The 1980s witnessed major transformations in the nature of postindustrialcapitalism often characterized by a commensurate ferment in the social theorythat was o... » 

The 1980s witnessed major transformations in the nature of postindustrialcapitalism often characterized by a commensurate ferment in the social theorythat was offered to make sense of it. In particular political economy urbansocial theory and contemporary cultural change all boasted majortransformations epitomized in the debates that described the end of organizedcapitalism and the advent of post Fordism a sustained debate on the essenceof the urban and fevered competitions to write a major account of thepostmodern.In the 1990s it is already clear that the incandescence of this spate ofinnovation could not obscure the repetition of a major omission in the subjectmatter that had impoversihed the social theory that the new vogues attempted tosucceed. At its crudest the experiences addressed by new social theoryremained Eurocentric bourgeois masculine elitist and culturally monolithic.The advent of regimes of flexible accumulation in one part of the world oftenpeak at the same time as in less affluent Fordist production systems were justbeginning. The salience of the experience of migrant communities inmetropolitan economies was rarely considered in frequently exotic portraits ofcultural change. In short issues of racism and race formation appearedfundamental to the urban forms of late capitalism but marginal to the academystheorization of it.This volume brings together contributors from different backgrounds in anattempt to address silences and omissions. It examines the way in whicheconomic and cultural changes are underscored by racial exploitation.Contributors include Leonard Harris Purdue University David GoldbergArizonaState University Michael Smith and Bernadette Tarallo University ofCalifornia Davis Margaret Wier Princeton University and Howard WinantTemple University. «