L Back
Biographic Data
| ID | 5243 |
|---|---|
| NAME | L Back |
| GIVEN NAMES | L |
| FAMILY NAME | Back |
| SIGNATURE | BACK L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Goldsmiths University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6057-0599 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 841 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 76 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1907 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Laurie Taylor in conversation
A Qualitative Research Renaissance
This article reflects on the state of sociological research craft and the importance of SRO as a publication space that has fostered research innovation and invention for 30 years. Drawing on the author’s own experience of publishing in the journal since 2002, the author develops an argument for the vitality of sociological craft today that operates both within and beyond the text. Despite the austere atmosphere in UK Higher Education, it argues …
Lives of the mind
As universities increasingly focus on quantifiable metrics, Les Back considers the support and structures we need to nurture a deep and rounded sociological life
The PhD Handbook by Rosie Doyle and Fraser Robertson
A review of this handbook on how to project manage a PhD
Beyond The Unfinished Politics of Race
This paper responds to three critical commentaries on the book The Unfinished Politics of Race. It engages with key aspects of the critiques and responds to the critiques and suggests some ways in which we can move forward in analysing the changing politics of race in British society
Grace, books and diplomacy
In this reflective conversation, John Solomos shares with Les Back something of his biographical and intellectual journey, in a career that has profoundly shaped the field of race and ethnic studies as we know it today. His ‘grace and diplomacy’ have earned him the respect of colleagues and critics, and his commitment to inclusivity has shaped a generation of scholars, and in ways that continues to create space for new voices and perspectives tod…
The Unloved Curriculum
This article reflects our experiences of developing a more sociable approach to teaching qualitative methods. Through a set of examples drawn from our teaching practice, from our shared development of a sociable qualitative methods curriculum for MA students to the production of the Fieldwork Fables films, we explore these possibilities practically through their use in teaching contexts as a way of fostering a ‘demonstrably alive’ sociological cr…
Black Folk in English Folk
In 2009 the British National Party caused outrage by placing English folk songs on its website. The result within the folk scene was the Folk Against Fascism movement and a critical discussion over the racial import of the idea of "folk music" in England. This article, accompanied by an online playlist, examines how folk music here is shaped by narrow associations with whiteness and nationalism and how this is being opened with contemporary debat…
Class and Everyday Life by Kirsteen Paton
The Sociological Review Foundation Public Lecture 2024
Doing Sociology Today
Field notes
What sociologists learn from music
Sociologists very often have extra-curricular lives as musicians. This article explores the relationship between musical life and sociological identities. Through a range of examples from Howard Becker's grounding in field research as a pianist in the Chicago jazz clubs and his theories of deviance, to the connection between Emma Jackson's life as a bass player in Brit pop band Kenickie and her feminist punk sociology, an argument is developed ab…
Notes, index cards and reminiscences
A conversation with Bridget Fowler about her life in scholarship
Uncommon Sense
Listening -with Les BackWhat does it mean to really listen in a society obsessed with spectacle?What's hidden when powerful people claim to "hear" or "give voice" to others?And what's at stake if we think that using fancy recording devices helps us to neatly capture "truth"?Les Back -author of "The Art of Listening" -tells Alexis and Rosie why listening to society is crucial, but cautions that there's nothing inherently superior about the hearing…
Theories of Race and Racism
Technicolour Eruptions of Light in the Darkness
'When you score you're English, when you miss you're Black'
Through an analysis of the fortunes of the England national football team in the Euro 2020 tournament, this article offers a critical assessment of the politics of race, nation and belonging in sport. While racist reactions to three Black players who missed penalties in the final revealed the contingent belonging of Black footballers within racially exclusive definitions of Englishness, the article argues that it also provided an opportunity for …
O que os sociólogos aprendem com a música? Vidas musicais ocultas e o ofício de entender a sociedade
Os sociólogos são frequentemente músicos secretos. Isso vem desde W.E.B. Du Bois e Max Weber, no século XIX, para os quais a vida musical sempre esteve entrelaçada em seu pensamento sociológico. Nos últimos tempos, têm ocorrido numerosos apelos para que a música seja usada para reimaginar a própria sociologia. Por exemplo, David Beer (2014) reivindicou uma sociologia punk – tão urgente e vital como um single do The Clash – como um antídoto para a…
Hope’s Work
This article, given as the Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture on 28 August 2019, argues that hope can be found through training an attentiveness to the social world in troubled times. Hope then is an empirical question and a matter of documenting hopeful possibilities that often otherwise remain unremarked upon. In this sense “worldly hope” draws possibilities that are manifested in the social world and stands in contrast to cruel forms of optimism or an u…
