B Byrne
Biographic Data
| ID | 52171 |
|---|---|
| NAME | B Byrne |
| GIVEN NAMES | B |
| FAMILY NAME | Byrne |
| SIGNATURE | BYRNE B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3519-4709 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 180 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Racism Seems to be the Hardest Word: How Racialised Workers Make Sense of Racial Inequalities in Creative and Cultural Industries
The creative and cultural industries face an urgent challenge in addressing structural exclusion and forms of racism. This article, based on in-depth interviews with 42 Black, Asian and ethnically diverse creatives, reveals that nearly all respondents faced racial disadvantages hindering their career progression. However, it was striking how there are different degrees of willingness to attribute their struggles to structural racism. Our research…
The endurance of whiteness in a museum
This article examines the persistent and enduring nature of whiteness and racial inequalities within the UK's cultural sector in general, and in one particular UK-based museum. We shed light on the challenges the institution faces in its journey towards adopting decolonisation and anti-racist practices. Drawing on ethnographic research, we conduct a sociological examination of the structural and institutional factors that hinder diversity efforts…
Cultural racism in the US and UK: The Culture Trap
Raising concerns on the dangers of linking biological invasions to human migration
Histories of place: The racialization of representational space in Govanhill and Butetown
We argue that the stories told about the histories and nature of places, are vehicles for narrating race. Drawing on interviews with professionals and community workers in Butetown in Cardiff and Govanhill in Glasgow, we explore how they negotiated – and contested – racialized histories of place, constructing different versions or claims to belong. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial concepts we explore this conceptualization through examination …
The Trouble with Diversity: The Cultural Sector and Ethnic Inequality
Diversity has increasingly become coveted in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), with a significant presence in institutional and policy vocabularies. The concern to employ diverse staff and cater to diverse audiences is driven by socio-economic rationales and in terms of ethnicity, the focus of this article, is justified by the levels of ethnic inequality within CCIs. This article argues that the painfully slow progress in advancing eth…
Change in the pipeline
Everyday Aesthetics, Locality and Racialisation
In this essay we reflect on the relationship between aesthetic practices and racialised conceptions of belonging. In particular, we explore attributions of beauty and ugliness, order and disorder, as these are made in relation to local space, and we consider how these attributions can be linked to proprietorial claims about who is welcome in those spaces. Our focus is thus on the everyday aesthetics of location: the ways in which aesthetic judgem…
Resilient resistance? The third sector in the London Borough of Newham at a time of ‘post-racial’ politics
This article engages with the shift towards an emphasis on ‘resilience’ in local government discourses. Using the London Borough of Newham as a case study, it will argue that contradictory definitions of the term have, until recently, been used to justify the erosion of the third sector in the borough, specifically groups who support religious and linguistic minorities. Interviews and documentary analysis are used to consider how the concept of r…
Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation
50 years after the establishment of the Runnymede Trust and the Race Relations Act of 1968 which sought to end discrimination in public life, this accessible book provides commentary by some of the UK’s foremost scholars of race and ethnicity on data relating to a wide range of sectors of society, including employment, health, education, criminal justice, housing and representation in the arts and media. URI
Introduction: Nationalism's Futures
At a time when nationalist sentiment is on the rise, this special issue takes stock of how sociology can contribute to understanding the past, present and future of nationalism. In contrast to declarations of 'the end of history', which was also meant to herald increasing integration due to a lowering of cultural and national barriers, nationalism never went away. The articles in this collection engage with the question of nationalism at a theore…
"Divide and conquer". Anti-racist and community organizing under austerity
This paper examines the effects of austerity on anti-racist and community organizing. We focus on three key shifts: changes to public funding, the push to entrepreneurialism and the mainstreaming of Equalities legislation. The paper contributes to critical understandings of the changing relationship between civil society and the state and the challenges this creates for working against racism. We highlight how austerity acts as an alibi to furthe…
Diversity in place: Narrations of Diversity in an Ethnically Mixed, Urban Area
This paper explores the implications of representations of places as 'diverse', particularly for those who live in them. Arising from an interdisciplinary research project, the paper takes one neighbourhood in Manchester (Cheetham Hill) and explores some of the narratives about it produced by residents and those who have a 'professional' stake in the area. These are put in the context of public narratives of the area, as well as Census data. The …
Michael Banton and Sociology
