Reviews for Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning

The average rating for Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-22 00:00:00 Sonny Keophimane At the heart of European liberal democracy, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, lies a contradictory and Janus-faced attitude towards racism. David Goldberg has argued that the irony of liberal modernity, committed to idealized principles of equality, is that is has failed to take racism seriously, to recognize how far it is woven into the history and the very fabric and institutions of Western societies. Tenttikirja. Racism in Europe tarjoaa tiiviin, akateemisen katsauksen eurooppalaisen rasismin historialliseen kehitykseen viimeisen reilun sadan vuoden aikana. Teoksessa käsitellään erityisesti antisemitististä sekä "anti-black" - erityisesti afrikkalaisiin ja afroamerikkalaisiin - kohdistuvaa rasismia, rasismin teoreettisia perusteluja sekä yhteiskunallista kontekstia, jossa eri rasismin muodot ja aallot esiintyivät. Läpi käydään niin kansallissosialistisen rotupuhtauden aatteellinen hajanaisuus, tieteellisen maailmankuvan kehityksen ja rasismin yhteys, rasismin esiintymisen sidonnaisuus luokkaan ja maantieteeseen sekä "uusi rasismi" ja sotienjälkeinen oikeistopopulismi. MacMasterin teos on akateeminen yleisesitys ja teksti paikoin vähän kuivakkaa, mutta suosittelin tätä silti näppäräksi yleisteokseksi aiheesta kiinnostuneille. Vaikka kirja on vuodelta 2003, huomaa lukiessa nopeasti, etteivät sen opit ja esimerkit ole vanhentuneet. Päinvastoin, tämä historia tulee tuntea, koska lukiessa huomaa välittömästi tässä päivässä toistuvat ilmiöt ja argumentit.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-18 00:00:00 Linda Daugherty This is an outstanding book on the history of racism in Europe, from the biologization of race to the "present" (which, unfortunately, is 18 years ago). MacMaster pulls together a number of threads and essentially breaks racism in Europe down into two not-quite-discrete categories: "colonial" racism, which generally originated in the colonies and constitutes the racism most of us would recognize today, and anti-Semitism. However, it must be noted that these two categories do overlap at points and cannot be seen as entirely separately. The primary weakness is that central and eastern Europe is not covered extensively, except for perhaps anti-Semitism in Russia, parts of Germany, and small sections on Poland and Hungary. The Balkans are not discussed at all. I still have many questions about views of race in eastern Europe, especially in the wake of the massive refugee crisis of 2015. This leads me to my next point. This book is dated. Although MacMaster is a bit older now, I would sincerely appreciate it if he could issue a second edition of this book. A new chapter on racism in Europe in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis, and the "crisis" of multiculturalism (which, in my opinion, is profoundly overstated) would add a great deal of contemporary relevance to this work.