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The Social Evolution of the Term “Half‐Caste” in Britain: The Paradox of its Use as Both Derogatory Racial Category and Self‐Descriptor
Author(s) -
Aspinall Peter J
Publication year - 2013
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/johs.12033
Subject(s) - caste , dialectic , term (time) , context (archaeology) , social category , ethnic group , white (mutation) , sociology , colonialism , genealogy , history , anthropology , law , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , political science , philosophy , archaeology , quantum mechanics , gene , biochemistry , physics , chemistry
The term “half‐caste” had its origins in nineteenth century B ritish colonial administrations, emerging in the twentieth century as the quotidian label for those whose ancestry comprised multiple ethnic/racial groups, usually encompassing “White”. From the 1920s–1960s the term was used in B ritain as a derogatory racial category associated with the moral condemnation of “miscegenation”. Yet today the label continues to be used as a self‐descriptor and even survives in some official contexts. This paradox – of both derogatory racial category and self descriptor – is explored in the context of the term's social evolution, drawing upon the theoretical constructs of the internal‐external dialectic of identification and labelling theory.