Dissertation Research: Identity Politics in Post-Colonial Britain

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This dissertation research project supports an anthropology student from Stanford University studying how people in British society interpret racial differences, in light of the upcoming national census in that country where racial identity will be recorded for the first time. Using an ethnographic methodology, the student (who is Black) and a research assistant (who will be White) will study how people living in Liverpool use concepts of national identity like "Englishness" as implicitly racial terms, as well as explicitly racial terms like "Asian" and "Black". In depth interviews will be conducted with community activists and census officials on the political controversy over racial categories in the census as well as with a sample of individual life histories focusing on their perceptions of race in British history. The investigators will also observe the teaching of British history in a senior (high) school. This project is significant because it attempts to understand how a democratic society similar to ours experiences racial change in their population. Understanding how race and nationality are experienced in a similar but less racially mixed situation will help us understand the sources of our own values and behavior.