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Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism

Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism

Released: 2025-05-30
© 2025 The Sociological Review Foundation
Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism - QR Code
4 Episodes
Audio
Listen on Apple Podcasts
4 Episodes
Audio
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Released: 2025-05-30
© 2025 The Sociological Review Foundation
Most Recent Episode
Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Tech and Anti-Racism – by John Narayan

Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Tech and Anti-Racism – by John Narayan

What does tech have to do with anti-racism? Why do we dismiss complex economics at our peril? And how do global struggles for justice connect to those at the local level? John Narayan  – Chair of the Council of the Institute of Race Relations, and a
Time: 23:23
What does tech have to do with anti-racism? Why do we dismiss complex economics at our peril? And how do global struggles for justice connect to those at the local level? John Narayan  – Chair of the Council of the Institute of Race Relations, and a lecturer in European and International Studies at King’s College London – introduces us to Ambalavaner Sivandanan, or “Siva”, a giant of anti-racism who showed us how to truly understand discrimination, and how we can best confront it, together – not just at the interpersonal level or the level of language alone, but through communities of resistance, with an eye firmly focussed on capitalism, colonialism and technology. Here, John celebrates and unpacks the ideas within Siva’s 1989 essay “New Circuits of Imperialism”, which saw him address racism, capitalism and tech at a global scale, and relate this back to state racism at the national level.
Siva, John says, shows us the scope for a truly anti-racist sociology, teaching us that the struggles of “Indian farmers for land rights, those of indigenous Amazonians, and those of Grenfell Tower fire survivors” are ultimately connected – united by “a story of people harmed and marginalised by the market state; and confronting it”.
Find out more at thesociologicalreview.org
Episode Readings
Communities of Resistance: writings on Black Struggles for Socialism – by Ambalavaner Sivandanan (originally published: 1990)From Resistance to Rebellion: Asian and Afro-Caribbean Struggles in Britain – by Ambalavaner Sivandanan (1982)New Circuits of Imperialism – by Ambalavaner Sivandanan (Race & Class, 1989)The Institute of Race Relations and the journal Race & ClassMore about the history of the journal “Race & Class”A collection of essays in memory of Ambalavaner Sivanandan – by the Sociological Review Foundation (2018)Obituary of Ambalavaner Sivanandan – by Gary Younge (The Guardian, 2018)Black Bodies, Broken Worlds – by Vijay Prashad (CounterPunch, 2014)More about the background of the “The Pentonville Five” story (Modern Records Centre, The University of Warwick)
Episode Credits
Author: John NarayanProducer: Alice BlochSound: Emma HoultonMusic: Joe GardnerArtwork: Kieran Cairns-Lowe
Production Note: This episode was recorded in 2024.
Episode ID: 1000710515188
GUID: Buzzsprout-17161523
Release Date: 30/05/2025, 09:30:00

Description

Three activists. Their ideas, their work, their lasting importance.
In this special short series of audio essays from the Sociological Review Foundation, three expert guests introduce us to key figures in the story of UK anti-racism, illuminating how they show us what that term really means – and what it takes – but also how their work and ideas speak to sociology, too, and deserve to be better known.
Starting the series, John Narayan – Chair of the Council of the Institute of Race Relations – explains Ambalavaner Sivanandan’s take on global technology, exploitation and anti-racist resistance. In the second episode,  A.S. Francis celebrates Gerlin Bean as the “mother of the Black women’s movement” in the UK, whose life of committed activism exemplified theory in action – and whose story leads us to ask how we represent individual activists who so passionately valued the collective. And in the third episode, Hannah Ishmael – former archivist at Black Cultural Archives – describes the importance of the determined archivist and educational activist Len Garrison, whose work raises crucial questions about history and identity, self-esteem and self-recognition.

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