Legacies of slavery in the African Diaspora: methodological
approaches to comparative racialization studies.
Stephen Small, Ph.D.
University of California, Berkeley
University of Amsterdam
The seminar has two main goals. First, it examines inequality, stratification and
resistance, with a particular focus on racialized institutions, ideologies and practices
in different nations with a significant population from the African diaspora. Second,
it considers qualitative research methods for collecting data on these issues,
including the relationships between concepts, theories and data. The focus will be
on England, the Netherlands, the United States, and Jamaica, nations inextricably
linked through slavery, colonialism and migration. Reference will also be made to
other nations such as Brazil and France. Qualitative research methods considered
will include ethnography, historical archives, qualitative interviews, site
observations and analysis of documents. These research methods are grounded in
research methodologies from history, sociology, anthropology, gender and women’s
studies, African American studies and museum studies.
These issues and these nations have been at the center my research on the African
diaspora over the last 30 years, including manifestations of the legacies of slavery;
qualitative methods for data collection; and comparative studies of post-slavery
societies. The seminar provides an opportunity to consider the empirical studies I
have carried out in each of these nations; to explore the intellectual context that
shaped my study and research; and to evaluate the key scholars and theorists that
have been central to my research. I will also explore some of the ways in which I
have developed projects by working with graduate students who completed
doctoral studies with me.
Day 1 Second generation immigrants and Rastafarian identity in England in the 1980s
(with reflections on the 21st century).
What was the conceptualization of the problematic ‘second generation’ of West
Indian Youth (meaning men)? Which institutional actors promoted such ideas?
What was the political context? And what empirical work was carried out? How do
the circumstances of the so-called ‘second generation’ of 1970s England, compare
with the circumstances of the current generation of young Black men in England
2014?
1 Small and Solomos – Race and Immigration in Britain.
2 Small – Black Identity in a white society.
3 Sivanandan – Black experience in Britain.
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Day 2 Racism and Class stratification of Black people under Reagan’s United States
and Thatcher’s Britain.
How do racist ideologies in England in the 1980s compare with racist ideologies in
the United States in the 1980s? What is the relationship between biology and
culture in notions of racism? Is there a ‘new racism”? And are the similarities or the
differences between the two nations more important for analytical understanding?
1 Solomos – Race and Racism, Chapter 8.
2 Stephen Small – Race, Class Relations and the State in US and England.
Day 3 People of mixed racial origins under 19th century slavery in the British
Caribbean and the United State.
What was the status of people of mixed racial descent as compared with people of
exclusive Black origins under slavery? Were their major differences across each
region? How did gender frame the status of people of mixed origins? What are the
sources of evidence for collecting data on these issues?
Small - Racial Group Boundaries and Identities: People of `Mixed-Race' in
Slavery across the Americas.
Small - Researching ‘Mixed-Race’ Experience Under Slavery. Concepts, Methods
and Data.
Day 4. Plantation Museum sites and public histories of slavery in the United States
today.
What is the plantation museum infrastructure across the United States today? What
are the major representations of slavery in these museums? How do gender
ideologies shape these representations? And how are such representations
contested?
1 Eichsted and Small – Symbolic Annihilation.
2 Small – 21st Century Slave Cabins in Louisiana.
3 Small - Still Back of the Big House.
4 Small – Mixed Methods in Museum Research
Day 5. Collective memory, social mobilization and political containment of slavery
legacies in England and the Netherlands.
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What the main public arenas in which systematic discussion of slavery and its
legacies occurs at the present time? Who the main groups mobilizing around the
memory of slavery? What is the main political preoccupation with slavery memory?
And what insights do these patterns provide into knowledge production and
knowledge dissemination in a context of asymmetrical power relations?
1Marika Sherwood – The Past in the Present.
2 Kwame Nimako - The Dutch Atlantic.
3Small and Nimako - Collective Memory of Slavery England and Netherlands.
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