A B Bakan
Biographic Data
| ID | 44869 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A B Bakan |
| GIVEN NAMES | A B |
| FAMILY NAME | Bakan |
| SIGNATURE | BAKAN A B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4794-4693 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Still ‘standing with’ Israel
When Stephen Harper became the first Canadian prime minister to speak in the Knesset, he declared unwavering loyalty to Israel. Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau, Harper's successor, echoed this sentiment. Following the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023, Israel's responses in Gaza have been deemed by the International Court of Justice to be “plausible genocide.” How far does Canada's position of standing with Israel go, and does it include …
Antisemitism as Anti-Jewish Racism
Advancing a consistent anti-racist analytic to challenge antisemitism demands standing with all those who suffer from systemic racism, and specifically with Palestinians. However, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism are rarely understood and opposed in a unified movement of solidarity. Here, we address what antisemitism is not, especially the false claim that equates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel – a claim that is reachi…
Anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism, and solidarity
Escalating Israeli state violence against Palestinians in Gaza in the current moment of genocide should serve as a wake-up call for united action, yet the context is fraught. The state of Israel, a settler colonial and occupying power over Palestinians, is simultaneously presented as a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, and Jews internationally. We ask how a united movement that counters both anti-Palestinian racism and antis…
The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance
Featuring chapters authored by leading scholars in the fields of criminology, critical race studies, history, and more, The Cambridge Handbook of Race and Surveillance cuts across history and geography to provide a detailed examination of how race and surveillance intersect throughout space and time. The volume reviews surveillance technology from the days of colonial conquest to the digital era, focusing on countries such as the United States, C…
The Israel/Palestine Racial Contract and the challenge of anti-Racism
Anti‐Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting
Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, more attention is being paid to anti‐black racism and anti‐racism. The authors contend that, by extension, other forms of racism need to be considered more closely, including those that have received limited scholarly and public attention. This article isolates key elements of anti‐Palestinian racism as a specific form of racism that operates at local and global levels. As an Arab group whic…
The Israel/Palestine Racial Contract and the challenge of anti-Racism
This article forwards an analysis about Israel/Palestine in relation to race in global context, through the case study of the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) process (2001–2011). Although the WCAR has been widely framed as "antisemitic" we demonstrate this interpretation is unfounded, through highlighting legitimate claims for Palestinian human rights and other oppressed and racialized groups – in particular African-descended peoples se…
Going Flat
Breast cancer, if it advances, is life threatening. It is also widespread. My life was changed when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There was much that I did not expect, including a hegemonic culture of “breast conservation.” I opted to “go flat” after bilateral mastectomy, resisting reconstruction plastic surgery. A politics of choice—like that demanded for reproductive rights—has yet to find similar resonance in the world of breast cancer t…
Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race
As the situation in Israel/Palestine seems to become ever more intractable and protracted, the need for new ways of looking at recent developments and their historical roots is more pressing than ever. Bearing this in mind, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Bakan discuss the historic and contemporary dynamics in Israel/Palestine, and their international reverberations, from the unique vantage point of ‘race’, racialization, racism and anti-racism.…
Asian Canadian Studies Reader
Roland Sintos Coloma and Gordon Pon’s Asian Canadian Studies Reader brings together essential writings by leading and emerging scholars in the field to explore the vibrancy of the diverse Asian diaspora in Canada
Permanent Patriots and Temporary Predators? Post-9/11 Institutionalization of the Arab/Orientalized “Other” in the United States and the Contributions of Arendt and Said
Permanent Patriots and Temporary Predators? Post-9/11 Institutionalization of the Arab/Orientalized “Other” in the United States and the Contributions of Arendt and Said was published in Liberating Temporariness? on page 60.