Introduction
It is as a result of this growing recognition of the need for greater theoretical clarity and conceptual analysis that the authors have put together this second edition of Theories of Race and Racism . It is to this mapping that the authors turn before moving on to the substantive parts that make up Theories of Race and Racism . Indeed, it can be said that during the past decade some of the most important contributions to the analysis of racism h…
Singing Sociologists
Urban multiculture and xenophonophobia in London and Berlin
In this article, we argue that in the context of the rise of nationalism and increasing inequalities across European metropolises, developing an attentiveness to the sounds of the city can be utilized to unpack individual and collective claims to entitlement and belonging. Focussing on London and Berlin, we argue that thinking through two aspects of sonic registers – languages and non-verbal sounds – together can enrich understandings of cities w…
New Ethnicities And Urban Culture
Engaging exploration of race and youth culture which examines the development of new identities, ethnicities and forms of racism. This text analyzes the relationship between racism, community and adolescent social identities in the African and South Asian diasporas.; This book is intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students on courses in race and ethnicity, urban sociology, cultural studies and social anthropology. It will also have some …
Let the ears of the guilty people tingle with truth”
Why Everyday Life Matters
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 devel…
A Manifesto for Live Methods
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 his…
Multicultural Conviviality in the Midst of Racism's Ruins
This article argues that the idea of multicultural tools is the best way to approach the understanding of conviviality. This argument is made through two discrete steps. The first offers a critical review of how issues of urban life and diversity have been theorised focusing on recent debates about 'culture loss' and 'super-diversity'. The discussion, we suggest, elides historical and present racism, in the making of urban diversity in cities lik…
Live Sociology
The article draws on recent debates about empirical sociology's methodological crisis that results from the emergence of sophisticated information-based capitalism and digital culture. Researchers face the challenge of 'newly coordinated social reality' in which social relations and interconnections exist across time and space. However, this challenge co-exists with an unprecedented opportunity to use digital multimedia to reimagine social resear…
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 ar…
New Labour’s White Heart
Aryans reading Adorno
This article examines the ways in which digital technology is being used in contemporary forms of racist culture within white nationalist movements. It argues that new types of racist culture are made possible in cyberspace. This both challenges popular conceptions of what 'The Racist' is supposed to look like and points the ways in which technological innovation is reinvigorating anti-Semitism and racisms that work in and through the boundaries …
Making methods sociable
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 communicati…
Beyond the racist/hooligan couplet
This paper draws on recent research to explore the changing cultures of racism in English football. Starting from a critical analysis of key themes in the literature on football it seeks to show that existing analytical frameworks need to be reworked if they are going to adequately account for the complex forms through which racism is expressed in contemporary football cultures. In the course of this analysis we question some of the ways in which…
The Return of Assimilationism
This paper develops a critique of the politics of race and multiculturalism under New Labour. It argues that as a political formation New Labour is fraught with incommensurable impulses and commitment with regard to issues of multiculturalism, nationalism, racial justice and racism. While there have been palpable shifts and important new legislative initiatives, one of the consequences is that the project of assimilation has been reinvigorated un…
Conceptualising Racisms
This paper explores the changing terms of debate about race and racism in contemporary social and political theory. It focuses attention on criticisms of what is often called the 'race relations problematic', and looks at some of the critical approaches that have emerged in the past decade. By looking at the questions addressed in the debates of the 1980s and the 1990s, it outlines some of the issues which researches have to address in developing…
Doing research, writing politics
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 identit…
Portrayal and Betrayal
Through an examination of Bourdieu's 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 phot…
Hope’s Work
This article, given as the Antipode RGS‐IBG Lecture on 28 August 2019, argues that hope can be found through training an attentiveness to the social world in troubled times. Hope then is an empirical question and a matter of documenting hopeful possibilities that often otherwise remain unremarked upon. In this sense “worldly hope” draws possibilities that are manifested in the social world and stands in contrast to cruel forms of optimism or an u…
Voices from the sidewalk
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMitchell Duneier MITCHELL DUNEIER is Professor of Sociology at Princeton and Distinguished Professor in the Graduate Center, CUNYin conversation withLes Back LES BACK is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, London(photographs by Ovie Carter
