Steve Garner

The Uses of Whiteness: What Sociologists Working on Europe Can Draw from US Research on Whiteness

Whiteness studies are trans-disciplinary, but here the focus is principally on sociology and social history. Firstly, I identify, elucidate and synthesize the major ways in which whiteness in this literature has hitherto been problematized, to provide a sociological view of the multidisciplinary work so far. Five interpretations are identified; whiteness as absence, as content, as a set of norms, as resources and as a contingent hierarchy. Secondly, I make some proposals regarding the whiteness problematic’s degree of pertinence to European settings, with a brief discussion of the Irish case. Finally, I argue that whiteness is useful if conceptualized in a way that sets it within the parameters of studies of racism.

The Racialization of Muslims: Empirical Studies of Islamophobia:

Racialization is a concept that is theoretically underdeveloped. Although there has been an increased interest in Islamophobia since 9/11, it is very rarely discussed as racial in its nature. In this special issue on Islamophobia and the Racialization of Muslims scholars connect racism to Islamophobia. This issue situates racialization as a way to explain and understand Islamophobia, as racism towards a Muslim population. Through empirical studies, this issue uncovers the processes of racialization of Muslims and the rise of Islamophobia in both Europe and the USA. Case studies include the experiences of middle-class US Muslims; of white British converts to Islam; of young working-class British-Pakistani men; policing practices in Ireland; and the construction of Muslim identities through online comments about a reality television show. As well as identifying some issues specific to the nation, each case study also reveals the intersection of the racialization process with class and gender experiences.

Problem Interpretation and Resolution via Visual Stimuli: The Use of ‘Mood Boards’ in Design Education

This paper defines and discusses ‘mood boards’– those assemblages of images and, less frequently, objects, which are used to assist analysis, creativity and idea development in design activity. There is need for discussion since little published information currently exists to guide students and tutors. The paper proposes that mood boards can assist problem finding as well as problem solving. Primarily, mood boards provide a mechanism for students and practising designers to respond to perceptions about the brief, the problem as it emerges and the ideas as they develop. The construction of mood boards potentially stimulates the perception and interpretation of more ephemeral phenomena such as colour, texture, form, image and status. They are, like Debonos lateral thinking techniques, partly responses to an inner dialogue and partly provocation to become engaged in such a dialogue. Examples are drawn from recent work in the field of industrial design at Loughborough University.

Ireland and immigration: explaining the absence of the far right

ABSTRACT Garner seeks to explain the absence of far-right political formations in the history of the Republic of Ireland, especially in relation to immigration. He argues that the ‘mainstream’ nationalist parties have implemented a racialized governance of Ireland via the issue of citizenship (in the referendum of 2004). While hegemonic ideas on the racial purity of indigenous populations and the highly ambivalent attitudes and policies on immigration pursued over the last decade are characteristic of a broader European trend, this has not, in the Republic, been accompanied by meaningful far-right political mobilization. Ireland has frequently been seen as sui generis in political terms, and indeed emerges in some ways as a counter-case: increasing hostility towards Others has been identified in the midst of rapid economic growth and political stability. A variety of issues related to the countrys political development have given rise to an especially small left-wing vote, a nationalist centre ground and longlasting domination by a single populist party, Fianna Fáil. This party has been partnered in government since 1997 by a free-market party, the Progressive Democrats, who have contributed to Irelands movement towards neo-liberal policies and a highly functional approach to immigration. The transition from country of emigration to country of immigration has thus taken place against an ideological backdrop in which the imperatives of labour demand and consolidating domestic support for reform have made an uneasy match, resulting in the racialization of Irishness. The state has, however, amended the Constitution in order to qualify jus soli citizenship entitlement in the case of particular categories of people: those whose parents are not Irish nationals. The significant stakes of these changes are analysed in the context of state responses to Eires transition to a country of immigration, and the role of nationalist-populism in the countrys political culture.

Shape exploration of designs in a style: Toward generation of product designs

Generative specifications have been used to systematically codify established styles in several design fields including architecture and product design. We examine how designers explore new designs in the early stages of product development as they manipulate and interpret shape representations. A model of exploration is proposed with four types of shape descriptions (contour, decomposition, structure, and design) and the results of the exploration are presented. Generative rules are used to provide consistent stylistic changes first within a given decomposition and second through changing the structure. Style expresses both the analytical order of explanation and the synthetic complexity of exploration. The model of exploration is consistent with observations of design practice. The application of generative design methods demonstrates a logical pattern for early stage design exploration. The model provides the basis for tools to assist designers in exploring families of designs in a style and for following new interpretations that move the exploration from one family to another.