Professor Michael Banton died in May 2018 aged 91. His long career involved a decade at the University of Edinburgh in the Department of Social Anthropology before spending the rest of his career at the University of Bristol. In Bristol he was Professor of Sociology (1965–1992) and subsequently Emeritus Professor, during which time he remained deeply engaged in scholarly research and publication (see Obituaries). It seems a fitting tribute, in th…
Testing Times: The Place of the Citizenship Test in the UK Immigration Regime and New Citizens’ Responses to it
Citizenship tests are designed to ensure that new citizens have the knowledge required for successful ‘integration’. This article explores what those who have taken the test thought about its content. It argues that new citizens had high levels of awareness of debates about immigration and anti-immigration sentiment. Considering new citizens’ views of the test, the article shows how many of them are aware of the role of the test in reassuring exi…
Rethinking Intersectionality and Whiteness at the Borders of Citizenship
This article critically engages with the concept of intersectionality, beginning with an account of its roots in Black feminist' theorizing and critical legal studies. The article argues that it is important to understand the origin and roots of the term in order to track its radical potential. Whilst intersectionality as a concept has been perhaps one of feminism's most successful exports, the article also considers some of the potential pitfall…
Multicultural Desires? Parental Negotiation of Multiculture and Difference in Choosing Secondary Schools for their Children
This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as the everyday experience of living with difference. The paper argues that multiculture needs to be understood as shaped not only by racialized, ethnic or r…
Trying to find the extra choices’: Migrant parents and secondary school choice in Greater Manchester
This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The…
A local welcome? Narrations of citizenship and nation in UK citizenship ceremonies
In 2004, the first citizenship ceremony was conducted in the London Borough of Brent. These compulsory ceremonies for those who have been granted British citizenship had been proposed in the government white paper and then in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. They were designed to celebrate the moment of achieving citizenships and were one response to a perceived ‘crisis of citizenship’ in Britain. This study examines the texts of…
Trends in postpartum haemorrhage in Ireland: An eleven-year population-based cohort study
Objective To derive population-based incidence rates of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) and to investigate trends associated with method of delivery and blood transfusion. Specific focus was given to PPH due to atonic uterus, the commonest type of PPH. Consideration was also given to morbidly adherent placenta, a rare but severe obstetric complication involving abnormally deep placental adherence to the uterine wall. Design Retrospective cohort stud…
Not just class: Towards an Understanding of the Whiteness of Middle-Class Schooling Choice
There is increased attention to questions of class in studies of education, particularly among those who adopt a Bourdieuian perspective. This paper explores the burgeoning literature on school choice and class (in particular middle 'classness') to argue that there are serious analytical and sociological costs to a singular focus on class without due attention to race. Examining interview material, it will show instances where the racialized natu…
Extended review
Odd tribes: Toward a cultural analysis of white people - By John Hartigan, Jr
Empire and after: Englishness in postcolonial perspective
In recent years there has been a sustained renewal of interest in national identity at a popular, political and academic level, and a striking common feature in each case has been the concern to differentiate between British and and to define a distinct sense of Englishness. The English flag (the cross of St. George as opposed to the flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Flag) has gained a currency inconceivable even ten years ago. Drawing togeth…
England - Whose England? Narratives of Nostalgia, Emptiness and Evasion in Imaginations of National Identity
This paper explores the contested and racialised nature of Englishness as a national identity. Based on qualitative interviews of white mothers in London, the paper examines the different ways in which the interviewees positioned themselves in relation to concepts of Englishness. National identity involves ways of being, a sense of place and belonging. It is produced through forms of myth-making and narrative production which depend on particular…
Not just class: Towards an Understanding of the Whiteness of Middle-Class Schooling Choice
There is increased attention to questions of class in studies of education, particularly among those who adopt a Bourdieuian perspective. This paper explores the burgeoning literature on school choice and class (in particular middle 'classness') to argue that there are serious analytical and sociological costs to a singular focus on class without due attention to race. Examining interview material, it will show instances where the racialized natu…
In Search of a 'Good Mix: Race', Class, Gender and Practices of Mothering
Drawing on interviews with white middle-class mothers, this article examines the ways in which mothering involves practices and identities which are classed, raced and gendered. In particular, it focuses on the construction and articulation of middle-classness with whiteness. The article examines the women's descriptions of how they constructed social networks as mothers, chose schools for their children and planned their after-school activities.…