Black politics and social change in Birmingham, UK
Over the past two decades the racialization of key aspects of British political life has become apparent both locally and nationally. This article seeks to examine the dynamics of this process by analysing the changing patterns of racial politics in Birmingham, UK. It addresses two main issues. First, the process through which ethnic minorities have mobilized in the context of local politics. Second, the responses of political parties to racial a…
Race, identity and nation within an adolescent community in South London
This article discusses the way notions of self and identity are generated within a adolescent community in South London. The principal aim is to show how ‘race’ and national belonging are defined at a local level. The culture of these young people exhibits a syncretic quality and within this area high levels of inter‐racial friendship occur. However, young people of Vietnamese origin are excluded from the dialogues that are occurring between blac…
Voices of Hate, Sounds of Hybridity
It is worth stating obvious. The music of African diaspora is not a recent import to Europe; rather, it has been an integral part of numerous European societies since eighteenth century. In England, these sounds were introduced through hands and voices of slave musicians, jubilee singers, jazz orchestras, reggae sound-system operators, and hip-hop DJs. It is--or should be--impossible to think about social history of Europe in general, or England …
Islam and the New Political Landscape
In this article we consider the forms of democratic participation that revolve around issues of religious faith and Islam. The context of such work is one in which a concern with the levels of participation in the political institutions of Western Europe and North America feature prominently in both journalistic and academic debate. The article speaks to debates that are concerned with the efficacy of specific forms of participation. In doing so …
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 …
Dream Utopias, nightmare realities
(1993). Dream Utopias, nightmare realities: Imaging race and culture within the world of Benetton advertising. Third Text: Vol. 7, No. 22, pp. 65-80
C. Wright Mills 50 Years On
This article takes the fiftieth anniversary of the death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills as a cue to revisit his legacy but also the value of sociology today. It argues that the enduring relevance of Mills’ work is his cultivation of a sociological sensibility, which is both an attentive and sensuous craft and also a moral and political project. The article returns to some of the key aspects of Mills’ life and work, and focuses, in partic…
Fishmongers in a Global Economy
This article is based on multi-sensory ethnographic research into fishmongers on a south London market, the setting for a specific topography of work. We contrast Charlie, a white Londoner whose family has been in the fish business for over 100 years, with Khalid, an immigrant from Kashmir, who, even without the tacit knowledge of generations at his fingertips, has successfully found a place for himself in the local and global economy of fish. Th…
Global Attentiveness and the Sociological Ear
This paper argues for the training of a global attentiveness that reconfigures the epistemic apparatus of sociology, to admit not only the legacy of empire but also an appreciation of how the dynamics of the British social formation are intimately tied to imperial and postcolonial networks. It argues not for provincialising British sociology and its modes of thought but for rendering explicit the implication near at hand and the postcolonial else…
Urban multiculture and xenophonophobia in London and Berlin
In this article, we argue that in the context of the rise of nationalism and increasing inequalities across European metropolises, developing an attentiveness to the sounds of the city can be utilized to unpack individual and collective claims to entitlement and belonging. Focussing on London and Berlin, we argue that thinking through two aspects of sonic registers – languages and non-verbal sounds – together can enrich understandings of cities w…
"Dr. Back's "Judaism
Books
Alison Dundes Renteln, International Human Rights: Universalism Versus Relativism London: Sage, 1990, Frontiers of Anthropology, Vol. 6, 203 pp., £13.95 p.b. Scott Bennett, Aborigines and Political Power London: Unwin Hyman, 1989, 167 pp., £9.95 p.b. Keith Tompson, Under Siege: Racial Violence in Britain Today London: Penguin, 1988, 204 pp., £3.99 p.b. Shelagh Gastrow, Who's Who in South African Politics London: Hans Zell Publishers, 1990, Third …
Black Political Mobilisation and the Struggle for Equality
One of the most interesting aspects of recent debates in Britain about issues of race and ethnicity is that increasing attention is being given to the political dimension. Within both academic and social discourses there is growing awareness that we need to examine the role of politics in shaping public debate about key aspects of contemporary racial relations in British society. It is as a result of this development that we are seeing the emerge…
Black politics and social change in Birmingham, UK
Over the past two decades the racialization of key aspects of British political life has become apparent both locally and nationally. This article seeks to examine the dynamics of this process by analysing the changing patterns of racial politics in Birmingham, UK. It addresses two main issues. First, the process through which ethnic minorities have mobilized in the context of local politics. Second, the responses of political parties to racial a…
Dream Utopias, nightmare realities
