Includes bibliographical references (pages 304-329) and index.

1. Representation -- And now the news... -- Complex war -- What is 'other'? -- Barthes and the reader's role in constructing meanings -- Rhetorical images -- Whiteness as myth -- Scared? -- The matrix of cultural identity -- Production -- Consumption -- Identity -- Regulation -- Representation -- The unfair campaign -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 1.1 Ideology and mythologies -- Exercise 1.2 'Scared?' and the unfair campaign -- Further reading -- 2. The politics of naming -- Defining race and ethnicity -- 'Race' -- Shifting meanings of race -- Monogenism -- Polygenism -- Evolutionism -- Race and class -- Race as culture -- Ethnicity -- Race as ethnicity -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 2.1 -- Further reading -- 3. Colonialism : invisible histories -- Construction of the colonial subject -- Slavery -- Enlightenment views -- Rationalisation of colonial exploitation -- Casta - representations of race and race making in New Spain -- Effects of colonialism -- Reparation movement -- Neo-colonialism and auto-colonialism -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 3.1 Guyana : look what they done to the mother -- Exercise 3.2 -- Further reading -- 4. Theories of race and ethnicity -- Primordial or instrumental ethnicity -- Primordialism -- Criticisms of primordialism -- Instrumentalism -- Criticisms of instrumentalism -- Plural society theories -- Marxist theories -- Structuralist criticism of Marxism -- Weberian/neo-Weberian theories -- Symbolic interactionism -- Foucault and discourse theory -- Bourdieu --Gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity -- Black feminism -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 4.1 -- Further reading -- 5. Identity : marginal voices and the politics of difference -- Postmodernity : maps and terrain -- Holocaust and relativity -- Identity politics and traditional left thought -- Consequences of postmodern thought -- Post-colonial identities -- Theories of post-colonialism -- Feminism and post-colonialism -- Critical race theory -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 5.1 -- Further reading -- 6. Case study : indigenous Australians -- Land rights -- Living conditions -- Contested homelands : Darwin's 'itinerant problem' -- Framing the fringe dwellers -- The 'itinerant problem' : community conditions -- Law and order -- Media manifestations -- Deconstructing the 'itinerant problem' -- Larrakia nation -- Postscript -- Conclusion -- Theoretical framing -- Plural society theory -- Marxist approaches -- Weberian notes -- Elite theory -- Symbolic interactionism -- Rational-choice theory -- Postmodernity -- Bourdieusian analysis : habitus and symbolic violence -- Critical race theory - a case of interest convergence? -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 6.1 -- Further reading -- 7. Conflict -- The struggle for symbolic dominance -- The persistence of ethnic stereotypes -- African-Guyanese stereotypes -- The 'other' - theft of legitimate pleasures -- Religion -- Ethnic cleansing -- 'Race riots' or social and economic exclusion -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 7.1 Guyana -- Exercise 7.2 Malaysia -- Exercise 7.3-7.4 -- Further reading -- 8. Living the contradiction -- Diaspora and hybridity -- Multiculturalism -- History and the conception of the multicultural state -- What is multiculturalism? -- Promise and reality : life in a multicultural society -- How multiculturalism stole Christmas! -- Chapter summary -- Exercise 8.1 Hybridity and multiculture -- Exercise 8.2 Boundary crossing -- Further reading -- 9. Futures -- Globalisation -- Mixed race -- Significance for theorising racialisation -- Race in cyberspace -- Cyber terrorism -- A pair of brown eyes -- Conclusions -- Exercise 9.1-9.2 -- Further reading.