The Racial Socialism project examines humanitarian practices in socialist countries in order to develop new perspectives on racialisation. Racialisation refers to the process by which certain groups are constructed as fundamentally different on the basis of supposedly essential biological differences. The significance of racialisation for the historical development of capitalism is well documented, as the extraction of socio-economic value was often legitimised by portraying populations as ontologically different. However, historical sources show that processes of racialisation also took place in socialist societies. To date, however, there has been a lack of theoretical analysis of this apparent contradiction. Using the example of the national Red Cross societies in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the German Democratic Republic and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the project examines how racialisation took effect in socialist societies.
A cultural anthropology of value is proposed as an analytical approach to systematically examine the contradictions of racialisation in socialism. Socialist societies are understood as social orders with diverse forms of value, structured by specific logics – or a network of competing logics – that were effective at different levels of society.
The central objectives of Racial Socialism are:
- new empirical research on whether and how different groups within socialist Red Cross societies were racialised;
- the identification of different value registers and negotiations of value – including political, economic, social and cultural value – as well as their hierarchical interrelationships;
- the theoretical redefinition of racialisation in socialism, which has thus far been understood primarily as a phenomenon of capitalist social formations. By combining detailed historical research on socialist humanitarian organisations with cultural anthropological theories on value and racialisation, the project develops new perspectives on this fundamental contradiction.