Theorizing anti-racism
After 9/11
Since September 11, 2001, a growing body of scholarship has traced the intensification of surveillance in countries of the industrialized West. However, less attention has been paid to analyzing the impact of surveillance of discourse, particularly public discourse normally considered a hallmark of liberal democratic freedoms of speech and association. In this article we consider the case of Canadian public discourse and illustrate how surveillan…
Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the ‘One-State Solution
The application of the term ‘apartheid’ to the policies and practices of the Israeli state forms a flashpoint in contemporary global politics. South Africa has provided a point of comparison for many state formations, and we suggest that, overall, the apartheid analysis serves as a useful contribution regarding Israel/Palestine within the framework of comparative political science. Moreover, because of the transformation evident in South Africa s…
Palestinian resistance and international solidarity
Israel's recent war in Gaza ('Operation Cast Lead') has both exposed Israel's defiance of international law and provided the occasion for increasing support for an organised transnational boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement is aimed at challenging the Israeli state's illegal military occupation and a host of corresponding repressive policies directed at Palestinians. However, the BDS campaign, and in particular the …
Marxism and Antiracism
Theorists of antiracism commonly embrace recognition of difference as a theoretical starting point, often as a corrective to a perceived economic reductionism associated with Marxism. This article suggests that the divide between Marxism and antiracist theory informed by the politics of difference needs to be reconsidered. There is far more ground for commonality than may be assumed. Central to this is recognition of a certain "politics of differ…
The racial contract
In this paper we adapt political philosopher Charles Mills’ notion of the racial contract to consider the fraught context of Israel/Palestine and its interface with other states, particularly Canada. Specifically, we argue the racialization of categories commonly considered to be race-neutral – including: religion; nationality; citizenship; democracy; security; historic claims to or denial of claims to land; and interpretation, implementation or …
Affirmative Action and Employment Equity
Abigail B. Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi take up the issue of “backlash” in “Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology, and Backlash in Canadian Context.” But where most studies examine the social forces orchestrating backlash, Bakan and Kobayashi consider the ways in which policymakers, including those on the “Left,” respond to and make room for the politics of backlash. In their case study of “employment equity,” Bakan and Kobayas…
Negotiating Citizenship
Negotiating Citizenship explores the growing inequalities associated with nation-based citizenship from the perspective of migrant women workers who have made their way from impoverished Third World c
Not One of the Family
Regulation and Resistance
While the Canadian program for migrant domestic workers offers among the best conditions internationally, it shares two features in common with worldwide policies and treatment of foreign household workers. These are: 1) the inherent asymmetry in citizenship statuses and rights of employers and their domestic employees; and 2) the expectation that employees will ‘live in’ their employers' homes. Enforcement of rights of foreign domestics is also …
Negotiating Citizenship
This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. 'Citizenship' is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nation-state - more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist post-war model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is…
Making the Match
Foreign Domestic Worker Policy in Canada and the Social Boundaries of Modern Citizenship
The social boundaries of citizenship involve relations of exclusion and inclusion within the global economy and specific nation-states. A case study of contemporary Canadian federal policy regarding the recruitment and regulation of foreign domestic workers reveals that, despite postwar trends toward liberalization of immigration policy and general advances made by Canadian workers, citizenship rights for third-world female domestics have decline…
Ideology & Class Conflict in Jamaica
Making the Match
Negotiating Citizenship
This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. 'Citizenship' is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nation-state - more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist post-war model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is…
Palestinian resistance and international solidarity
Israel's recent war in Gaza ('Operation Cast Lead') has both exposed Israel's defiance of international law and provided the occasion for increasing support for an organised transnational boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement is aimed at challenging the Israeli state's illegal military occupation and a host of corresponding repressive policies directed at Palestinians. However, the BDS campaign, and in particular the …
Negotiating Citizenship
Negotiating Citizenship explores the growing inequalities associated with nation-based citizenship from the perspective of migrant women workers who have made their way from impoverished Third World c
Anti‐Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting
Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, more attention is being paid to anti‐black racism and anti‐racism. The authors contend that, by extension, other forms of racism need to be considered more closely, including those that have received limited scholarly and public attention. This article isolates key elements of anti‐Palestinian racism as a specific form of racism that operates at local and global levels. As an Arab group whic…
Marxism and Antiracism
Theorists of antiracism commonly embrace recognition of difference as a theoretical starting point, often as a corrective to a perceived economic reductionism associated with Marxism. This article suggests that the divide between Marxism and antiracist theory informed by the politics of difference needs to be reconsidered. There is far more ground for commonality than may be assumed. Central to this is recognition of a certain "politics of differ…
Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the ‘One-State Solution
