Karim Murji

After the Stephen Lawrence Report

This article, which was written in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the report of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, argues that the critical challenge will be to construct an agenda for pushing forward the key recommendations. The authors begin by briefly highlighting the uneven nature of the reports analysis and recommendations. The following sections detail the immediate reactions of the right wing press and the police. The article concludes with proposals for how to overcome the limitations of official discourses on police reform in the UK.

Sociological Engagements: Institutional Racism and Beyond:

The concept of institutional racism emerged in 1967, the same year that this journal began. This first part of the article traces the origins and context of the term in the black power movement of the 1960s. Its subsequent adoption by sociology shows its engagement with issues of race and racism, though sociology itself became the object of critique for its understanding and explanation of racial inequalities. Links and differences between the USA and Britain are used to reflect on the different public roles of their national sociological associations. The second section draws on the example of the Macpherson inquiry and its difficulty in conceptualizing institutional racism. This shows that sociologys public role is contested and that trying to develop a public voice through the media is challenging. Overall, while focusing on some of the problems for developing public sociology, the article argues that confronting such problems is essential for the vitality of the discipline.

Riot: Race and Politics in the 2011 Disorders:

The 2011 riots have already been the most commented upon riots of recent decades. Casting some doubt about generalised and holistic explanations and responses, we seek to locate the events in a matrix of race, policing and politics. This approach enables us to identify shifts in political discourse around the riots from the simple to the complex, as well as significant changes between how the events of 2011 and earlier riots have been ‘read’. We seek to unravel some of these strands, to show how race, place and political discourse have been located in the reaction to the riots. In drawing attention to important unevenness, we argue that sociologists need to focus on both continuities and changes since the 1980s.

Hierarchies, Markets and Networks: Ethnicity/Race and Drug Distribution

Three models—hierarchies, markets, and networks—are used to explore the organization of drug distribution and the place of ethnicity/race in that. These models are well established as conceptual approaches to the coordination of social life. Each of them is employed in the analysis of drug distribution, though not always clearly. This paper aims to elucidate their key features as they bear on questions of ethnicity/race. In doing so, it problematizes the way that ethnicity/race is employed in research and policy circles and challenges naïve assumptions about ethnic sameness and ethnicity/race as bases for organizing drug distribution. Ethnicity may be a useful resource for criminal and legitimate enterprises but both comparisons between the two and details of what is specifically ethnic are generally lacking. Some avenues for future research and simple principles to guide such research are proposed.

The Future Lasts a Long Time: Public Policework and the Managerialist Paradox

The 1990s have the appearance of being the worst and best of times for the British police. The organization has made a sustained effort to climb back up the U-shaped curve of political legitimacy after the disastrous period of the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was exposed to searching scrutiny by the Audit Commission, the Sheehy Inquiry, internal Home Office reviews and sections of the media. The largely successful campaign by police staff associations to neutralize the reforming thrust of the proposals emanating from these scrutinies seemed to mark some sort of watershed in their relationship with the previous Conservative government and in part contributed to the reconstruction of a bipartisan consensus on the police with the main political parties emphasizing their commitment to increasing police numbers and resources. Furthermore, in 1996 the Home Secretary agreed to the police having long-handled batons and CS gas, while police criticisms of the Crown Prosecution Service, the judiciary, the laws of evidence and so-called ‘revolving door’ cautioning policies for juveniles also registered as a cause for concern with leading politicians. This however is only part of the story.

