Heinemann African Writers Series

Bejjit, Nourdin

doi:10.1163/18784712-03001003

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Second, with a decline of state sponsorship at home and abroad, what had been “commonwealth literature” needed a new market. Publishers found one in marketing what was soon to become postcolonial literature as a “luxury commodity for the British educated middle-classes,” the appreciation for which emerged as “a mark of discernment” ( Donnelly 2015 :49, 142; see also Bejjit 2019 ). Central to these developments were the field configuring effects of the Booker Prize for Fiction ( Anand and Jones 2008 ).…”

Section: The Cultural Foundations Of Tokenismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Childress,

Nayyar,

Gibson

2023

Am Sociol Rev

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Research on tokenism has mostly focused on negative experiences and career outcomes for individuals who are tokenized. Yet tokenism as a structural system that excludes larger populations, and the meso-level cultural foundations under which tokenism occurs, are comparatively understudied. We focus on these additional dimensions of tokenism using original data on the creation and long-term retention of postcolonial literature. In an institutional environment in which the British publishing industry was consolidating the production of non-U.S. global literatures written in English, and readers were beginning to convey status through openness in cultural tastes, the conditions for tokenism emerged. Using data on the emergence of postcolonial literature as a category organized through the Booker Prize for Fiction, we test and find for non-white authors (1) evidence of tokenism, (2) unequal treatment of those under consideration for tokenization, and (3) long-term retention consequences for those who were not chosen. We close with a call for more holistic work across multiple dimensions of tokenism, analyses that address inequality across and within groups, and a reconsideration of tokenism within a broader suite of practices that have grown ascendent across arenas of social life.

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Section: The Cultural Foundations Of Tokenismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Childress,

Nayyar,

Gibson

2023

Am Sociol Rev

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…And second, with a decline of state sponsorship both at home and abroad, what had been "Commonwealth literature" needed a new market. It found one in solidifying itself as "luxury commodity for the British educated middle-classes," the appreciation for which emerged as "a mark of discernment" (Donnelly 1995: 49, 142; see also Bejjit 2019).…”

Section: British Publishing the Booker Prize And The Formation Of Pos...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tokenism and its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Childress,

Nayyar,

Gibson

2023

Preprint

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Research on tokenism has mostly focused on negative experiences and career outcomes for individuals who are tokenized. Comparatively understudied are tokenism as a structural system that excludes larger populations, and the meso-level cultural foundations under which tokenism occurs. We focus on these other sides of tokenism using original data on the creation and long-term retention of postcolonial literature. In an institutional environment in which the British publishing industry was consolidating the production of non-U.S. global literatures written in English and readers were beginning to convey status through openness in cultural tastes, the conditions for tokenism emerged. Relying on data on the emergence of postcolonial literature as a category organized through the Booker Prize for Fiction, we test and find for nonwhite authors (1) evidence of tokenism, (2) unequal treatment of those under consideration for tokenization, and (3) long-term retention consequences for those who were not chosen. We close with a call for more holistic work on both sides of tokenism, analyses that address inequality across and within groups, and a reconsideration of tokenism within a broader suite of practices that have grown ascendent across arenas of social life.

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In Pursuit of the “Real” Nigeria/n through the Archives of Heinemann’s African Writers Series

Walsh

2023

Humanities

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This paper will depart from the premise that with the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe as its flagship author, exemplar and editorial adviser, Heinemann Educational Books, which aimed to represent Africa and Africans through its African Writers Series (AWS) had a tendency to privilege and prioritise realist literary expressions coming out of Africa. This, combined with the fact that the series was published by an educational company looking for a way to market its product in an environment that did not yet have a place for African writers when it was first launched, might also be regarded as having fostered a tendency within the publishing house to treat the works submitted to it more as socio-historical documents than as works of literary fiction and to lead to their framing in anthropological terms. The paper will investigate the precise terms in which this takes place in two case studies of some of the archival material relating to Heinemann’s interest in representing Northern Nigeria and Nigerians in the early years of the series, and it will investigate the consequences and implications of a drive towards producing a series that could be marketed as representative.

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Heinemann African Writers Series

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

Tokenism and its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field

In Pursuit of the “Real” Nigeria/n through the Archives of Heinemann’s African Writers Series

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