Anti-racism and Multiculturalism

Studies in International Communication

All scholarly books are engagements with the existing literature, often the published scholarly work of one established discipline. This book originated with modest objectives, to produce a work that would be in conversation with the literature of international relations even though not of relevance only to that field. The professed goal of international relations is international peace. The ethical lens of pondering the best means to achieve world peace is used to filter media content in the field of multiculturalism and anti-racism. Although there has been little work on the impact of racial difference on the contours of contemporary international order, there has been a sizeable body of research intended to abolish the credibility of pseudo-scientific racism. Such racism has provided the ideological foundation and justification for imperialism, colonialism, the holocaust, and apartheid. Race has been debunked as a myth. Because of this, racism - the ideology bred of human classification according to racial difference - has been found to be intellectually and morally barren. But the need to communicate egalitarian and scientific sentiments remains. The contributors to this volume consider five questions: How does the literature on antiracism improve our understanding of conflict resolution? How does the analysis of the media's role in racist and anti-racist discourses improve the process of theorizing on hate and war propaganda? How can research on anti-racist discourse improve UN peacekeeping? What implications does this subject have for theory-building and cultural diversity? How and why should the literature on anti-racism expand research in international relations? This is a unique, worthwhile framework for cross-disciplinary research in race and intellectual consensus and conflict.