Sociologies of Everyday Life: Editors’ Introduction to the Special Issue

Welcome to the 2015 Special Issue of Sociology. It is the journal’s policy that each editorial team has the opportunity to guest edit a Special Issue of Sociology during their editorial term. As a part of this editorial treat, the theme of the Special Issue is completely open and in the gift of the editors. Taking time to explain why we selected and settled on the sociologies of everyday life as the theme for our Special Issue provides a way for us to begin this Introduction. In many ways, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the everyday because it is, as Sarah Pink (2012: 143) observes, ‘at the centre of human existence, the essence of who we are and our location in the world’. The study of everyday life is a well-established tradition within sociology and interest and thinking about the quotidian continues to grow, with these engagements becoming increasingly interdisciplinary across the social sciences and beyond. In his worry about the drift of sociology into more generic social science, John Holmwood (2010) argues that the discipline has been particularly effective in working as an ‘exporter’ of concepts and methods (as well as personnel). With this ‘open borders’ character of sociology as a discipline in mind (see also Meer and Nayak 2013; Urry 2000), we saw our Special Issue as a timely moment for taking sociological stock. This means that the Special Issue can be thought of as both a reflective moment – where has sociology been and arrived at in its attempts to think through the everyday? – and as an anticipative moment – what are the new logics, foci, approaches, uses, limits for sociologies of the everyday? Everyday life-approaches attempt to capture and recognize the mundane, the routines in (and of) social relations and practices. In doing so, they not only give importance to the ordinary, and take the ordinary seriously as a category of analysis, but they also evidence how everyday life social relations, experiences and practices are always

Understanding the contemporary race–migration nexus

ABSTRACT The linkage between race and migration, especially in the UK since the 1990s, has shifted from a focus on postcolonial migrants to focus on newer groups, while migration within the European Union has also altered the discussion of racism and migration. This critical review provides a framework for understanding how race is conceptualized (or ignored) in contemporary scholarship on migration. We identify three, partly overlapping nexi between migration and racialization: (1) ‘Changing Migrations – Continuities of Racism’; (2) ‘Complex Migrations – Differentialist Racialization’; (3) ‘Post-racial Migrations – Beyond Racism’. The article analyses what each of these nexi bring into focus as well as what they neglect. The concept of race–migration nexus aids a fuller understanding of how migration and contemporary racialization are co-constructed. Scholars need to consider the relationship between migration and race to better address pressing issues of racism against migrants and settled communities.

Resistance through representation: ‘Storylines’,advertising and police federation campaigns

The Police Federation has become an active and successful pressure group on policing and criminal justice issues in the U.K. This article traces the origins of the Federation through to two bitter and far reaching campaigns in the post‐war period. The first was the Federations law and order and pay campaign in the 1970s, the second its battle against the Conservative governments reform proposals during 1993. It is argued that these campaigns represented ‘moments of truth’ when the Federation took it case to the public, appealing above the heads of government and senior officers in pursuit of its goals. A notable, and perhaps unique feature of these campaigns is shifting the ‘arena of negotiation’ through the use of press advertisements. The core textual and pictorial images and representations of the police and policework deployed during these campaigns are examined through use of the richly suggestive concept of ‘storylines’.

Using racial stereotypes in anti-racist campaigns

Abstract This article examines the use of stereotyped images in a series of adverts by the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE]. As part of the CREs ‘personal responsibility’ campaign the adverts aimed to raise awareness of racial stereotyping, and, in one case, to provoke members of the public into complaining about the images presented. As the main body charged with implementing and monitoring anti-racism in the UK the use of racial stereotypes by the CRE has been controversial, though not always in the expected ways. The main arguments are that the CREs use of stereotypes is based on questionable evidence, on a problematic conception of positive and negative images, and that it fails to consider how the images can be read in diverse ways. The CRE seems to rely upon a quasi-essentialist view of race and racism and, consequently, its anti-racism appears static and unable to engage with racism in its diverse manifestations.

Theories of race and ethnicity : contemporary debates and perspectives

How have research agendas on race and ethnic relations changed over the past two decades and what new developments have emerged? Theories of Race and Ethnicity provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge collection of theoretically grounded and empirically informed essays. It covers a range of key issues in race and ethnicity studies, such as genetics and race, post-race debates, racial eliminativism and the legacy of Barack Obama, and mixed race identities. The contributions are by leading writers on a range of perspectives employed in studying ethnicity and race, including critical race feminism, critical rationalism, psychoanalysis, performativity, whiteness studies and sexuality. Written in an authoritative yet accessible style, this volume is suitable for researchers and advanced students, offering scholars a survey of the state of the art in the literature, and students an overview of the field.