Vancouver's Chinatown
Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980
Description
Anderson charts the construction of Chinatown in the minds and streets of the white community of Vancouver over a hundred year period. She shows that Chinatown -- from the negative stereotyping of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its current status as an "ethnic neighbourhood" -- has been stamped by changing European ideologies of race and the hegemonic policies those ideas have shaped. The very existence of the district is the result of a regime of cultural domination that continues to exist today. Anderson clearly rejects the concept of "race" as a means of distinguishing between groups of human beings. She points out that because the implicit acceptance of public beliefs about race affects the types of questions asked by researchers, the issue of the ontological status of race is as critical for commentators on society as it is for scientists studying human variation. Anderson applies this fresh approach toward the concept of race to a critical examination of popular, media, and academic treatments of the Chinatown in Vancouver.
Reviews
"a compelling case ... The author has done an admirable job in developing a difficult theoretical position and successfully applying it to the development of `Chinese' and `Chinatown' in Canada ... offers a refreshing contrast to the evolutionary model ... quite sophisticated theoretically and analytically." Peter S. Li, Department of Sociology, University of Saskatchewan. "The book is of exceptionally fine quality, making a significant contribution to contemporary debates about `race' and racism and highlighting the importance of a geographical perspective on the relationship between people and place. [It is] written with outstanding clarity." Peter Jackson, Department of Geography, University College London.