The categories we use to divide the world and its

peoples are usually represented as uncontrover-

sial and commonsensical. ‘Asian’, ‘African’,

‘European’, ‘western’ trip off the tongue as if

they were the most natural of ideas. National,

regional, religious and other ethnic classifica-

tions can seem just as obvious, to the extent that

they are often attached to highly specific attri-

butes and claims. Indeed, a lot of political and

social conversation is made up of assertions such

as ‘What Russians really feel ...’ or ‘Experience

has taught the Africans that ...’. Of course, com-

munication relies on classification, which is in

turn dependent upon generalization. It is when

this process is racialized that it becomes prob-

lematic: in other words, when the kinds of terms

mentioned above are employed to sustain the

dangerous conceit that they refer to natural, ‘pre-

social’ and homogeneous entities with immutable

attributes.

Perhaps surprisingly, it is only comparatively

recently that social and cultural geographers

have turned their attention to the construction of

racial myths. It is surprising because a shared

characteristic of the terms we have already

mentioned is that they are territorial: to speak the

language of race and ethnicity is, very often, to

talk geography. Indeed, along with anthropo-

logy, geography is the most racialized of schol-

arly pursuits; a fact starkly evident from its

institutional history (Livingstone, 1992; 1994).

We take this to mean that the critique of racial-

izationis one of the most pressing concerns for

contemporary geographers. At least, it should be

for those who wish to see the subject fulfil

Kropotkin’s (1996, first published 1885) hope

that geography’s inevitable involvement with

questions of race and ethnicity can and should be

based, not on racism, but on the ability to under-

stand and challenge stereotype and prejudice.

It will be noticed that the most explicitlyracial

of racial terms, such as ‘white’, ‘black’ and

‘people of colour’, were not mentioned above.

Such expressions are explicitly racial in the

sense that they refer directly to the body; they are

designed to connote those most seemingly

natural things, our flesh and blood. In this way they

‘fix’ race, make it seem real. A paradox emerges:

geography is based on race but the most racial of

terms appear to lack territorial significance, to

escape geography. Indeed, we would propose

that the ability of such terms to appear as the

mostracial of racial categories (and hence to

nudge other contenders into the amorphous ter-

rain of ‘ethnicity’) is relatedto their capacity to

make space seem irrelevant. This paradox should

not tempt us into taking such categories ‘on their

own terms’. Rather it impels us to confront them

as some of the most extreme examples of the

way racial identities can be essentialized by

being removed from history and geography.

Unfortunately, it is the most familiar and

widely employed racial terms that have, tradi-

tionally, received the least critical attention.

Whilst more ‘exotic’ identities have attracted

geographers and anthropologists for many years,

being white and/or European and/or western

remain comparatively new objects of enquiry.

Yet, we argue in this chapter, that it is only by

understanding such terms – the ones against

which all others are defined as exotic – that the

wider system of racial demarcation and privilege

can be brought into view. As this emphasis sug-

gests, this chapter will not be following the con-

ventional pathway, established since the 1960s,

of identifying the geography of race with the

15

Cultural Geographies of Racialization –

The Territory of Race

Alastair Bonnett and Anoop Nayak

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