Reflexive Ethnicities: Crisis, Diversity and Re-Composition

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of how people reflexively relate to their ethnicity in the context of cultural and political crisis after the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. Introducing a differentiated conception of reflexivity following Archer and Lash, the paper shows how cognitive, hermeneutic and aesthetic reflexivity (Lash) are expressed autonomously, communicatively and in a meta-reflexive manner (Archer) variably across and within ethnicities. Differentiated reflexive expressions of ethnicity are rooted in the politics and histories of ethnicities in relation to dominant discourses of whiteness and Britishness. The data is from a qualitative interview study of how different ethnic groups in West Yorkshire were affected by the 7/7 London bombings, with people of African-Caribbean, Black- African, Bangladeshi, Indian Pakistani and White backgrounds. The increased reflexivity of ethnic identity is seen to be rooted in the political crises generated by Britain's role in and response to, the war on terror, but also biographical experiences of contextual continuities, discontinuities and incongruities of migration.