edited by Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian
Duke University Press, 2003 eISBN: 978-0-8223-8465-6 | Paper: 978-0-8223-3091-2 | Cloth: 978-0-8223-3079-0 Library of Congress Classification HT1521.R2355 2003 Dewey Decimal Classification 305.8
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
How do race and nature work as terrains of power? From eighteenth-century claims that climate determined character to twentieth-century medical debates about the racial dimensions of genetic disease, concepts of race and nature are integrally connected, woven into notions of body, landscape, and nation. Yet rarely are these complex entanglements explored in relation to the contemporary cultural politics of difference. This volume takes up that challenge. Distinguished contributors chart the traffic between race and nature across sites including rainforests, colonies, and courtrooms.
Synthesizing a number of fields—anthropology, cultural studies, and critical race, feminist, and postcolonial theory—this collection analyzes diverse historical, cultural, and spatial locations. Contributors draw on thinkers such as Fanon, Foucault, and Gramsci to investigate themes ranging from exclusionary notions of whiteness and wilderness in North America to linguistic purity in Germany. Some essayists focus on the racialized violence of imperial rule and evolutionary science and the biopolitics of race and class in the Guatemalan civil war. Others examine how race and nature are fused in biogenetic discourse—in the emergence of “racial diseases” such as sickle cell anemia, in a case of mistaken in vitro fertilization in which a white couple gave birth to a black child, and even in the world of North American dog breeding. Several essays tackle the politics of representation surrounding environmental justice movements, transnational sex tourism, and indigenous struggles for land and resource rights in Indonesia and Brazil. Contributors. Bruce Braun, Giovanna Di Chiro, Paul Gilroy, Steven Gregory, Donna Haraway, Jake Kosek, Tania Murray Li, Uli Linke, Zine Magubane, Donald S. Moore, Diane Nelson, Anand Pandian, Alcida Rita Ramos, Keith Wailoo, Robyn Wiegman
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Donald S. Moore is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jake Kosek is a geographer and a Lang Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
Anand Pandian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
REVIEWS
“A stunning and original collection. As far as the essays here excavate the many valences of 'race' and 'nature' and the 'racisms' and 'naturalisms' that operate and mobilize them, they are cautiously hopeful, and write eloquently against the reproduction and government of life through these exclusive terms.”—Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics
"This is a pathbreaking volume on the cultural politics of race, nature, and power. A range of innovative contributions address the most pressing questions regarding the mutually mediating ‘traffic’ between the terms of nature, culture, and race. This book now sets the standard in thinking critically—that is, politically—about the racial cultures of nature, difference, and distinction."—David Theo Goldberg, author of The Racial State
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nature: Terrains of Power and Practice / Donald S. Moore, Anand Pandian, and Jake Kosek 1
Part One. Calculating Improvements 71
1. After the Great White Error . . . The Great Black Mirage / Paul Gilroy 73
2. Simians, Savages, Skulls, and Sex: Science and Colonial Militarism in Nineteenth-Century South Africa / Zine Magubane 99
3. “The More You Kill the More You Will Live”: The Maya, “Race,” and Biopolitical Hopes fro Peace in Guatemala / Diane M. Nelson 122
Part Two. Landscapes of Purity and Pollution
4. “There is a Land Where Everything is Pure": Linguistic Nationalism and Identity Politics in Germany / Uli Linke 149
5. “On the Raggedy Edge of Risk": Articulations of Race and Nature after Biology / Bruce Braun 175
6. Beyond Ecoliberal “Common Futures": Environmental Justice, Toxic Touring, and a Transcommunal Politics of Place / Giovanna Di Chiro 204
7. Inventing the Heterozygote: Molecular Biology, Racial Identity, and the Narratives of Sickle-Cell Disease, Tay-Sachs, and Cystic Fibrosis / Keith Wailoo 235
8. For the Love of a Good Dog: Webs of Action in the World of Dog Genetics / Donna Haraway 254
edited by Donald S. Moore, Jake Kosek and Anand Pandian
Duke University Press, 2003 eISBN: 978-0-8223-8465-6 Paper: 978-0-8223-3091-2 Cloth: 978-0-8223-3079-0
How do race and nature work as terrains of power? From eighteenth-century claims that climate determined character to twentieth-century medical debates about the racial dimensions of genetic disease, concepts of race and nature are integrally connected, woven into notions of body, landscape, and nation. Yet rarely are these complex entanglements explored in relation to the contemporary cultural politics of difference. This volume takes up that challenge. Distinguished contributors chart the traffic between race and nature across sites including rainforests, colonies, and courtrooms.