Testing Times: The Place of the Citizenship Test in the UK Immigration Regime and New Citizens’ Responses to it
Citizenship tests are designed to ensure that new citizens have the knowledge required for successful ‘integration’. This article explores what those who have taken the test thought about its content. It argues that new citizens had high levels of awareness of debates about immigration and anti-immigration sentiment. Considering new citizens’ views of the test, the article shows how many of them are aware of the role of the test in reassuring exi…
Rethinking Intersectionality and Whiteness at the Borders of Citizenship
This article critically engages with the concept of intersectionality, beginning with an account of its roots in Black feminist' theorizing and critical legal studies. The article argues that it is important to understand the origin and roots of the term in order to track its radical potential. Whilst intersectionality as a concept has been perhaps one of feminism's most successful exports, the article also considers some of the potential pitfall…
Reciting the Self: Narrative Representations of the Self in Qualitative Interviews
Drawing on accounts from interviews with white women, this article explores the production of narratives of the self. It suggests that the story produced of the self is not inevitable and may revolve around notions of sameness and difference that, in turn, depend on the positionality of individuals in terms of normative discourses of `race', class and gender. Sally can be seen to be reciting the process of subjection in the way she creates hersel…
Diversity in place: Narrations of Diversity in an Ethnically Mixed, Urban Area
This paper explores the implications of representations of places as 'diverse', particularly for those who live in them. Arising from an interdisciplinary research project, the paper takes one neighbourhood in Manchester (Cheetham Hill) and explores some of the narratives about it produced by residents and those who have a 'professional' stake in the area. These are put in the context of public narratives of the area, as well as Census data. The …
England - Whose England? Narratives of Nostalgia, Emptiness and Evasion in Imaginations of National Identity
This paper explores the contested and racialised nature of Englishness as a national identity. Based on qualitative interviews of white mothers in London, the paper examines the different ways in which the interviewees positioned themselves in relation to concepts of Englishness. National identity involves ways of being, a sense of place and belonging. It is produced through forms of myth-making and narrative production which depend on particular…
"Divide and conquer". Anti-racist and community organizing under austerity
This paper examines the effects of austerity on anti-racist and community organizing. We focus on three key shifts: changes to public funding, the push to entrepreneurialism and the mainstreaming of Equalities legislation. The paper contributes to critical understandings of the changing relationship between civil society and the state and the challenges this creates for working against racism. We highlight how austerity acts as an alibi to furthe…
Trying to find the extra choices’: Migrant parents and secondary school choice in Greater Manchester
This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The…
A local welcome? Narrations of citizenship and nation in UK citizenship ceremonies
In 2004, the first citizenship ceremony was conducted in the London Borough of Brent. These compulsory ceremonies for those who have been granted British citizenship had been proposed in the government white paper and then in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. They were designed to celebrate the moment of achieving citizenships and were one response to a perceived ‘crisis of citizenship’ in Britain. This study examines the texts of…
Introduction: Nationalism's Futures
At a time when nationalist sentiment is on the rise, this special issue takes stock of how sociology can contribute to understanding the past, present and future of nationalism. In contrast to declarations of 'the end of history', which was also meant to herald increasing integration due to a lowering of cultural and national barriers, nationalism never went away. The articles in this collection engage with the question of nationalism at a theore…
Towards a Gendered Understanding of Conflict
Summaries Conflict has only recently been examined in the context of development studies and a gender analysis is frequently lacking. Nevertheless a gender analysis is an important tool for understanding how economic, social and political divisions which underlie conflict situations are cross?cut by gender divisions and how men and women are caught up in and affected in different ways by struggles over power and resources. This article draws out …
Multicultural Desires? Parental Negotiation of Multiculture and Difference in Choosing Secondary Schools for their Children
This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as the everyday experience of living with difference. The paper argues that multiculture needs to be understood as shaped not only by racialized, ethnic or r…
Resilient resistance? The third sector in the London Borough of Newham at a time of ‘post-racial’ politics
This article engages with the shift towards an emphasis on ‘resilience’ in local government discourses. Using the London Borough of Newham as a case study, it will argue that contradictory definitions of the term have, until recently, been used to justify the erosion of the third sector in the borough, specifically groups who support religious and linguistic minorities. Interviews and documentary analysis are used to consider how the concept of r…