The application of the term ‘apartheid’ to the policies and practices of the Israeli state forms a flashpoint in contemporary global politics. South Africa has provided a point of comparison for many state formations, and we suggest that, overall, the apartheid analysis serves as a useful contribution regarding Israel/Palestine within the framework of comparative political science. Moreover, because of the transformation evident in South Africa s…
After 9/11
Since September 11, 2001, a growing body of scholarship has traced the intensification of surveillance in countries of the industrialized West. However, less attention has been paid to analyzing the impact of surveillance of discourse, particularly public discourse normally considered a hallmark of liberal democratic freedoms of speech and association. In this article we consider the case of Canadian public discourse and illustrate how surveillan…
The racial contract
In this paper we adapt political philosopher Charles Mills’ notion of the racial contract to consider the fraught context of Israel/Palestine and its interface with other states, particularly Canada. Specifically, we argue the racialization of categories commonly considered to be race-neutral – including: religion; nationality; citizenship; democracy; security; historic claims to or denial of claims to land; and interpretation, implementation or …
Foreign Domestic Worker Policy in Canada and the Social Boundaries of Modern Citizenship
The social boundaries of citizenship involve relations of exclusion and inclusion within the global economy and specific nation-states. A case study of contemporary Canadian federal policy regarding the recruitment and regulation of foreign domestic workers reveals that, despite postwar trends toward liberalization of immigration policy and general advances made by Canadian workers, citizenship rights for third-world female domestics have decline…
The Israel/Palestine Racial Contract and the challenge of anti-Racism
This article forwards an analysis about Israel/Palestine in relation to race in global context, through the case study of the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) process (2001–2011). Although the WCAR has been widely framed as "antisemitic" we demonstrate this interpretation is unfounded, through highlighting legitimate claims for Palestinian human rights and other oppressed and racialized groups – in particular African-descended peoples se…
Affirmative Action and Employment Equity
Abigail B. Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi take up the issue of “backlash” in “Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology, and Backlash in Canadian Context.” But where most studies examine the social forces orchestrating backlash, Bakan and Kobayashi consider the ways in which policymakers, including those on the “Left,” respond to and make room for the politics of backlash. In their case study of “employment equity,” Bakan and Kobayas…
Plantation Slavery and the Capitalist Mode of Production
The role of slavery in the history of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies has become a central problem in Marxist and neo-Marxist discourse over recent years.' In the development of the Jamaican labour force, the transition from slavery to complete legal freedom (finally won in 1838 as a result of the passage of the emancipation Act in the British Parliament) stands as perhaps the most significant formative event
Anti-Palestinian racism, antisemitism, and solidarity
Escalating Israeli state violence against Palestinians in Gaza in the current moment of genocide should serve as a wake-up call for united action, yet the context is fraught. The state of Israel, a settler colonial and occupying power over Palestinians, is simultaneously presented as a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, and Jews internationally. We ask how a united movement that counters both anti-Palestinian racism and antis…
Regulation and Resistance
While the Canadian program for migrant domestic workers offers among the best conditions internationally, it shares two features in common with worldwide policies and treatment of foreign household workers. These are: 1) the inherent asymmetry in citizenship statuses and rights of employers and their domestic employees; and 2) the expectation that employees will ‘live in’ their employers' homes. Enforcement of rights of foreign domestics is also …
Housing, the State and the Poor
The International Market for Female Labour and Individual Deskilling
This article presents the experiences of five West Indian women immigrant workers living in Toronto in 1985 who were employed at the time in distinct skill categories ranging from the live-in domestic to the registered nurse. The case studies were selected from a larger survey (forty interviews in all, eight in each of five skill categories, where there were relatively high concentrations of West Indian women employees). The aim of the study was …
Plantation Slavery and the Capitalist Mode of Production
The role of slavery in the history of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies has become a central problem in Marxist and neo-Marxist discourse over recent years.' In the development of the Jamaican labour force, the transition from slavery to complete legal freedom (finally won in 1838 as a result of the passage of the emancipation Act in the British Parliament) stands as perhaps the most significant formative event
The International Market for Female Labour and Individual Deskilling
This article presents the experiences of five West Indian women immigrant workers living in Toronto in 1985 who were employed at the time in distinct skill categories ranging from the live-in domestic to the registered nurse. The case studies were selected from a larger survey (forty interviews in all, eight in each of five skill categories, where there were relatively high concentrations of West Indian women employees). The aim of the study was …
Housing, the State and the Poor
Making Socialism
Michael Kaufman's Under is an important contribution to our understanding of one of the most dramatic experiments in radical government in recent years. Kaufman analyzes both the important measures toward reform taken by the Manley government in Jamaica during its two-term period of office from 1972 to 1980, and the very real barriers encountered along that road. In so doing, Kaufman accomplishes two tasks simultaneously
Ideology & Class Conflict in Jamaica
The Old Village and the Great House
Foreign Domestic Worker Policy in Canada and the Social Boundaries of Modern Citizenship
The social boundaries of citizenship involve relations of exclusion and inclusion within the global economy and specific nation-states. A case study of contemporary Canadian federal policy regarding the recruitment and regulation of foreign domestic workers reveals that, despite postwar trends toward liberalization of immigration policy and general advances made by Canadian workers, citizenship rights for third-world female domestics have decline…
