Colonial Proximities by Renisa Mawani
Real and imagined encounters among Aboriginal peoples, European colonists, Chinese migrants, and mixed-race populations produced racial anxieties that underwrote crossracial contacts in the salmon canneries, the illicit liquor trade, and the (white) slavery scare in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British Columbia. Colonial Proximities explores the legal and spatial strategies of rule deployed by Indian agents, missionaries, and legal authorities who aspired to restrict crossracial encounters. By connecting genealogies of aboriginal-European contact with those of Chinese migration, this book reveals that territorial dispossession and Chinese exclusion were never distinct projects but two conjunctive processes in the making of the settler regime. Drawing on archival documents and historical records, Colonial Proximities historicizes current discussions of multiculturalism and pluralism in modern settler societies by revealing how crossracial interactions in one colonial contact zone inspired juridical racial truths and forms of governance that continue to linger in contemporary racial politics. It is essential reading for students and practitioners of history, anthropology, sociology, colonial/ postcolonial studies, and critical race and legal studies.
"This book offers fascinating new perspectives on the roots of Canadian racismMoving beyond traditional narratives of Aboriginal-European contact and Chinese-European relations, Renisa Mawani probes the unsettled landscape of cross-racial encounters between "indians" and "Chinese" in BC history. She deftly captures the frenzied anxieties that whites harboured over ungovernable mixed-race activities, and brilliantly dissects the renewed state racisms that were born of such encounters. - Constance Backhouse, University of Ottawa"
Renisa Mawani is an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780774816342 |
| ISBN 10 | 0774816341 |
| Title | Colonial Proximities |
| Author | Renisa Mawani |
| Series | Law And Society |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia Press |
| Year published | 2010-01-01 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |