Race, Space, and the Law: Unmapping a White Settler Society - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1896357598 ISBN 13: 9781896357591

Publisher: Between the Lines, 2002

Synopsis

Race, Space, and the Law belongs to a growing field of exploration that spans critical geography, sociology, law, education, and critical race and feminist studies. Writers who share this terrain reject the idea that spaces, and the arrangement of bodies in them, emerge naturally over time. Instead, they look at how spaces are created and the role of law in shaping and supporting them. They expose hierarchies that emerge from, and in turn produce, oppressive spatial categories.
The authors' unmapping takes us through drinking establishments, parks, slums, classrooms, urban spaces of prostitution, parliaments, the main streets of cities, mosques, and the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders. Each example demonstrates that "place," as a Manitoba Court of Appeal judge concluded after analyzing a section of the Indian Act, "becomes race."

About this title

From the Author:

"It is a similar process with race, although often not so obvious. If lots in a subdivision are large, only wealthy people can live there. If people of colour are under constant police surveillance on the streets or in malls, you will have more arrests and will contribute to the marking of their bodies as deviant bodies, and so on."
Sherene Razack

in conversation with Zoë Druick
ZOE DRUICK: What is the significance of the term "unmapping" in the title of the book?

SHERENE RAZACK: When colonisers first get to a place they intend to own, one of their first acts is to map it and give it names. Mapping enables them to feel in control and to know themselves as owners of the space. It is always about identity as well as a material act of possession. When you unmap, you ask questions about the claims and the identity-making process that have gone into making maps. You ask, for instance, about what the land was called before it was mapped. You unsettle notions that the land was simply theirs for the taking. To unmap is to consider that there is nothing innocent about mapping, that it is a process born of and consolidating certain power arrangements.

ZD: Can you explain the phrase "space becomes race"?

SR: It is probably more accurate to talk about how place becomes race. In the book I begin with an example from Canadian history. It was an offence under the Indian Act to be intoxicated on an Indian reserve. This law marked an Indian reserve as a special kind of place, one where the normal rules of society did not apply. Anyone in that space earned the mark of being somehow abnormal or different (and negatively so). Of course the people who are most likely to be on an Indian reserve are Aboriginal peoples. To have such a law is to mark as degenerate and lesser Indians. The place is thereby effectively collapsed with race.

ZD: What role does law specifically play in producing space?

SR: Law plays a very direct role in producing space. When you declare that land can only be used to build two-storey houses, or when you say that certain kinds of businesses cannot operate there, for instance, you absolutely shape the landscape and actively shape the social relations that will take place there. In my area of Toronto, houses had to be built in a Tudor or English style, a law that effectively shapes the cultural landscape of the area, marking it as the place for settlers of British origin.

It is in this way that difference is spatially produced. We regulate what can happen in a space, who will feel good in it, who will profit from it, and we regulate social hierarchies. If all our buildings have no ramps, we are making a powerful statement about whether we think wheelchair bound people should have access, and, simultaneously, we are ensuring that they cannot in fact have access. It is a similar process with race, although often not so obvious. If lots in a subdivision are large, only wealthy people can live there. If people of colour are under constant police surveillance on the streets or in malls, you will have more arrests and will contribute to the marking of their bodies as deviant bodies, and so on.

ZD: Is the book of interest to law and policy makers?

SR: The book, as a critical work, will not be of interest to law and policy makers who are merely seeking a recipe for finding and rooting out racism in law. Instead, Race, Space, and the Law will be useful to those law and policy makers who wish to consider how racist conceptual tools and practices invade the very foundational categories of law. It will also build critical thinking on how our history has been and continues to be one of white dominance, and how we actively shape places to make this so. With this kind of awareness, we can begin to consider how to assess the racial impact of various laws and policies.

ZD: What areas of research does the book contribute to?

SR: This body of work clearly fits into what I would call critical race theory. It makes contributions to how we understand racial hierarchies. It fits readily into the sociology of law since it analyses how law produces and maintains hierarchical social relations. It also engages with the tools of critical geography and thus it fits into an ever expanding body of spatial theory. Finally, because it devotes considerable space to national myth

About the Author:

Sherene Razack teaches in the Sociology and Equity Studies in Education program at the University of Toronto.

About this edition

• Publisher: Between the Lines
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1896357598
• ISBN 13: 9781896357591
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Razack Sherene