The Art of Listening

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Baker, H. (2020). Wobbles on Cobbles [Recorded by Hak Baker]. On Wobbles on Cobbles [Audio Album]. The Orchard Music. The limits of the sociological imagination might be posed a different way if we ask 'can sociology hear beyond the boundaries Europe and America without committing violations of this sort?' Or, better still how has the intellectual apparatus of sociology and its relationship to modernity been limited? What also has it been deaf to closer to home? Gurminder Bhambra argues ( 2007a) that British sociology remains unable to confront the centrality of the colonial and postcolonial experience to its constitutive theoretical formation. She argues for ‘difference to make a difference’ to our ways of conceiving the social and not to reduce issues of difference to ‘identity’ that, following Spivak, is assimilated as an ‘add on’ sociological specialism.

BHATT, Chetan 2004. ‘Geopolitics and “alterity” research,’ in Researching Race and Racism, eds., Martin Bulmer and John Solomos. London and New York: Routledge The first point that I want to make is to suggest that if we are to develop ‘global sociological modes of sociological inquiry’ – and I want to argue very strongly for the urgency of this - it necessitates re-thinking the near at hand as well as the elsewhere. This should not be a license for a global scramble for exotic informants in Africa or China who will only be assimilated in an age old and self-serving way. Part of the challenge of global social inquiry is to re-think how we understand the traces and presences of global relations in and across localities.

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Luke: And I suppose the follow up question being how you feel that paradox feels different; this is a big question about London, I guess, how it feels different to then, because you’re talking, I think, about 30 years ago. MacarenaBonhomme Making ‘Race’ at the Urban Margins: Latin American and Caribbean Migration in Multicultural Chile, 2020 CUCR is a well established interdisciplinary research centre within Goldsmiths’ Department of Sociology with a distinguished history of collaboration with local communities and activists. It combines theoretical investigation with critical ‘local’ project implementation from Deptford to Jakarta. It's podcast series Street Signs is produced by Freya Hellier. ORWELL, George 1968. ‘Not counting Niggers,’ The collected essays, journalism and letters: volume 1, eds, Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. Harmondsworth, Penguin

I have a wide experience of PhD supvision and I am currently supervising students in the field of multicultural conviviality, immigration control, cultural identuty, racism and fascism, nationalism, sport, social class, gentrification and urban divisions.Professor Michael Keith, Director of The University of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), UK

Philly Desai Spaces of Identity, Cultures of Conflict: the development of New British Asian Masculinities(full-time, ESRC studentship) 2000 On a moody, drizzly day, Freya met Dr Jennie Roberton, a freelance archeologist, for a walk through a beautiful patch of woodland which opens out onto some fascinating ruins. We learn about the story of Mary of Inniemore who was one of thousands of Highlanders who were cleared from the land and had to make a new life.

co-author with Vron Ware) Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics and Culture Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press

The idea of the immigrant itself holds our thinking hostage very often; that’s one of the big points we wanted to make. It’s so coded, it’s so symbolic in our political culture, particularly the legal/illegal ones that bear down on the public debates – the good migrants vs. the unwanted ones.” CHAKRABARTY, Dipesh 2000. Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press Lewis, C. (2020). Listening to community: The aural dimensions of neighbouring. The Sociological Review, 68(1), 94–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026119853944 LB:This summer I was involved with the Urban Water Cultures project at CUCR and we had a great event in Laurie Grove Baths on how thinking with water sociologically – everything from hygiene to washing to swimming - makes you understand city life differently. Also, I have just finished a new book called Migrant City with my friend Shamser Sinha. The book is the story of contemporary London through 30adult migrant lives. We worked alongside the participants for ten years and I have learned so much from working with people rather than doing research on them. The book will be published next year.

2023

The changes of the last 35 years have carved deep wounds in the life of our city – huge discrepancies in wealth, housing crises and a situation where for many it hard to imagine a future here. I think we need to do much more work to develop a precise social diagnosis of what is happening. London seems to becoming more like French and European cities where the poor are shipped out to the suburbs at the edges of the city. Much of the work I admire in urban studies is both interpreting those changes and speaking out against their social consequences. LB:I want to develop new collaborations and link up with research across Goldsmiths and develop new ideas for research, carrying on the great work done by the previous Director Professor Caroline Knowles. I also want to try and do something interesting with our home in Laurie Grove Baths and make it a real hub for activities, meeting and ideas. We have a small space where we exhibit artworks that are linked to urban life that include Tim Cousins’ paintings of the Eltham bus stop where Stephen Lawrence was murdered, and also one of David Howe’s Manhattan street corner portraits. BHAMBRA, Gurminder K. 2007a. ‘Sociology and postcolonialism: another ‘missing’ revolution?,’ Sociology, 41(5): 871-884. [doi:10.1177/0038038507080442] NELSON, Lynn Hankinson 1993. ‘Epistemological communities’ in Feminist Epistemologies, eds. L. Alcoff and E. Potter. New York and London: Routledge Join your hosts Neil Robertson and Freya Hellier as we learn about the West Highland region of Lochaber.