Abstract
If we look back at the British race and ethnic relations literature of earlier decades, it is difficult to ignore the tendency for a proliferation of edited collections concentrating on minorities party to one ‘crisis’ or another. The debates over the discursive construction of black youth are one obvious illustration but there are others. That is not to say such a tendency is limited to the study of ethnic and racial minorities, and in many ways the field of race and ethnic relations has moved on. Inquiry has become multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, less consciously ideological though perhaps no less political, and the aperture has widened to encompass different scales of perspective, now frequently taking in the global. But arguably the chief difference between present and earlier accounts of minorities in Britain has been the ‘arrival’ of Muslims; or, more precisely, that both Muslim-consciousness and Islamophobia has made it impossible to deny the empirical presence and conceptual significance of Muslims for the field. As such, the last few years have seen a plethora of commentaries and collections on this problem minority, each varying in scholastic merit, intellectual value and political purchase.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 558-559 |
Number of pages | 2 |
Journal | Ethnic and Racial Studies |
Volume | 33 |
Issue number | 3 |
Early online date | 22 Feb 2010 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2010 |
Keywords
- Muslims
- muslim identity
- cultural identity