Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind CountryPosted in Anthropology, Books, Europe, History, Media Archive, Monographs on 2022-08-25 00:58Z by Steven |
Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country
University of Minnesota Press
August 2022
304 pages
5½ x 8½
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-5179-1230-7
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5179-1231-4
Ryan Thomas Skinner, Associate Professor of Music and African American and African Studies
Ohio State University
Foreword by Jason Timbuktu Diakité
A compelling examination of Sweden’s African and Black diaspora
Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes have emerged as a vibrant demographic presence, from generations of diasporic movement, migration, and homemaking. In Afro-Sweden, Ryan Thomas Skinner uses oral histories, archival research, ethnography, and textual analysis to explore the history and culture of this diverse and growing Afro-European community.
Skinner employs the conceptual themes of “remembering” and “renaissance” to illuminate the history and culture of the Afro-Swedish community, drawing on the rich theoretical traditions of the African and Black diaspora. Remembering fosters a sustained meditation on Afro-Swedish social history, while Renaissance indexes a thriving Afro-Swedish public culture. Together, these concepts illuminate significant existential modes of Afro-Swedish being and becoming, invested in and contributing to the work of global Black studies.
The first scholarly monograph in English to focus specifically on the African and Black diaspora in Sweden, Afro-Sweden emphasizes the voices, experiences, practices, knowledge, and ideas of these communities. Its rigorously interdisciplinary approach to understanding diasporic communities is essential to contemporary conversations around such issues as the status and identity of racialized populations in Europe and the international impact of Black Lives Matter.
Contents
- Foreword
- Jason Timbuktu Diakité
- A Note on Orthography
- Introduction: Race, Culture, and Diaspora in Afro-Sweden
- Part I. Remembering
- 1. Invisible People
- 2. A Colder Congo
- 3. Walking While Black
- Part II. Renaissance
- 4. Articulating Afro-Sweden
- 5. The Politics of Race and Diaspora
- 6. The Art of Renaissance
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index