
Inside Babylon
The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain
Verso Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. November 1993
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-0-86091-636-9 (ISBN)
Description
The varied experience of the Caribbean diaspora in Britain, with its difficult and fractured history, is reflected in this distinctive and lively collection. The contributors to Inside Babylon show how employers and police, psychiatrists and welfare services, help to channel black people into residential and occupational ghettoes.
Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi analyse the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. Going beyond the familiar prisms of race relations and reductionist class analysis they illuminate the radicalizing dynamic of British capitalism in the postwar period. Errol Francis provides a shocking account of the experience of black people at the hands of psychiatrists in Britain. Cecil Gutzmore finds the Notting Hill carnival to be a litmus test of racist formations in both the media and the state, as well as evidence of the resilience of the black community. Amina Mama and Claudette Williams explore the position of women in black communities while Gail Lewis focuses on their characteristic patterns of employment. In a powerful concluding essay Winston James charts the unfolding of a new Afro-Caribbean identity in Britain and debunks the notion that racist structures by themselves create a homogeneous black community.
Inside Babylon is a radical and timely indictment which moves beyond over-simplified and misleading stereotypes to identify and explore the impressive struggles of black people of Britain.
Clive Harris, Bob Carter and Shirley Joshi analyse the economic destiny of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain. Going beyond the familiar prisms of race relations and reductionist class analysis they illuminate the radicalizing dynamic of British capitalism in the postwar period. Errol Francis provides a shocking account of the experience of black people at the hands of psychiatrists in Britain. Cecil Gutzmore finds the Notting Hill carnival to be a litmus test of racist formations in both the media and the state, as well as evidence of the resilience of the black community. Amina Mama and Claudette Williams explore the position of women in black communities while Gail Lewis focuses on their characteristic patterns of employment. In a powerful concluding essay Winston James charts the unfolding of a new Afro-Caribbean identity in Britain and debunks the notion that racist structures by themselves create a homogeneous black community.
Inside Babylon is a radical and timely indictment which moves beyond over-simplified and misleading stereotypes to identify and explore the impressive struggles of black people of Britain.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 159 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
489 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-86091-636-9 (9780860916369)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition
Book
11/1993
Verso Books
€63.33
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Persons
Winston James is the author of A Fierce Hatred of Injustice: Claude McKay's Jamaica and His Poetry of Rebellion (2000), The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799-1851 (2010) and editor with Clive Harris of Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain (1993). James won the Gordon K. Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship from the Caribbean Studies Association for Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia. He is Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine.