Introductory description

This is not a module which is about deciding whether something-or-other is ‘racist’, ‘not-racist’ or ‘antiracist’. It is about helping you think through social and historical processes that have created differential treatment along lines of “race”, how these inequalities are manifested today in our everyday lives, and the theory and practice of struggles against racism.

The module takes a sociological approach to understanding racisms, that is:

• Recognising race and racisms as produced through practices of people and institutions
• Understanding racism as a structure of power, entangled with other structures of power including gender, class, sexuality, disability and citizenship.
• Paying attention to how formations of race and racism can function in different ways in different places, times and situations (racisms rather than racism).

You will learn about different practices of antiracism that have taken place or are happening now and explore how different theoretical approaches to anti/racism can help us understand political struggle and social life. That is, antiracisms will be discussed both as an empirical real-world practice and as a resource for theorising political struggle and social life.

We will engage with social theory and relate this directly to empirical, real-life examples. You will be encouraged to think each week about how experiences in your everyday life, and in current affairs and the news, relate to the concepts and examples we are discussing.

Being respectful: The module focuses on socio-historical ideas and analysis and present-day examples. Some discussions may bring up strong feelings or experiences from students’ own lives. We encourage open and critical discussion in seminars and lectures, but please be respectful of one another. If you feel particularly disturbed by anything in the module, you are welcome to talk to the module convenor or seminar tutor about this.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

1. What is racism and what is antiracism?
2. Racism in theory and practice
3. Antiracism in theory and practice
4. Racial capitalism
5. "Decolonise the university"
6. Nationalisms and borders
7. Feminisms and antiracisms
8. Extreme vs everyday
9. Local to global

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of concepts, theories and processes of racism and antiracism
• Demonstrate a critical analysis of relationships between racisms and other relations of power (e.g. class, gender, sexuality, disability, citizenship)
• Demonstrate an ability to relate current social divisions to longer histories of power, domination and struggle
• Demonstrate an ability to identify relationships between social divisions at local, national and transnational scales
• Address the aims and objectives of the module demonstrating close engagement with module materials

Indicative reading list

Ayyash, M. M. (2023). The Toxic Other: The Palestinian Critique and Debates About Race and Racism. Critical Sociology, 49(6), 953-966.
Back, Les, Keith, Michael, Shukra, Kalbir, and Solomos, John (2022) The Unfinished Politics of Race: Histories of political participation, migration and multiculturalism, Cambridge: CUP.
Bhattacharyya, Gargi (2018) “Chapter Four: What Racial Capitalism is and What it is Not”, in Rethinking Racial Capitalism, London: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 101-124.
Blee, Kathleen M and Winddance Twine, France (2001) “Introduction: Feminist Antiracist Maps,
Transnational Contours” in KM Blee and F Winddance Twine (eds) Feminism and Antiracism: International Struggles for Justice, New York: NYU Press, pp. 1-13.
de Noronha, L (2019) 'Deportation, racism and multi-status Britain: immigration control and the production of race in the present, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42:14, 2413-2430.
Davis, Angela Y (2016) “Transnational Solidarities”, in Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement, Chicago: Haymarket Books, pp. 129-145.
Drnovšek Zorko, Š. (2019) “Articulations of race and genealogies of encounter among former Yugoslav migrants in Britain,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(9):1574-1591.
Elliot-Cooper, Adam (2019) ““Our life is a struggle”: Respectable Gender Norms and Black Resistance to Policing”, Antipode, 51(2):539-557.
Elliott-Cooper, Adam (2023) “Abolishing institutional racism”, Race and Class, 65(1):100-118.
Gilroy, Paul (2000) Between camps: race, identity and nationalism at the end of the colour line, London: Allen Lane.
Hall, Stuart (2021 [1980]) “Teaching Race”, in Hall, Stuart (2021) Selected Writings on Race and Difference (P. Gilroy & R. W. Gilmore, Eds.). Duke University Press, pp.123-135.Goldberg, David Theo (2015) Are We All Post-Racial Yet? London: Polity Press.
Joseph-Salisbury, Remi and Connelly, Laura (2021) Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism, Manchester: MUP.
Kapoor, Nisha (2018) “On Recognition, Rights and Resistance”, in Deport, Deprive, Extradite: 21st century state extremism, London: Verso.
Kelbert, A. W. (2022) “It Shouldn’t Happen Here: Colonial and racial discourses of deservingness in UK anti-poverty campaign”, Critical Social Policy, 42(4), 565-585. https://doi.org/10.1177/02610183221075960
Kundnani, Arun (2023) What is Antiracism? And Why it Means Anticapitalism, London: Verso.
Mills, Charles W (1997) The Racial Contract, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mirza, Heidi Safia (2022) “‘A Vindication of the Rights of Black Women’: Black British Feminism Then and Now” in Shirley Anne Tate and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 189-207.
Lentin, Alana (2020) Why Race Still Matters, Oxford: Wiley.
Mondon, Aurelien and Winter, Aaron (2020) “Racist movements, the far right and mainstreaming”, in John Solomos (ed) Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Racisms, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 147-159.
Okazawa-Rey, Margo (2009) “Solidarity with Palestinian Women: Notes from a Japanese Black U.S. Feminist” in Julia Sudbury and Margo Okazawa-Rey (eds) Activist Scholarship: Antiracism, Feminism and Social Change, New York: Routledge, pp. 205-223.
Shafi, Azfar, and Ilyas Nagdee. Race to the Bottom : Reclaiming Antiracism, Pluto Press, 2022.
Srivastava, Sarita (2024) “"Are You Calling Me a Racist?" Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change”, New York: NYU Press.
Solomos, John (2022) Race and Racism in Britain, 4th edition, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Srivastava, Sarita (2024) "Are You Calling Me a Racist?" Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change, New York: NYU Press.
Tate, Shirley Anne and Bagguley, Paul (2017) “Building the anti-racist university: next steps”, Race Ethnicity and Education, 20:3, 289-299, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2016.1260227
Tate, Shirley Anne and Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Encarnación (2022) “Critical Race and Gender: Dialogues Between Decoloniality and Intersectionality” in Shirley Anne Tate and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-19.
Tuck, Eve and K Wayne Yang (2012) “Decolonization is not a metaphor” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), pp. 1-40.
Valluvan, Sivamohan (2022) “Racist apologism and the refuge of nation”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45:3, 466-477, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2021.1889634
Winddance Twine, France (2010) A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy, Durham: Duke University Press.

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Independent library-based research for assessment

Subject specific skills

• a systematic understanding of sociological understanding of racisms and antiracisms, including acquisition of coherent and detailed knowledge, at least some of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of the sociology of 'race' and migration
• conceptual understanding that enables the student:
  *to devise and sustain arguments, and/or to solve problems, using ideas and techniques, some of which are
  at the forefront of sociology
  *to describe and comment upon particular aspects of current research in sociology
• the ability to manage their own learning, and to make use of scholarly reviews and primary sources including refereed research articles, other scholarly works, and archival materials

Transferable skills

• an ability to deploy accurately established techniques of analysis and enquiry within a discipline
• an appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity and limits of knowledge
• an ability to apply the methods and techniques that they have learned to review, consolidate, extend and apply their knowledge and understanding, and to initiate and carry out projects
• an ability to critically evaluate arguments, assumptions, abstract concepts and data (that may be incomplete), to make judgements, and to frame appropriate questions to achieve a solution - or identify a range of solutions - to a problem
• an ability to communicate information, ideas, problems and solutions to both specialist and non-specialist audiences.
• the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring:
  *the exercise of initiative and personal responsibility
  *decision-making in complex and unpredictable contexts
  *the learning ability needed to undertake appropriate further training of a professional or equivalent nature.