Stereotypes and the social psychology of repression

Stereotypes and the social psychology of repression

This presentation considers how people manage the demand to both express stereotypes in order to account for inequality and social injustice and simultaneously repress them in order to deflect the criticism of racism. It draws on the work of discursive psychologists (Billig, Edwards) to show how these competing demands to both express and repress race stereotypes is accomplished in practice by managing hearing. In so doing, the presentation develops a genuinely social psychological account of stereotyping as a dialogical accomplishment involving two parties, a speaker and a hearer. The presentation also seeks to extend the discursive approach by a consideration of the other embodied ways in which racial inequality can be repressed without words.

Kevin Durrheim

ccrri seminar

2011-03-01

MP3 recording