This article offers an explanation of how and why the British working class, from being marginal to white identity in the nineteenth century, came to adopt and adapt this identity in the twentieth century. The changing position of whiteness within the symbolic constitution of capitalism is discussed. More specifically, the transition from whiteness as bourgeois identity within Victorian, relatively laissez-faire, capitalism to whiteness as a popular, or mass, identity, within the more state interventionist capitalism of the twentieth century is used to exemplify the mutable nature, and political complexities, of the relationship between working class and white identities. The paper concludes with some observations on the implications of this argument for the theory and practice of anti-racism.

https://homepage.univie.ac.at/fanny.mueller-uri/php/inequalities/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Bonnett-Alastair-How-the-British-Working-Class-Became-White-The-Symbolic-Reformation-of-Racialized-Capitalism.pdf

How the British Working Class Became White: The Symbolic (Re)formation of Racialized Capitalism

This article reviews the current state of the debate around the concept of ‘urban bias’. It first reviews Michael Lipton’s original formulation of an Urban Bias Thesis (UBT), and the initial debates that took shape in regard to his work and the work of Elliott Berg and Robert Bates. The main body of the article, however, considers a recent reworking of the UBT by Robert Eastwood and Michael Lipton, and four sets of objections that can be raised against it. Central to these objections are new accounts of the importance of mobility in constructing rural-urban livelihoods and claims emanating from the ‘new economic geography’ about the economic advantages of towns and cities. The article concludes with a short review of the implication of the continuing debate on ‘urban bias’ for public policy and Poverty Reduction Strategies.

http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/The%20continuing%20debate%20about%20urban%20bias.pdf

The continuing debate about urban bias the thesis, its critics, its influence and its implications for poverty-reduction strategies

In his book ‘Why Poor People Stay Poor'the author has argued that urban bias is the moving force behind needlessly slow and inequitable growth in contemporary developing countries. This claim is defended against three main criticisms: that the methods chosen to test it are not appropriate; that the evidence tendered is not relevant or sufficient; and that the rural‐urban polarity is not clear‐cut or does not represent the prime conflict within contemporary developing countries.

Urban bias revisited

Given shortcomings in basic data collection and insufficient resources in preparing official statistics African growth data are unlikely to be very reliable. Estimates of an annual growth rate of 3 per cent may be consistent with a reality between 0 and 6 per cent growth. Although data from international databases are widely used in an expanding literature on African growth there has been no research into how serious these data inaccuracies are. This paper addresses the reliability of the available growth evidence for a selection of countries and offers concrete measures of inaccuracies. It examines the reasons for discrepancies and shows that they can be quite large.

Random Growth in Africa? : Lessons from an Evaluation of the Growth Evidence on Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, 1965–1995

/pdf/the-continuing-debate-about-urban-bias-the-thesis-its-204x1kq58t.pdf

Brian Van Arkadie

Papers

Town versus Country

Some Realities of Adjustment: An Introduction

National Accounting and Development Planning: A Review of Some Issues

The Future of Vulnerable Societies

The Scope of Planning in Developing Countries: Some Notes