Synthesizing a number of fields—anthropology, cultural studies, and critical race, feminist, and postcolonial theory—this collection analyzes diverse historical, cultural, and spatial locations. Contributors draw on thinkers such as Fanon, Foucault, and Gramsci to investigate themes ranging from exclusionary notions of whiteness and wilderness in North America to linguistic purity in Germany. Some essayists focus on the racialized violence of imperial rule and evolutionary science and the biopolitics of race and class in the Guatemalan civil war. Others examine how race and nature are fused in biogenetic discourse—in the emergence of “racial diseases” such as sickle cell anemia, in a case of mistaken in vitro fertilization in which a white couple gave birth to a black child, and even in the world of North American dog breeding. Several essays tackle the politics of representation surrounding environmental justice movements, transnational sex tourism, and indigenous struggles for land and resource rights in Indonesia and Brazil. Contributors. Bruce Braun, Giovanna Di Chiro, Paul Gilroy, Steven Gregory, Donna Haraway, Jake Kosek, Tania Murray Li, Uli Linke, Zine Magubane, Donald S. Moore, Diane Nelson, Anand Pandian, Alcida Rita Ramos, Keith Wailoo, Robyn Wiegman
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Donald S. Moore is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jake Kosek is a geographer and a Lang Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
Anand Pandian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
REVIEWS
“A stunning and original collection. As far as the essays here excavate the many valences of 'race' and 'nature' and the 'racisms' and 'naturalisms' that operate and mobilize them, they are cautiously hopeful, and write eloquently against the reproduction and government of life through these exclusive terms.”—Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics
"This is a pathbreaking volume on the cultural politics of race, nature, and power. A range of innovative contributions address the most pressing questions regarding the mutually mediating ‘traffic’ between the terms of nature, culture, and race. This book now sets the standard in thinking critically—that is, politically—about the racial cultures of nature, difference, and distinction."—David Theo Goldberg, author of The Racial State
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nature: Terrains of Power and Practice / Donald S. Moore, Anand Pandian, and Jake Kosek 1
Part One. Calculating Improvements 71
1. After the Great White Error . . . The Great Black Mirage / Paul Gilroy 73
2. Simians, Savages, Skulls, and Sex: Science and Colonial Militarism in Nineteenth-Century South Africa / Zine Magubane 99
3. “The More You Kill the More You Will Live”: The Maya, “Race,” and Biopolitical Hopes fro Peace in Guatemala / Diane M. Nelson 122
Part Two. Landscapes of Purity and Pollution
4. “There is a Land Where Everything is Pure": Linguistic Nationalism and Identity Politics in Germany / Uli Linke 149
5. “On the Raggedy Edge of Risk": Articulations of Race and Nature after Biology / Bruce Braun 175
6. Beyond Ecoliberal “Common Futures": Environmental Justice, Toxic Touring, and a Transcommunal Politics of Place / Giovanna Di Chiro 204
7. Inventing the Heterozygote: Molecular Biology, Racial Identity, and the Narratives of Sickle-Cell Disease, Tay-Sachs, and Cystic Fibrosis / Keith Wailoo 235
8. For the Love of a Good Dog: Webs of Action in the World of Dog Genetics / Donna Haraway 254