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Clarke, Kamari Maxine, and Deborah Thomas, eds. Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness. Durham: Duke UP, 2006.
This edited collection analyzes "the changing meanings and politics of blackness" (4) that move beyond the rootedness of origins in the Black Diaspora; Globalization and Race: Transformation in the Cultural Production of Blackness considers identity processes as multileveled, complex, and politically laden. The editors, Deborah A. Thomas and Kamari M. Clarke, situate diaspora, "a process that generates subjects through negotiations arising from particular structural and historical conditions that change over time" (12), firmly within the context of "relational networks" (13) developed through globalization-a multifaceted process of transnational movements with meanings that change over time. The contributors agree that what are missing from current discussions of globalization are the very social constitutions of myriad politicized economies, thus moving analyses beyond "deterritorialized" economies and the loss of "original" relationships between people and things. Thomas and Clarke argue that the globalization of race politics forces scholars to consider the new "geometry" of the color line, which can no longer be theorized in terms of black and white (33). Globalization and Race, then, presents "the particularities of contemporary racialized circulations" with research questions that address and demonstrate "who travels, what travels, and how transnational alliances are tied to particular knowledge economies" (9). As such, this collection takes all forms of cultural production seriously, even, and especially, popular culture.
The interdisciplinary, multi-institutional collaborative project was conceived of at the 2001 American Anthropological Association (vii) and although the majority of the contributors to the collection are anthropologists, the anthology also includes chapters by interdisciplinary scholars who work in women's studies, African and African-American studies, literature, sociology, and cultural studies. The book consists of seventeen chapters that are separated into three overarching themes that speak to the differing ways in which the essays explore the formation of the Black Diaspora in the context of globalization. For the purposes of this review a chapter or two from each section is singled out for further discussion due to the unique overall contribution to scholarship in the anthropology of the Black Diaspora.
Part one, "Diasporic Movements, Missions, and Modernities," historicizes discussions of globalization and race and addresses the multiple meanings of modernity, education, and...