Michael Banton and Sociology
Professor Michael Banton died in May 2018 aged 91. His long career involved a decade at the University of Edinburgh in the Department of Social Anthropology before spending the rest of his career at the University of Bristol. In Bristol he was Professor of Sociology (1965–1992) and subsequently Emeritus Professor, during which time he remained deeply engaged in scholarly research and publication (see Obituaries). It seems a fitting tribute, in th…
Towards a Gendered Understanding of Conflict
Summaries Conflict has only recently been examined in the context of development studies and a gender analysis is frequently lacking. Nevertheless a gender analysis is an important tool for understanding how economic, social and political divisions which underlie conflict situations are cross?cut by gender divisions and how men and women are caught up in and affected in different ways by struggles over power and resources. This article draws out …
Books Reviewed
Reciting the Self: Narrative Representations of the Self in Qualitative Interviews
Drawing on accounts from interviews with white women, this article explores the production of narratives of the self. It suggests that the story produced of the self is not inevitable and may revolve around notions of sameness and difference that, in turn, depend on the positionality of individuals in terms of normative discourses of `race', class and gender. Sally can be seen to be reciting the process of subjection in the way she creates hersel…
White Lives
This revealing book explores the processes of racialization, class and gender, and examines how these processes play out in the everyday lives of white women living in London with young children. Bridget Byrne analyzes the flexibility of racialized discourse in everyday life, whilst simultaneously arguing for a radical deconstruction of the notions of race these discourses create. Byrne focuses on the experience of white mothers and their childre…
In Search of a 'Good Mix: Race', Class, Gender and Practices of Mothering
Drawing on interviews with white middle-class mothers, this article examines the ways in which mothering involves practices and identities which are classed, raced and gendered. In particular, it focuses on the construction and articulation of middle-classness with whiteness. The article examines the women's descriptions of how they constructed social networks as mothers, chose schools for their children and planned their after-school activities.…
Empire and after: Englishness in postcolonial perspective
In recent years there has been a sustained renewal of interest in national identity at a popular, political and academic level, and a striking common feature in each case has been the concern to differentiate between British and and to define a distinct sense of Englishness. The English flag (the cross of St. George as opposed to the flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Flag) has gained a currency inconceivable even ten years ago. Drawing togeth…
England - Whose England? Narratives of Nostalgia, Emptiness and Evasion in Imaginations of National Identity
This paper explores the contested and racialised nature of Englishness as a national identity. Based on qualitative interviews of white mothers in London, the paper examines the different ways in which the interviewees positioned themselves in relation to concepts of Englishness. National identity involves ways of being, a sense of place and belonging. It is produced through forms of myth-making and narrative production which depend on particular…
Extended review
Odd tribes: Toward a cultural analysis of white people - By John Hartigan, Jr
Not just class: Towards an Understanding of the Whiteness of Middle-Class Schooling Choice
There is increased attention to questions of class in studies of education, particularly among those who adopt a Bourdieuian perspective. This paper explores the burgeoning literature on school choice and class (in particular middle 'classness') to argue that there are serious analytical and sociological costs to a singular focus on class without due attention to race. Examining interview material, it will show instances where the racialized natu…
Trends in postpartum haemorrhage in Ireland: An eleven-year population-based cohort study
Objective To derive population-based incidence rates of postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) and to investigate trends associated with method of delivery and blood transfusion. Specific focus was given to PPH due to atonic uterus, the commonest type of PPH. Consideration was also given to morbidly adherent placenta, a rare but severe obstetric complication involving abnormally deep placental adherence to the uterine wall. Design Retrospective cohort stud…
Trying to find the extra choices’: Migrant parents and secondary school choice in Greater Manchester
This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The…
A local welcome? Narrations of citizenship and nation in UK citizenship ceremonies
In 2004, the first citizenship ceremony was conducted in the London Borough of Brent. These compulsory ceremonies for those who have been granted British citizenship had been proposed in the government white paper and then in the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act. They were designed to celebrate the moment of achieving citizenships and were one response to a perceived ‘crisis of citizenship’ in Britain. This study examines the texts of…
Multicultural Desires? Parental Negotiation of Multiculture and Difference in Choosing Secondary Schools for their Children
