Prejudice

Abstract

This chapter argues for the importance of studying prejudice and the challenge this provides for social researchers. The history of prejudice is briefly reviewed within a framework of colonisation and the physical and cultural genocide associated with ‘new’ settlers in countries such as the USA, Australia, and New Zealand. In yet another bleak chapter of human history, the colour-coded prejudices that enabled trading in human slaves are also reviewed. Traditional social psychological approaches to studying prejudice and discrimination are discussed. These accounts variously locate the sources of prejudice as faulty thinking, as faulty personality traits, and as a function of group psychology. Critical approaches to the study of prejudice, grounded in social constructionist epistemology, are introduced, and the importance of examining everyday talk and text as a site of social action is posited. For social constructionists, language is not simply a route to interior cognitions but provides the very building blocks on which prejudicial assumptions rest. Thus, prejudice is inextricably involved with language, and the challenge for critical scholars is to interrogate the linguistic resources which enable prejudice. The chapter concludes with a discussion of two areas of research which build on the history of critical engagement and point towards future research possibilities.