Les Back

New hierarchies of belonging

The article discusses the effects that the debate about the ‘crisis of multiculturalism’ is having on the regulation, scrutiny and the surveillance of migrant communities. Through the story of a young migrant it explores the ways that old hierarchies of belonging are taking new forms within the social landscape of contemporary London. This biographical case study is drawn from a larger qualitative study of 30 young adult migrants. Although the article focuses on a single case, its arguments are informed by the larger sample. The article argues that the debate about population mobility needs to transcend the ‘migrancy problematic’ and identify how the ordering of humanity works in a globalized and neo-liberal context. Combining insights from Stuart Hall’s recent writings and Franz Fanon’s lesser-known essays, the article argues that new hierarchies of belonging are established that replay aspects of colonial racism but in a form suited to London’s postcolonial situation.

AT HOME AND NOT AT HOME: STUART HALL IN CONVERSATION WITH LES BACK

The opening of Rivington Place, new home of the Institute of International Visual Arts’ (inIVA) and Autograph ABP (Association of Black Photographers) in east London is landmark not only for the bl...

A manifesto for live methods: provocations and capacities

In this manifesto for live methods the key arguments of the volume are summarized in eleven propositions. We offer eleven provocations to highlight potential new capacities for how we do sociology. The argument for a more artful and crafty approach to sociological research embraces new technological opportunities while expanding the attentiveness of researchers. We identify a set of practices available to us as sociologists from the heterodox histories of the tradition as well as from current collaborations and cross-disciplinary exchanges. The question of value is not set apart from the eleven points we raise in the manifesto. Additionally, we are concerned with how the culture of audit and assessment within universities is impacting on sociological research. Despite the institutional threats to sociology we emphasize the discipline is well placed in our current moment to develop creative, public and novel modes of doing imaginative and critical sociological research.

Why Everyday Life Matters: Class, Community and Making Life Livable:

This article argues that studying everyday life is valuable because it makes sociologists attend to the routine and temporal aspects of social life. The ‘everyday’ brings the seasons of society into view. It also brings to the fore how liveable lives are made in the midst of the social damage produced by widening class divisions. Drawing lessons from Erving Goffman’s sociology, the article argues that attending to everyday life necessitates developing an eye for detail and attentiveness to the seemingly unimportant. It is also argued that central to the study of everyday life is the relationship between history, culture, class and biography. These arguments are illustrated through a discussion of a working-class estate in Croydon, south London where residents light up their home at Christmas in ‘chromatic surplus’.

Researching community and its moral projects

The study of community is a key area of concern in sociology and anthropology. In this paper it is argued that community should be understood as a moral project as well as a state of affairs or a set of social relationships. Through reviewing the current debate on the ‘death of multiculturalism’ the political and ethical dimensions of research practice are explored. The paper argues for the development of a cosmopolitan method that reworks the relationship between technology, art and critical social science. Accounting for the complexities of community require a research imagination that is supple enough to attend to the interplay between local and global levels in order to find new ways of describing how people live in and across social divisions. Drawing on 20 years of research on the meanings of community in south London the paper explores the limits of interviewing and quantitative measures as they apply to social cohesion or social capital. It argues for a sensuous mode of scholarship in which the social relations of sound, smell, touch and taste can alert us to the ways in which community is inhabited and lived. The aspiration of this sensuous and multimodal agenda for researching community is to create vital forms of research that capture the conflicts as well as the opportunities that arise in city life.

Doing research, writing politics: the dilemmas of political intervention in research on racism

What are the ethical and political dilemmas faced in carrying out research on racism? This paper explores this question by drawing on our fieldwork experience in the course of doing research on the local politics of race in Birmingham. The initial premise is that it is impossible to see research in this field as simply an information-gathering process. Rather we argue that it is important to see how researcher and researched interact, the identities which are expressed and generated in these interactions, and how racism features within the research process. The second half of the paper focuses on the dilemmas of becoming involved in political debates through the research process itself.

Race, Social Cohesion and the Changing Politics of Citizenship

The relationship between race, social cohesion and citizenship has become an important issue in recent political and policy debates. In this paper these questions are explored in the context of the changing forms of ethnic minority political engagement and participation that have evolved in the past two decades. We suggest that there are growing tensions in policy debates about the boundaries and limits of multicultural policies, particularly focused around the issue of social cohesion.