This paper considers the ways in which parents talk about choosing secondary schools in three areas of Greater Manchester. It argues that this can be a moment when parents are considering their own attitudes to, and shaping their children's experiences of, multiculture. Multiculture is taken as the everyday experience of living with difference. The paper argues that multiculture needs to be understood as shaped not only by racialized, ethnic or r…
Rethinking Intersectionality and Whiteness at the Borders of Citizenship
This article critically engages with the concept of intersectionality, beginning with an account of its roots in Black feminist' theorizing and critical legal studies. The article argues that it is important to understand the origin and roots of the term in order to track its radical potential. Whilst intersectionality as a concept has been perhaps one of feminism's most successful exports, the article also considers some of the potential pitfall…
Testing Times: The Place of the Citizenship Test in the UK Immigration Regime and New Citizens’ Responses to it
Citizenship tests are designed to ensure that new citizens have the knowledge required for successful ‘integration’. This article explores what those who have taken the test thought about its content. It argues that new citizens had high levels of awareness of debates about immigration and anti-immigration sentiment. Considering new citizens’ views of the test, the article shows how many of them are aware of the role of the test in reassuring exi…
Diversity in place: Narrations of Diversity in an Ethnically Mixed, Urban Area
This paper explores the implications of representations of places as 'diverse', particularly for those who live in them. Arising from an interdisciplinary research project, the paper takes one neighbourhood in Manchester (Cheetham Hill) and explores some of the narratives about it produced by residents and those who have a 'professional' stake in the area. These are put in the context of public narratives of the area, as well as Census data. The …
Michael Banton and Sociology
Professor Michael Banton died in May 2018 aged 91. His long career involved a decade at the University of Edinburgh in the Department of Social Anthropology before spending the rest of his career at the University of Bristol. In Bristol he was Professor of Sociology (1965–1992) and subsequently Emeritus Professor, during which time he remained deeply engaged in scholarly research and publication (see Obituaries). It seems a fitting tribute, in th…
Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK: State of the Nation
50 years after the establishment of the Runnymede Trust and the Race Relations Act of 1968 which sought to end discrimination in public life, this accessible book provides commentary by some of the UK’s foremost scholars of race and ethnicity on data relating to a wide range of sectors of society, including employment, health, education, criminal justice, housing and representation in the arts and media. URI
Introduction: Nationalism's Futures
At a time when nationalist sentiment is on the rise, this special issue takes stock of how sociology can contribute to understanding the past, present and future of nationalism. In contrast to declarations of 'the end of history', which was also meant to herald increasing integration due to a lowering of cultural and national barriers, nationalism never went away. The articles in this collection engage with the question of nationalism at a theore…
"Divide and conquer". Anti-racist and community organizing under austerity
This paper examines the effects of austerity on anti-racist and community organizing. We focus on three key shifts: changes to public funding, the push to entrepreneurialism and the mainstreaming of Equalities legislation. The paper contributes to critical understandings of the changing relationship between civil society and the state and the challenges this creates for working against racism. We highlight how austerity acts as an alibi to furthe…
Change in the pipeline
Everyday Aesthetics, Locality and Racialisation
In this essay we reflect on the relationship between aesthetic practices and racialised conceptions of belonging. In particular, we explore attributions of beauty and ugliness, order and disorder, as these are made in relation to local space, and we consider how these attributions can be linked to proprietorial claims about who is welcome in those spaces. Our focus is thus on the everyday aesthetics of location: the ways in which aesthetic judgem…
Resilient resistance? The third sector in the London Borough of Newham at a time of ‘post-racial’ politics
This article engages with the shift towards an emphasis on ‘resilience’ in local government discourses. Using the London Borough of Newham as a case study, it will argue that contradictory definitions of the term have, until recently, been used to justify the erosion of the third sector in the borough, specifically groups who support religious and linguistic minorities. Interviews and documentary analysis are used to consider how the concept of r…
The Trouble with Diversity: The Cultural Sector and Ethnic Inequality
Diversity has increasingly become coveted in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), with a significant presence in institutional and policy vocabularies. The concern to employ diverse staff and cater to diverse audiences is driven by socio-economic rationales and in terms of ethnicity, the focus of this article, is justified by the levels of ethnic inequality within CCIs. This article argues that the painfully slow progress in advancing eth…
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (19 works) · Gender Studies (17 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works)