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

Abstract

Whiteness studies are trans-disciplinary, but here the focus is principally on sociology and social history. Firstly, the major ways in which whiteness in this literature has hitherto been problematised are identified, elucidated and synthesised to provide a sociological take on the multidisciplinary work so far. Five interpretations are identified; whiteness as absence, as content, a set of norms, as resources and a contingent hierarchy. Secondly, some proposals are made 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 conceptualised in a way that sets it within the parameters of studies of racism.Keywords; identities, racism, whiteness. This paper firstly reviews some of the burgeoning US literature on whiteness, identifies significant sociological threads running through it and synthesises them.i Secondly, Iargue that whiteness is a relevant paradigm for European social worlds by highlighting how it can be understood, and what use it is as a distinct sub-field within the study of racist phenomena. Whiteness is most effectively conceptualised as both a resource and a contingent hierarchy, and its utility is that it enables collective identities to be examined in a more nuanced way than is allowed for by the hegemonic black/white, or more accurately, white/non-white paradigms. This approach thus interrogates the assumed monolithic status of 'whites', allowing a more fluid picture of situational micro-level power relations to emerge.Whiteness: the story so farOstensibly, whiteness studies follow a time-honoured pattern: originating in the cultural orbit of black America, then being adopted by radical elements within the dominant culture. The corpus can be traced back through Du

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