Books by Peter Wade
Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia , 1993
This is Chapter 1 (Introduction) of my book Blackness and Race Mixture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins ... more This is Chapter 1 (Introduction) of my book Blackness and Race Mixture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).
Powerful narratives often describe Latin American nations as fundamentally mestizo. These narrati... more Powerful narratives often describe Latin American nations as fundamentally mestizo. These narratives have hampered the acknowledgment of racism in the region, but recent multiculturalist reforms have increased recognition of Black and Indigenous identities and cultures. Multiculturalism may focus on identity and visibility and address more casual and social forms of racism, but can also distract attention from structural racism and racialized inequality, and constrain larger antiracist initiatives. Additionally, multiple understandings of how racism and antiracism fit into projects of social transformation make racism a complex and multifaceted issue. The essays in Against Racism examine actors in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico that move beyond recognition politics to address structural inequalities and material conflicts and build common ground with other marginalized groups. The organizations in this study advocate an approach to deep social structural transformation that is inclusive, fosters alliances, and is inspired by a radical imagination.
Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2019
Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and convivial... more Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and conviviality offers useful ammunition for strengthening anti-racist stances. This volume asks whether cultural production has a particular role to play within discourses and practices of anti-racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors analyse music, performance, education, language, film and art in diverse national contexts across the region.
The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Race mixture, or mestizaje, has played a critical role in the history, culture, and politics of L... more Race mixture, or mestizaje, has played a critical role in the history, culture, and politics of Latin America. In Degrees of Mixture, Degrees of Freedom, Peter Wade draws on a multidisciplinary research study in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. He shows how Latin American elites and outside observers have emphasized mixture's democratizing potential, depicting it as a useful resource for addressing problems of racism (claiming that race mixture undoes racial difference and hierarchy), while Latin American scientists participate in this narrative with claims that genetic studies of mestizos can help isolate genetic contributors to diabetes and obesity and improve health for all. Wade argues that, in the process, genomics produces biologized versions of racialized difference within the nation and the region, but a comparative approach nuances the simple idea that highly racialized societies give rise to highly racialized genomics. Wade examines the tensions between mixture and purity, and between equality and hierarchy in liberal political orders, exploring how ideas and scientific data about genetic mixture are produced and circulate through complex networks.
The articles in this issue highlight contributions that studies of Latin America can make to wide... more The articles in this issue highlight contributions that studies of Latin America can make to wider debates about the effects of genomic science on public ideas about race and nation. We argue that current ideas about the power of genomics to transfigure and transform existing ways of thinking about human diversity are often overstated. If a range of social contexts are examined, the effects are uneven. Our data show that genomic knowledge can unsettle and reinforce ideas of nation and race; it can be both banal and highly politicized. In this introduction, we outline concepts of genetic knowledge in society; theories of genetics, nation and race; approaches to public understandings of science; and the Latin American contexts of transnational ideas of nation and race.
In genetics laboratories in Latin America, scientists have been mapping the genomes of local popu... more In genetics laboratories in Latin America, scientists have been mapping the genomes of local populations, seeking to locate the genetic basis of complex diseases and to trace population histories. As part of their work, geneticists often calculate the European, African, and Amerindian genetic ancestry of populations. Some researchers explicitly connect their findings to questions of national identity and racial and ethnic difference, bringing their research to bear on issues of politics and identity.
Based on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to Mestizo Genomics explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research. In Latin America, national identities are often based on ideas about mestizaje (race mixture), rather than racial division. Since mestizaje is said to involve relations between European men and indigenous or African women, gender is a key factor in Latin American genomics and the analyses in this book. Also important are links between contemporary genomics and recent moves toward official multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. One of the first studies of its kind, Mestizo Genomics sheds new light on the interrelations between "race," identity, and genomics in Latin America.
Contributors. Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Roosbelinda Cárdenas, Vivette García Deister, Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Michael Kent, Carlos López Beltrán, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Eduardo Restrepo, Mariana Rios Sandoval, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Peter Wade
Publisher's blurb:
"For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essenti... more Publisher's blurb:
"For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date.
Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness.
This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America."
"The intersection of race and sex in Latin America is a subject touched upon by many disciplines ... more "The intersection of race and sex in Latin America is a subject touched upon by many disciplines but this is the first book to deal solely with these issues.