Marxism, Racism, and Ethnicity

Marxism provides a profound analysis of the interrelations of events, putting economics into perspective. However, Marxism as a method in sociological research fails to provide substantial explanation to problems pertaining to race and ethnic relations. Assumptions which can explain economic relationships fail to explain contemporary racism and problems associated with it. Advocates of Marxism face the challenge of showing the relevance of their theoretical and historical views to contemporary forms of race and ethnic relations.© COPYRIGHT Sage Publications Inc. 1995Contemporary debates about race and ethnicity have been influenced in one way or another by Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship and research. This is clear from both recent theoretical texts on the subject and from empirical and historical studies in a number of societies. Indeed, it can be argued that an engagement with Marxism has been at the heart of many of the most original contributions to recent debates in this field. It is therefore appropriate that, even at a time when Marxist scholarship is perhaps in relative decline and Marxism as a political ideology seems discredited, an attempt is made to reassess its contribution to our understanding of racial and ethnic relations in contemporary societies. This is what this article tries to do, at least in a partial sense, by taking a critical look at Marxist-influenced scholarship in this field.The first part of the article looks at the development of a Marxist approach to racism and ethnicity. This includes an attempt to define the key questions with which Marxists have been concerned during recent years. The emergence of new critical perspectives from within the Marxist paradigm is then explored by reference to some of the main texts produced over the past decade or so. The concluding part of the article looks at the attempts to develop a post-Marxist analysis that takes account of the limitations of existing accounts of the dynamics of racial and ethnic relations.FROM CLASSICAL TO NEO-MARXISMThe works of Marx and Engels contain a number of scattered references to the pertinence of racial and ethnic relations in particular societies - for example, the references to race as an economic factor in the slavery of the United States and the position of Irish migrant workers in Britain. But they contain little historical or theoretical reflection on the role of such processes in the development of capitalist social relations as a whole. Perhaps even more damaging, a number of critics have argued that several statements on race by Marx and Engels reveal traces of the dominant racial stereotypes of their time and an uncritical usage of common sense racist imagery. Additionally, a number of critics of Marxism have argued that the reliance by Marxists on the concept of class has precluded them from analyzing racial and ethnic phenomena in their own right, short of subsuming them under wider social relations or treating them as a kind of superstructural phenomenon (Solomos, 1986).This kind of criticism has been a recurrent theme in both sociological and historical writing on this subject over the years. Yet it is clear from writings in the United States, Great Britain, and other societies that Marxism has provided an important source of theoretical influence in research on race and ethnicity. This can be seen in the number of important theoretical studies that have been produced by Marxist writers. There is also by now a sizable number of historical studies that have been produced from within the Marxist paradigm. What seems clear is that Marxist discussion of race and racism is searching for a new agenda for the analysis of the dynamics of racial categorization, and there are some encouraging signs of development and renewal.What of the themes that have helped to define a specifically Marxist approach to the study of racism and ethnicity? Although it is not easy to state categorically what the main concerns of all Marxist approaches to this subject have been, it is clear that a number of themes have been emphasized in recent Marxist scholarship. For example, the role of political institutions has provided a major area of research for those scholars who have attempted to use a Marxist perspective. A number of studies have focused specifically on the role of the state as a site for the reproduction of racially structured situations. Drawing partly on recent Marxist debates on the nature of the capitalist state, a number of studies have analyzed the interplay between politics and racism in specific historical settings. Studies of the role of state institutions in maintaining racialized structures in a number of societies, particularly the United States and South Africa, have highlighted the importance of the political context of racism. This has raised important questions and problems: What is the precise role of the state in the reproduction of racially structured social relations? How far can the state be transformed into an instrument of antiracist political actions? These and other questions are currently being explored and debated.Important contributions are being made to this debate from American Behavioral Scientist Jan 1995 v38 n3 p407(14) Page 1- Reprinted with permission. Additional copying is prohibited. -

Making methods sociable: dialogue, ethics and authorship in qualitative research

The article argues for fostering sociable forms of dialogue in qualitative research. Conventional research shares an emphasis on extracting narratives with judicial and invasive state modes of enquiry rather than on learning from a genuine two-way dialogue between participants and researchers. Using a study of young migrants, we show how involving participants as observers and shapers of analytical dialogue can produce circulations of communication oscillating across the researcher’s and participant’s horizons of understanding. This produces new insight, beyond the limits of qualitative investigation, that extracts information from participants, and in so doing, has the potential to affect shifts in perception that animate and enchant experience. It has consequences for rethinking authorship that share, credit and specify responsibility. Developing such an approach opposes the ‘ethical hypochondria’ characterising qualitative research culture, where ‘automatic anonymity’ is limiting the potential of research to travel, connect people and engage the public imagination.

Portrayal and betrayal: Bourdieu, photography and sociological life

Through an examination of Bourdieus Algerian fieldwork the article raises general questions regarding the place of photography in sociological research. In the midst of a colonial war Bourdieu used photography to make visual fieldnotes and record the mixed realities of Algeria under colonialism. Bourdieu also used photography to communicate to the Algerians an ethical and political commitment to their cause and plight. It is argued that his photographs do not simply portrayal or communicate the realities of Algeria. They are, paradoxically, at the same time full of information and mysterious and depthless. In order to read them it is necessary to ethnographically situate them in their social and historical context. It is suggested that the photographs can also be read as an inventory of Bourdieus attentiveness as a researcher, his curiosity and ultimately his sociological imagination. They betray his concerns as a researcher but also can be used to raise ethical and political questions beyond Bourdieus own attempts at reflexive self-analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of how Bourdieus sociological life might contribute to the craft of sociology today.