(1993). Dream Utopias, nightmare realities: Imaging race and culture within the world of Benetton advertising. Third Text: Vol. 7, No. 22, pp. 65-80
Race, identity and nation within an adolescent community in South London
This article discusses the way notions of self and identity are generated within a adolescent community in South London. The principal aim is to show how ‘race’ and national belonging are defined at a local level. The culture of these young people exhibits a syncretic quality and within this area high levels of inter‐racial friendship occur. However, young people of Vietnamese origin are excluded from the dialogues that are occurring between blac…
Doing research, writing politics
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 identit…
White/Whiteness
Labour and Racism
The issue of the representation of minorities in political institutions has become central in recent debates about the political sociology of race in British society. This paper uses a case study of a selection process for a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party to explore the dynamics of recent developments. It explores the following questions: What impact have minority activists had on processes of candidate selection? How ha…
Conceptualising Racisms
This paper explores the changing terms of debate about race and racism in contemporary social and political theory. It focuses attention on criticisms of what is often called the 'race relations problematic', and looks at some of the critical approaches that have emerged in the past decade. By looking at the questions addressed in the debates of the 1980s and the 1990s, it outlines some of the issues which researches have to address in developing…
X Amount of Sat Siri Akal
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 …
Racism and Society
Why is there a resurgence of racism in contemporary societies? How do ideas about race and ethnicity serve to construct forms of social and political identity? These are some of the key questions addr
Technology, Race and Neo‐fascism in a Digital Age
Les AA. soulignent que l'Europe et l'Amerique du Nord connaissent une vive resurgence du racisme et de l'antisemitisme. Ils montrent que les mouvements neofascistes et racistes utilisent des technologies de pointe, notamment Internet, en ce qui concerne la dissemination de leurs idees. Ils se demandent si ces technologies contribuent a creer les mouvements neofascistes. Ils s'efforcent de savoir comment ces derniers concilient l'utilisation de te…
Du clientélisme aux sections noires du Parti travailliste
From clientelism to Black sections of the labor party: interracial policy in birmingham This paper explores in detail recent changes in political participation by minority communities in British society, drawing on research in Birmingham. It explores the conditions which led to the emergence of new forms of political engagement and action from within minority communities, the circumstances under which black people entered the local political syst…
Beyond the racist/hooligan couplet
This paper draws on recent research to explore the changing cultures of racism in English football. Starting from a critical analysis of key themes in the literature on football it seeks to show that existing analytical frameworks need to be reworked if they are going to adequately account for the complex forms through which racism is expressed in contemporary football cultures. In the course of this analysis we question some of the ways in which…
Voices of Hate, Sounds of Hybridity
It is worth stating obvious. The music of African diaspora is not a recent import to Europe; rather, it has been an integral part of numerous European societies since eighteenth century. In England, these sounds were introduced through hands and voices of slave musicians, jubilee singers, jazz orchestras, reggae sound-system operators, and hip-hop DJs. It is--or should be--impossible to think about social history of Europe in general, or England …
New Labour’s White Heart
Dancing and Wrestling with Scholarship
The Return of Assimilationism
This paper develops a critique of the politics of race and multiculturalism under New Labour. It argues that as a political formation New Labour is fraught with incommensurable impulses and commitment with regard to issues of multiculturalism, nationalism, racial justice and racism. While there have been palpable shifts and important new legislative initiatives, one of the consequences is that the project of assimilation has been reinvigorated un…
God save the Queen
Aryans reading Adorno
This article examines the ways in which digital technology is being used in contemporary forms of racist culture within white nationalist movements. It argues that new types of racist culture are made possible in cyberspace. This both challenges popular conceptions of what 'The Racist' is supposed to look like and points the ways in which technological innovation is reinvigorating anti-Semitism and racisms that work in and through the boundaries …
Heard the one about the Jewish rock star
Prospects and RetrospectsA flame immune to the wind
Falling from the sky
Back examines the human costs of immigration policy through recovering the stories of the desperate stowaways who are literally falling out of the skies over London. Some 3,000 people have died trying to gain entry to Europe. These are the human costs of contemporary forms of immigration policy. Back attempts to problematize the ways in which the global movement of people is understood within an immigrant/host framework. He argues for an alternat…
Sociology (58 works) · Political science (36 works) · Law (35 works) · Gender Studies (30 works) · Politics (26 works) · Art (25 works) · Law (19 works) · Aesthetics (17 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Philosophy (16 works)