Interracial sexual relations are often a key mythic basis for Latin American national identities, but the importance of this has been underexplored. Peter Wade provides a pioneering overview of the growing literature on race and sex in the region, covering historical aspects and contemporary debates. He includes both black and indigenous people in the frame, as well as mixed and white people, avoiding the implication that "race" means "black-white" relations.
Challenging but accessible, this book will appeal across the humanities and social sciences, particularly to students of anthropology, gender studies, history and Latin American studies."
Since the controversial scientific race theories of the 1930s, anthropologists have generally avo... more Since the controversial scientific race theories of the 1930s, anthropologists have generally avoided directly addressing the issue of race, viewing it as a social construct. Challenging this tradition, Peter Wade proposes in this volume that anthropologists can in fact play an important role in the study of race.
Wade is critical of contemporary theoretical studies of race formulated within the contexts of colonial history, sociology and cultural studies. Instead he argues for a new direction; one which anthropology is well placed to explore. Taking the study of race beyond Western notions of the individual, Wade argues for new paradigms in social science, in particular in the development of connections between race, sex and gender. An understanding of these issues within an anthropological context, he contends, is vital for defining personhood and identity.
Race is often defined by its reference to biology, ‘blood,’ genes, nature or essence. Yet these concepts are often left unexamined. Integrating material from the history of science, science studies, and anthropological studies of kinship and new reproductive technologies, as well as from studies of race, Peter Wade explores the meaning of such terms and interrogates the relationship between nature and culture in ideas about race.
Long a favorite on dance floors in Latin America, the porro, cumbia, and vallenato styles that ma... more Long a favorite on dance floors in Latin America, the porro, cumbia, and vallenato styles that make up Colombia's musica tropical are now enjoying international success. How did this music which has its roots in a black, marginal region of the country manage, from the 1940s onward, to become so popular in a nation that had prided itself on its white heritage? Peter Wade explores the history of musica tropical, analyzing its rise in the context of the development of the broadcast media, rapid urbanization, and regional struggles for power. Using archival sources and oral histories, Wade shows how big band renditions of cumbia and porro in the 1940s and 1950s suggested both old traditions and new liberties, especially for women, speaking to a deeply rooted image of black music as sensuous. Recently, nostalgic, "whitened" versions of musica tropical have gained popularity as part of government-sponsored multiculturalism. Wade's fresh look at the way music transforms and is transformed by ideologies of race, nation, sexuality, tradition, and modernity is the first book-length study of Colombian popular music.
Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT), Jan 1, 1996
Academic Papers by Peter Wade
Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies, 2022
The chapter begins by setting the demographic context of conquest and race mixture. The chapter t... more The chapter begins by setting the demographic context of conquest and race mixture. The chapter then outlines the processes in which the key racialized categories of Latin American societies emerged and changed-negro, indio, blanco/branco and various proliferating types of mestizos-and the changing relations that existed between these categories, with a focus on Afro-Latin American peoples. An historical overview will trace these processes for the colonial and post-colonial periods, dividing the latter into two: a) nineteenth and early to midtwentieth centuries, covering processes of early nation-building-often centred on ideas of mestizaje (mixture)-eugenics and claims to racial democracy or tolerance; b) mid-twentieth century to the present, covering the strengthening of black and indigenous political mobilizations, multiculturalist reform and anti-racism. Brief mention is made other racialized categories such as turco (Middle Eastener) and the possible significance of these for Afro-Latin American peoples.
