific reference to discrimination against women in the context of race discrimination. The Convention establishes the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which is empowered to consider complaints from other countries about violations of the ICERD and, in certain circumstances, individual or group complaints. Its role is also to monitor progress towards full implementation of the Convention in the countries that have ratified the convention.
As a member Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) from 1986 to 2001 and its Chairman from 1996 98, Banton played an important part in getting the states to comply with their international obligations as parties to this convention and to provide information needed to demonstrate compliance. Although he has so far been the only UK national to be elected to chair a UN human rights treaty body, and this has been his main career distinction, his academic associates, his students and policy-makers who were influenced by him will always remember Michael Banton as an astute scholar who contributed to both intellectual and policy dimensions of race and ethnic studies. References BANTON, M. 1955 The Coloured Quarter, London: Cape ** 1957 West African City, Oxford: Oxford University Press ** 1959 White and Coloured , London: Cape ** 1964 The Policeman in the Community, London: Tavistock ** 1965 Roles, London: Tavistock ** 1967 Race Relations, London: Tavistock ** 1972 Racial Minorities, London: Fontana
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** 1977 Rational Choice Theory of Race and Ethnic Relations, Bristol: Research Unit on Ethnic Relations, University of Bristol ** 1979 ‘Two theories of racial discrimiantion in housing’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2,4 pp.416 427 ** 1983 Racial and Ethnic Competition , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ** 1988 ‘Chapter 2 Epistemological assumptions in the study of racial differentiation’, in Rex J. and Mason D (eds), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42 63 ** (1991) ‘The Race Relations Problematic’ British Journal of Sociology, Volume No 42, No.1, March 1991, pp. 115 130 ** 1996 ‘Chapter 1 Racism Problematic’, in Rohit Barot (ed.), The Racism Problematic: Contemporary Sociological Debates on Race and Ethnicity, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 20 43 ** 1996 International Action against Racial Discrimination , Oxford: Clarendon Press ** 2002 The International Politics of Race, Cambridge: Polity Press BAROT, R (ed.). (1996) The Racism Problematic: Contemporary Sociological Debates on Race and Ethnicity, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, pp. 20 43 HUXLEY, J. and HADDON, A.C 1935 We Europeans, London: Cape ICERD (2006) http://www.iwtc.org/ICERD.html MILES, R. 1982 Racism and Migrant Labour, London: Routledge REX J and MASON D. (eds) (1986) Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations Cambridge: Cambridge University Press UNESCO Statement on Race and Racial Prejudice (1968) Current Anthropology, Volume 9, No. 4 (October 1968) pp. 270 272 ZUBAIDA S. (ed) (1970) Race and Racialism . London: Tavistock
ROHIT BAROT is Visiting Fellow, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol. ADDRESS: Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol, 43 Woodland Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1UU. Email: Brohitbarot@bristol.ac.uk /
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