Making the Match
Regulation and Resistance
While the Canadian program for migrant domestic workers offers among the best conditions internationally, it shares two features in common with worldwide policies and treatment of foreign household workers. These are: 1) the inherent asymmetry in citizenship statuses and rights of employers and their domestic employees; and 2) the expectation that employees will ‘live in’ their employers' homes. Enforcement of rights of foreign domestics is also …
Negotiating Citizenship
This paper argues that most conceptualizations of citizenship limit the purview of the discourse to static categories. 'Citizenship' is commonly seen as an ideal type, presuming a largely legal relationship between an inidividual and a single nation-state - more precisely only one type of nation-state, the advanced capitalist post-war model. Alternatively, we suggest a re-conceptualization of citizenship as a negotiated relationship, one which is…
Not One of the Family
Negotiating Citizenship
Negotiating Citizenship explores the growing inequalities associated with nation-based citizenship from the perspective of migrant women workers who have made their way from impoverished Third World c
Affirmative Action and Employment Equity
Abigail B. Bakan and Audrey Kobayashi take up the issue of “backlash” in “Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology, and Backlash in Canadian Context.” But where most studies examine the social forces orchestrating backlash, Bakan and Kobayashi consider the ways in which policymakers, including those on the “Left,” respond to and make room for the politics of backlash. In their case study of “employment equity,” Bakan and Kobayas…
Marxism and Antiracism
Theorists of antiracism commonly embrace recognition of difference as a theoretical starting point, often as a corrective to a perceived economic reductionism associated with Marxism. This article suggests that the divide between Marxism and antiracist theory informed by the politics of difference needs to be reconsidered. There is far more ground for commonality than may be assumed. Central to this is recognition of a certain "politics of differ…
The racial contract
In this paper we adapt political philosopher Charles Mills’ notion of the racial contract to consider the fraught context of Israel/Palestine and its interface with other states, particularly Canada. Specifically, we argue the racialization of categories commonly considered to be race-neutral – including: religion; nationality; citizenship; democracy; security; historic claims to or denial of claims to land; and interpretation, implementation or …
Palestinian resistance and international solidarity
Israel's recent war in Gaza ('Operation Cast Lead') has both exposed Israel's defiance of international law and provided the occasion for increasing support for an organised transnational boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The BDS movement is aimed at challenging the Israeli state's illegal military occupation and a host of corresponding repressive policies directed at Palestinians. However, the BDS campaign, and in particular the …
Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the ‘One-State Solution
The application of the term ‘apartheid’ to the policies and practices of the Israeli state forms a flashpoint in contemporary global politics. South Africa has provided a point of comparison for many state formations, and we suggest that, overall, the apartheid analysis serves as a useful contribution regarding Israel/Palestine within the framework of comparative political science. Moreover, because of the transformation evident in South Africa s…
After 9/11
Since September 11, 2001, a growing body of scholarship has traced the intensification of surveillance in countries of the industrialized West. However, less attention has been paid to analyzing the impact of surveillance of discourse, particularly public discourse normally considered a hallmark of liberal democratic freedoms of speech and association. In this article we consider the case of Canadian public discourse and illustrate how surveillan…
Permanent Patriots and Temporary Predators? Post-9/11 Institutionalization of the Arab/Orientalized “Other” in the United States and the Contributions of Arendt and Said
Permanent Patriots and Temporary Predators? Post-9/11 Institutionalization of the Arab/Orientalized “Other” in the United States and the Contributions of Arendt and Said was published in Liberating Temporariness? on page 60.
Theorizing anti-racism
Asian Canadian Studies Reader
Roland Sintos Coloma and Gordon Pon’s Asian Canadian Studies Reader brings together essential writings by leading and emerging scholars in the field to explore the vibrancy of the diverse Asian diaspora in Canada
Going Flat
Breast cancer, if it advances, is life threatening. It is also widespread. My life was changed when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There was much that I did not expect, including a hegemonic culture of “breast conservation.” I opted to “go flat” after bilateral mastectomy, resisting reconstruction plastic surgery. A politics of choice—like that demanded for reproductive rights—has yet to find similar resonance in the world of breast cancer t…
Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race
As the situation in Israel/Palestine seems to become ever more intractable and protracted, the need for new ways of looking at recent developments and their historical roots is more pressing than ever. Bearing this in mind, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail B. Bakan discuss the historic and contemporary dynamics in Israel/Palestine, and their international reverberations, from the unique vantage point of ‘race’, racialization, racism and anti-racism.…
The Israel/Palestine Racial Contract and the challenge of anti-Racism
This article forwards an analysis about Israel/Palestine in relation to race in global context, through the case study of the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) process (2001–2011). Although the WCAR has been widely framed as "antisemitic" we demonstrate this interpretation is unfounded, through highlighting legitimate claims for Palestinian human rights and other oppressed and racialized groups – in particular African-descended peoples se…
The Israel/Palestine Racial Contract and the challenge of anti-Racism
Political science (27 works) · Law (26 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Politics (18 works) · Law (15 works) · History (11 works) · Gender Studies (10 works) · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies (10 works) · Economics (8 works) · Political economy (8 works)