Racial Encounter: The Social Psychology of Contact and Desegregation

The political and legislative changes which took place in South Africa during the 1990s, with the dissolution of apartheid, created a unique set of social conditions. As official policies of segregation were abolished, people of both black and white racial groups began to experience new forms of social contact and intimacy for the first time. By examining the processes of intergroup contact which arose in South Africa following the removal of official ethnic divides, and supporting it with evidence from the US, Racial Encounter offers a social psychological account of desegregation. It begins with a critical analysis of the traditional theories and research models used to understand desegregation: the contact hypothesis and race attitude theory. It then proceeds by considering and analysing every day discourse, as central to an individual's conception and management of relationships and as a key site of ideological resistance to social change. This book will be of interest to socialpsychologists, students of intergroup relations and all those interested in post-apartheid South Africa

John Dixon is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Lancaster.