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Re‐Thinking the ‘Origins Debate’: Race Formation and Political Formations in England’s Chesapeake Colonies
Author(s) -
Smaje Chris
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6443.00176
Subject(s) - race (biology) , racism , politics , colonialism , argument (complex analysis) , trace (psycholinguistics) , relation (database) , sociology , reading (process) , resistance (ecology) , gender studies , political science , law , ecology , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , biology , database , computer science
The debate over the ‘origins’ of racism in colonial North America has been dominated by the view that racism was a consequence of the enslavement of African‐origin labour, or alternatively that it was a prior – perhaps primordial – sentiment that shaped the process of enslavement. This paper offers an alternative reading of the evidence in suggesting that race formation can be understood in relation to the emergence of new forms of imagining political communities in early modern England, and Europe more generally. This argument can not only help refine understanding of race formation in early colonial America, but also sociological theories of race more generally, while helping avoid some of the theoretical problems entailed in attempting to trace the ‘origins’ of social phenomena.