Third World Studies questions the very social formations that enable the study of religion

• Main Author: TSE, Justin Kh
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3351; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4608/viewcontent/Third_World_2019_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In Racial Formations in the United States, Michael Omi and Howard Winant have one of the best takes, I think, on why the interrogation of racial formations has been so central to American studies. Calling the Civil Rights Movement the beginning of ‘the great transformation,’ what Omi and Winant help us to see is that by calling attention to race, what began in the 1950s led to what they term the ‘politicization of the social,’ the revelation that there were multiple inequalities and oppressive structures – gender, sexuality, religion, age, ability – on which American society was founded and that there were multiple ways to reckoning with these legacies.