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A COMMON CAUSE Reconnecting the study of racism and antisemitism
Author(s): Cousin, Glynis; Fine, Robert
Date: 2012
Topics: Antisemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Racism, Antisemitism: Opposition to and Activism Against Antisemitism
Abstract: This paper explores connections and disconnections in the study of racism and antisemitism within sociological inquiry. It begins with an exposition of how certain prominent theorists of racism and antisemitism (e.g., Du Bois, Fanon, Arendt) have in the past identified important connections between these fields of exclusion and persecution in the making of European modernity. While their analysis of connections between racism and antisemitism may have been uneven and provisional, the more recent tendency to replace such connectivity with separatist or even oppositional readings has been a step backward. This tendency toward what we call ‘methodological separatism’ impoverishes our sociological imagination for a number of reasons. First, it neglects the extent to which prejudice and persecution in relation to Muslims, Jews and Black people are connected phenomena in the formation of European modernity. Second, it encourages divisive and competitive analytical approaches which lock their protagonists in rival camps and reproduce aspects of the language of racism they oppose. While affirming the distinctive characteristics of anti-Black and anti-Jewish racisms, we argue that the development of a more integrated approach is required to enable our understanding of how modernity continues to operate.