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In the course of the project, four small (one- or two-day) workshops will be organized at Leiden University.
Cultural repertoire professional#
In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.This project tries to explain the persistence of this cultural repertoire by zooming in on (1) interaction between idioms (cultural repertoires) available to scholars at certain points in time, (2) mechanisms that help transmit repertoires across time and place, and (3) rhetorical purposes for which repertoires can be used.ĭrawing on a wide array of 18th, 19th, and 20th-century sources from across the academic spectrum, the project tests three hypotheses: (1) early modern language of vice persisted in productive interaction with modern notions of “bias,” “subjectivity,” and “conflicts of interest” (2) commonplaces, anecdotes, and stereotypes (“dark Middle Ages”) were major mechanisms of transmission and (3) language of vice was attractive, not despite, but because of its time-honored origins.īy doing so, the project hopes to enrich our understanding of continuity and discontinuity between early modern learning and modern science. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership.
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Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality.
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Abstract This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Delusions are equally derived from the cultural repertoire but are constructed as dogmatic explanations that are idiosyncratic to the individual who holds.
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