History and Anthropology, 2024
Focusing on humorous cartoons about the Conquest published between 1945 and 1970 in an Argentinia... more Focusing on humorous cartoons about the Conquest published between 1945 and 1970 in an Argentinian popular comic magazine and on a Colombian educational and politically militant comic-book narrative history of the same events, published in 1978, I analyse how the publications used mixed temporalities when relating historical events. I challenge the common idea that disrupting linear timelines by mixing temporalities necessarily has politically progressive effects. The humorous cartoons typically portray Indigenous Americans from the fifteenth century as ‘primitives’ who nevertheless behaved in ‘modern’ ways, but this temporal disruption in fact works to erase the responsibility of dominant classes for Indigenous disadvantage. In contrast, the educational comic-book brings Indigenous people from the conquest into the present, talking directly to the readers and interpellating them as comrades in the struggle. Yet this comic-book also portrays Indigenous people in generic stereotyped ways, illustrating the difficulty of shaking off these colonial ‘recursions’ (Ann Stoler)
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Mar 27, 2024
It has often been asked if Latin America has any lessons in anti-racism for other regions. This k... more It has often been asked if Latin America has any lessons in anti-racism for other regions. This kind of comparative approach reifies and homogenises regions as distinct “cases”, obscuring common ground. In contrast, a relational approach highlights commonalities and suggests that learning experiences in developing anti-racism can be shared across and within different contexts. Examples from Ecuador and Mexico suggest that the historical relation between race and class in Latin America has produced a “racially-aware class consciousness” that could be mistaken as a simple “lesson” for other regions about how to balance a politics of recognition with one of redistribution. A relational approach highlights that this “lesson” also applies within Latin American countries, because this racially-aware class consciousness is not simply a fully-formed given, but instead needs to be activated and developed in progressive directions, pushing against the currents of history and coloniality.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Mar 25, 2024
We are currently witnessing a turn to racism and anti-racism in Latin America. The recognition of... more We are currently witnessing a turn to racism and anti-racism in Latin America. The recognition of racism is not new, but the attention and challenge to racism, in such an orchestrated way, is. What are the signals of such turn to racism and anti-racism? What are the overall lessons for Latin America and from Latin America to global antiracist efforts? This introduction looks at the arguments of the articles in this special issue to highlight how issues of racial visibility, naming racism, racial data, legal rights and recognition, entrepreneurship, mestizo identity, the possibilities of alliances, racially-aware struggles against class (and gendered) oppression, are key to understanding this turn. While we do not claim that these articles cover the full extent of this turn in Latin America, we suggest that analysing how this turn appears in Latin American opens useful ways of thinking about anti-racism more widely.
Global Perspectives, 2024
Genomic science values the genetic diversity revealed by advances in genetic sequencing that allo... more Genomic science values the genetic diversity revealed by advances in genetic sequencing that allow the detailed mapping of diversity at the level of the individual as well as the population group. This has reinforced the idea that humans share the vast majority of their DNA and that the diversity that does exist cannot be parcelled into biological categories that align with older categories of race, which are deeply implicated in the practices and structures of racism. However, the practice of genomic science and medical genetics continues to make use of collective categories and populations. This paper argues that practices in genomic science in Latin America change but also reproduce and even reinforce (by biologizing) familiar and enduring categories of race at different levels in societyamong scientists and among non-scientists. The Latin American cases are particular in showing that race is often parsed through ideas about the nation, seen as emerging from the mixture of three ancestral populations. Biologisation effects can reinforce the racism (and nationalism) that depend on racialised categories. The paper ends by arguing that these effects are a result of the basic concept of population that has in the past and continues today to organise genetic diversity in science practice, despite the ability of genomic technologies to handle genetic diversity at the level of the individual. The grounding role of the population concept is accentuated by Latin American national identities being based on ideas of mixture, which entails a corresponding idea of original purities.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023
This article explores a dual dynamic of simultaneous subordination and limited inclusion of Black... more This article explores a dual dynamic of simultaneous subordination and limited inclusion of Blackness in Latin America, using the example of a 1920s’ Argentinian comic strip, “Página del Dólar”. The comic's representations of Black people are racist, but also ambivalent and complex. Going beyond common characterisations of the exclusion/inclusion dynamic as a mask of inclusion hiding the reality of exclusion, I argue that the simultaneity and interpenetration of exclusion-plus-inclusion are important for understanding Latin American racial formations. The dynamic works in multiple ways are not fully appreciated in the literature, which emphasises the reproduction of racial hierarchy: as well, it lends specificity to images of the nation; and it provides a moral benchmark for middle classes, especially in relational and ambiguous class and racial locations. The domain of humour is apt for conveying ambivalent meanings, because it provides distance for the reader (“it's just a joke”), while also transmitting important affective charge.
Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction, 2018
In history and anthropology, there has traditionally been a strong tendency to deal with Latin Am... more In history and anthropology, there has traditionally been a strong tendency to deal with Latin American indigenous and Afrodescendant people as separate categories. The separation has been structured by conceptual distinctions between rural and urban, ethnicity and race, anthropology and sociology, and more and less “other.” This academic tendency has deep roots in colonial and postcolonial governance practices, which treated indigenous Americans and Africans as very distinct – in terms of their places in the legal system and in the political-economic divisions of labor, and in terms of their moral-physical constitution – and posited a basic antagonism between them. The practice of colonial authorities tended to assume the separation of the two categories, and this was reproduced in the historical archive, fragmenting and masking evidence of exchanges and interactions. The same separation continued in different ways in regimes of governance after independence and into the present day. This divergence influenced the shape of anthropology in Latin America, when, during the twentieth century, it was institutionalized as a discipline that focused almost entirely on indigenous peoples, often seen as under threat not only from whites and mestizos, but also blacks. The study of Afrodescendants was undertaken by historians and sociologists, but they too obeyed a conceptual distinction that kept apart black and indigenous.
Luso-Tropicalism and its Discontents: The Making and Unmaking of Racial Exceptionalism. Edited by Warwick Anderson, Ricardo Roque and Ricardo Ventura Santos. Berghahn Books, 2019
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Books by Peter Wade
The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Based on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to Mestizo Genomics explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research. In Latin America, national identities are often based on ideas about mestizaje (race mixture), rather than racial division. Since mestizaje is said to involve relations between European men and indigenous or African women, gender is a key factor in Latin American genomics and the analyses in this book. Also important are links between contemporary genomics and recent moves toward official multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. One of the first studies of its kind, Mestizo Genomics sheds new light on the interrelations between "race," identity, and genomics in Latin America.
Contributors. Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Roosbelinda Cárdenas, Vivette García Deister, Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Michael Kent, Carlos López Beltrán, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Eduardo Restrepo, Mariana Rios Sandoval, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Peter Wade
"For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date.
Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness.
This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America."
Interracial sexual relations are often a key mythic basis for Latin American national identities, but the importance of this has been underexplored. Peter Wade provides a pioneering overview of the growing literature on race and sex in the region, covering historical aspects and contemporary debates. He includes both black and indigenous people in the frame, as well as mixed and white people, avoiding the implication that "race" means "black-white" relations.
Challenging but accessible, this book will appeal across the humanities and social sciences, particularly to students of anthropology, gender studies, history and Latin American studies."
Wade is critical of contemporary theoretical studies of race formulated within the contexts of colonial history, sociology and cultural studies. Instead he argues for a new direction; one which anthropology is well placed to explore. Taking the study of race beyond Western notions of the individual, Wade argues for new paradigms in social science, in particular in the development of connections between race, sex and gender. An understanding of these issues within an anthropological context, he contends, is vital for defining personhood and identity.
Race is often defined by its reference to biology, ‘blood,’ genes, nature or essence. Yet these concepts are often left unexamined. Integrating material from the history of science, science studies, and anthropological studies of kinship and new reproductive technologies, as well as from studies of race, Peter Wade explores the meaning of such terms and interrogates the relationship between nature and culture in ideas about race.
Academic Papers by Peter Wade
The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Based on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to Mestizo Genomics explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research. In Latin America, national identities are often based on ideas about mestizaje (race mixture), rather than racial division. Since mestizaje is said to involve relations between European men and indigenous or African women, gender is a key factor in Latin American genomics and the analyses in this book. Also important are links between contemporary genomics and recent moves toward official multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. One of the first studies of its kind, Mestizo Genomics sheds new light on the interrelations between "race," identity, and genomics in Latin America.
Contributors. Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Roosbelinda Cárdenas, Vivette García Deister, Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Michael Kent, Carlos López Beltrán, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Eduardo Restrepo, Mariana Rios Sandoval, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Peter Wade
"For over ten years, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America has been an essential text for students studying the region. This second edition adds new material and brings the analysis up to date.
Race and ethnic identities are increasingly salient in Latin America. Peter Wade examines changing perspectives on Black and Indian populations in the region, tracing similarities and differences in the way these peoples have been seen by academics and national elites. Race and ethnicity as analytical concepts are re-examined in order to assess their usefulness.
