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Brexit, Trump, and ‘methodological whiteness’: on the misrecognition of race and class

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posted on 2023-06-09, 08:13 authored by Gurminder BhambraGurminder Bhambra
The rhetoric of both the Brexit and Trump campaigns was grounded in conceptions of the past as the basis for political claims in the present. Both established the past as constituted by nations that were represented as ‘white’ into which racialized others had insinuated themselves and gained disproportionate advantage. Hence, the resonant claim that was broadcast primarily to white audiences in each place ‘to take our country back’. The politics of both campaigns was also echoed in those social scientific analyses that sought to focus on the ‘legitimate’ claims of the ‘left behind’ or those who had come to see themselves as ‘strangers in their own land’. The skewing of white majority political action as the action of a more narrowly defined white working class served to legitimize analyses that might otherwise have been regarded as racist. In effect, I argue that a pervasive ‘methodological whiteness’ has distorted social scientific accounts of both Brexit and Trump’s election victory and that this needs to be taken account of in our discussion of both phenomena.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

British Journal of Sociology

ISSN

0007-1315

Publisher

Wiley

Issue

S1

Volume

68

Page range

214-232

Department affiliated with

  • Geography Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-10-11

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-11-08

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-10-11

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