Comparing graphic actions between remote and proximal design teams

Abstract This paper outlines the conduct and findings of a research project which compared the sketching activity and sketched output of pairs of design students collaborating face-to-face with other pairs linked by computer mediated tools. The paper proposes that attention to the nature and dispersion of ‘graphic acts’ can lead to a better understanding of the exploitation of sketching between remotely located design participants. Sketch Graphic Acts are used to illuminate the phenomenon of shared sketches and the importance of ‘thumbnail’ sketches—which were commonly exploited in laboratory studies of face-to-face collaborative working but which were significantly impoverished in studies of computer mediated, remote collaborative working.

Categorisation of designs according to preference values for shape rules

Shape grammars have been used to explore design spaces through design generation according to sets of shape rules with a recursive process. Although design space exploration is a persistent issue in computational design research, there have been few studies regarding the provision of more preferable and refined outcomes to designers. This paper presents an approach for the categorisation of design outcomes from shape grammar systems to support individual preferences via two customised viewpoints: (i) absolute preference values of shape rules and (ii) relative preference values of shape rules with shape rule classification levels with illustrative examples.

The racialisation of asylum in provincial England: class, place and whiteness

This article examines the discursive racialisation of asylum-seekers by residents of Portishead, a small English town, a process demonstrating a classed and placed set of expressions of whiteness. I study the racialisation of a diverse group of people from the bottom-up, through an analysis of residents’ letters of objection to the Government’s request for planning permission to turn a building into an asylum processing centre in 2004. Three registers of language are presented: ‘technocratic’, ‘resentful’ and ‘conjectural’. Racialisation is expressed through shared ideas about the type of space in Portishead, and the type of people appropriate for it. The space is constructed as white and middle-class: the asylum-seekers are produced discursively as neither and therefore as not belonging. I suggest that the phenomenon of relatively powerful groups constructing themselves as weak and beleaguered can be conceptualised as a form of ‘defensive engagement’.

Injured nations, racialising states and repressed histories: making whiteness visible in the Nordic countries

This paper sets out some parameters for the special issue, focusing on Nordic countries studied as ‘injured nations’, racialising states and repressed histories. The distinctiveness of using whiteness paradigms to accomplish this are specified, and then the individual contributions to the topic are outlined. The processes of racialisation identified and analysed link the past to the present. There are different pathways, from colonised to colonising, from subaltern to dominant racialised position. The specifics of each countrys journey are noted, whilst links to contemporary discourse elsewhere are also established. Although there are populist nationalist parties active in the Nordic countries, the contributors argue that first, it is the mainstream political discourse that enables the more extreme versions: it is not a question of rupture but continuity. Secondly, racialising discourses that place people belonging to the nation in a privileged position vis-à-vis Others can be found outside the formal political arena, in development aid, national cuisine, and in national debates about violence, for example.

Crimmigration When Criminology (Nearly) Met the Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

This extended review of two 2013 publications, Guia, van der Woude, and van der Leun (eds.) Social Control and Justice: Crimmigration in the Age of Fear and Aas and Bosworth (eds.) The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship and Social Exclusion, critically engages with the potential for race scholarship in the paradigms utilized by the contributors. While acknowledging that these volumes represent an imaginative and significant recasting of criminology, raising as they do a number of useful theoretical issues, the author identifies a reluctance to frame any aspect of these studies in terms of racialization. While much of the substantive content might easily be examined using that concept, it is implicit rather than explicit in this scholarship. Sociologists interested in the racialization of immigration are urged to engage seriously with the work and ideas contained in these two volumes and to bring their insights to bear in complementing this emerging field.This extended review of two 2013 publications, Guia, van der Woude, and van der Leun (eds.) Social Control and Justice: Crimmigration in the Age of Fear and Aas and Bosworth (eds.) The Borders of Punishment: Migration, Citizenship and Social Exclusion, critically engages with the potential for race scholarship in the paradigms utilized by the contributors. While acknowledging that these volumes represent an imaginative and significant recasting of criminology, raising as they do a number of useful theoretical issues, the author identifies a reluctance to frame any aspect of these studies in terms of racialization. While much of the substantive content might easily be examined using that concept, it is implicit rather than explicit in this scholarship. Sociologists interested in the racialization of immigration are urged to engage seriously with the work and ideas contained in these two volumes and to bring their insights to bear in complementing this emerging field.