This book should be the first port of call for anthropologists and sociologists studying identity in Latin America."
Interracial sexual relations are often a key mythic basis for Latin American national identities, but the importance of this has been underexplored. Peter Wade provides a pioneering overview of the growing literature on race and sex in the region, covering historical aspects and contemporary debates. He includes both black and indigenous people in the frame, as well as mixed and white people, avoiding the implication that "race" means "black-white" relations.
Challenging but accessible, this book will appeal across the humanities and social sciences, particularly to students of anthropology, gender studies, history and Latin American studies."
Wade is critical of contemporary theoretical studies of race formulated within the contexts of colonial history, sociology and cultural studies. Instead he argues for a new direction; one which anthropology is well placed to explore. Taking the study of race beyond Western notions of the individual, Wade argues for new paradigms in social science, in particular in the development of connections between race, sex and gender. An understanding of these issues within an anthropological context, he contends, is vital for defining personhood and identity.
Race is often defined by its reference to biology, ‘blood,’ genes, nature or essence. Yet these concepts are often left unexamined. Integrating material from the history of science, science studies, and anthropological studies of kinship and new reproductive technologies, as well as from studies of race, Peter Wade explores the meaning of such terms and interrogates the relationship between nature and culture in ideas about race.
We compare the discourses on obesity found in early- and mid-twentieth century Mexican public discourse with those of Mexican geneticists and doctors today. We argue that postgenomic shifts towards non-determinism, apparently contained in current openness to epigenetics, need to be considered alongside the persistence of racialized genetic determinisms, and alongside the potential for epigenetic environmental determinisms. By exploring the environmentalist explanations of earlier eugenic thinking about obesity, we trace continuities in the gendered and racialized framings of obesity, which risk stigmatizing indigenous ancestry and attributing blame to individual mothers.
We explore the discourses of Mexican scientists and doctors on genetics and obesity and how these relate to ideas about race, class and national identity. Drawing on interviews with geneticists and doctors treating obese children, the paper makes two contributions to the literature on race and medical science. First, although our data reveal familiar racializing tendencies among geneticists, a more nuanced view is needed, as medical doctors who are sceptical about genetic explanations nevertheless tend to racialize, using more environmental and cultural explanations, which adduce epigenetic mechanisms. Second, rather than focusing on minority groups, as in much literature on racialization and genetics, in Mexico ideas about racialized genetic (and cultural) ancestry also impinge on the majority “mestizo” (mixed-race) population, opening broader panoramas of racialized pathologization. These two factors represent an overall strengthening of discourses of race in Mexico and probably in much of Latin America.
operando como un velo sobre la persistencia de este fenómeno. El multiculturalismo en la década de 1990 y el antirracismo en los 2000 alteraron las formaciones raciales basadas en el mestizaje en América Latina, pero no las desplazaron.
Abstract: In this selective view of Afrodescendant Studies in Latin America, I start with issues of naming and racial classification, before exploring issues of racial discrimination and racism, and how these are addressed by governments and black social movements. This raises the question of whiteness and privilege. I then review the status of ideologies and practices of mestizaje, in the wake of 30 years of black political mobilization.
Theory –GDAT–, realizada en la Universidad de Manchester
el 30 de noviembre de 1996
a) Introduction by Peter Wade, Fernando Urrea Giraldo and Mara Viveros Vigoya, "Identidades racializadas y sexualidades en América Latina: a manera de introducción"
b) chapter by Peter Wade, "Debates contemporáneos sobre raza, etnicidad, género y sexualidad en las ciencias sociales"
First broadcast: 10:03, January 26th, 2016
Africans, Jews, Asians, Arabs, Native Americans, Caucasians. Skull shape, skin color, hair type, mouth, nose. Human race in all its diversity. Human beings with their many differences. African Americans are shot by white police officers. Mexicans are deported. Refugees and immigrants are being detained by Europeans. We hear about more and more unfortunate episodes where racial discrimination plays a part. Existence is investigating what is at stake.
Contributors: Professor of Migration and Anthropology at AAU, Peter Hervik. Professor of Social Anthroplogy at the University of Manchester, Peter Wade. Assistant Professor in Political Science at AU, Emily Cochran Bech.
Host & organizer: Carsten Ortmann.