[ecrea] New book on racism and multiculturalism in Europe

Dear friends,

Please find attached some information on my new book with Alana Lentin, 
The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (Zed Books).

The website for the book/project can be found here: 
http://www.multiculturecrisis.com/ and the preface for the book, by 
Guardian journalist Gary Younge, is available here: 
http://tinyurl.com/3sdd6c6


best, and good summer to all,
Gavan


    New Book Announcement

The Crises of Multiculturalism
Racism in a Neoliberal Age
Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley

Across the West, something called multiculturalism is in crisis. 
Regarded as the failed experiment of liberal elites, commentators and 
politicians compete to denounce its corrosive legacies; parallel 
communities threatening social cohesion, enemies within cultivated by 
irresponsible cultural relativism, mediaeval practices subverting 
national 'ways of life' and universal values. This important new book 
challenges this familiar narrative of the rise and fall of 
multiculturalism by challenging the existence of a coherent era of 
'multiculturalism' in the first place. The authors argue that what we 
are witnessing is not so much a rejection of multiculturalism as a 
projection of neoliberal anxieties onto the social realities of lived 
multiculture. Nested in an established post-racial consensus, new forms 
of racism draw powerfully on liberalism and questions of 'values', and 
unsettle received ideas about racism and the 'far right' in Europe. In 
combining theory with a reading of recent controversies concerning 
headscarves, cartoons, minarets and burkas, Lentin and Titley trace a 
transnational crisis that travels and is made to travel, and where 
rejecting multiculturalism is central to laundering increasingly 
acceptable forms of racism.

Praise for the Book

'Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley offer a powerful and persuasive account 
of how multiculturalism has been sentenced to death. Drawing on a vast 
array of sources, voices and examples, they show how laments on the 
failure of multiculturalism create a political and affective landscape 
in which racism is simultaneously repudiated and reproduced. A necessary 
and important book.' - Sara Ahmed, Professor of Race and Cultural 
Studies, Goldsmiths College

'This book provides a rich and scholarly analysis of the multiple forces 
at play in the construction of the 'death of multiculturalism'  as a 
flexible and potent political discourse. Incisive and provocative in 
it's analysis; it is uncomfortable reading for those on both the left 
and right in politics. This is necessary reading for anyone concerned 
with the complex masking of racism within the rhetorical dance of 
national identities and globalized neo-liberal ideologies.’ - Professor 
Charles Husband, Centre for Applied Social Research, University of Bradford.

'The Crises of Multiculturalism critically examines the entanglements 
inherent in the broad range of European multiculturalisms  today, their  
"loud" rejection and yet a melancholic neediness expressed in their 
bemoaning.  The analysis is especially incisive about the ways in which 
an "era of integration," as multiculturalism's contemporary expression,  
seeks insecurely to assert authoritative control and security in the 
face of  threatening and fearful expressions of a burgeoning 
multiculture  supposedly marking European nations. The authors reveal 
how the politics of multiculturalism continue to  structure, reproduce, 
and render less visible contemporary racisms.Those concerned to 
understand the synchrony of multiculturalism, integration, and 
revitalized racisms across the European landscape would do well to 
consult this book.' - Professor David Theo Goldberg, University of 
California

 'Neoliberalism is deeply connected to racism: austerity, exclusion, 
the restriction of rights and withdrawal of freedoms -- hallmarks of 
both these despotic phenomena -- all mark their congruence and indeed 
interdependence. But in Europe and elsewhere as well the new racist 
regime has employed the seemingly benign and tolerant trope of 
‘Multiculturalism’ to mask its malevolence. Lentin and Titley's fierce 
critique of this strategy provides a much-needed critical analysis of 
multiculturalism's ineffectuality in opposing the racism rising in 
Europe today. The Crises of Multiculturalism points out how racism 
cannot be understood as a matter of cultural difference. This book 
exposes the repressive assumptions that shape the politics of 
multiculturalism and that place the burden of inclusion on those seen as 
"different" and "other," rather than on the regimes of privilege and 
hierarchy that target immigrants, Muslims, and blacks in their effort to 
maintain a white "fortress Europe." The smiling rhetoric of tolerance, 
we learn here, is still produced by sharp white teeth. Highly 
recommended!' - Howard Winant, UC Santa Barbara, Director, University of 
California Center for New Racial Studies

Table of Contents

Preface, by Gary Younge
Introduction and acknowledgments
1: Recited truths: the contours of multicultural crisis
2: Let's talk about your culture: post-race, post-racism
3: Free like me: the polyphony of liberal postracialism
4: Mediating the crisis: circuits of belief
5: Good and bad diversity: the shape of neoliberal racisms
6: On one more condition: the politics of integration today
References and bibliography

Published:  July 2011
Pb ISBN 9781848135819  £15.99 / $27.95
Hb ISBN 9781848135802  £70.00 / $125.95
256 pages, 216mm x 138mm
www.zedbooks.co.uk/the_crises_of_multiculturalism


Dr Gavan Titley
Lecturer in Media Studies
Doctoral programme coordinator, Media Studies
BA Media Studies coordinator

School of English, Media and Theatre Studies
Iontas Building 0.23
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
Ph: 00-353- 0 1-7086422

Vice-Chair of the 'Diaspora, Migration and Media' section
European Communication Research Association - ECREA


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