Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville was born in 1805 into the French nobility and a family estate in Normandy. He died in 1859. His wider family was part of the conservative reaction to the changes brought about by the French Revolution in 1789, but Tocqueville, himself, looked forward. He participated in public office, initially as a magistrate and subsequently as a deputy of the Constituent Assembly, rising briefly to Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1849. He travelled to the United States between May 1831and February 1832 with his friend Gustave Beaumont, ostensibly to study penal institutions, but instead published a two-volume study of Democracy in America. Throughout his life, he commented on contemporary politics and public affairs, including France’s occupation of Algeria. The politics of the period were frequently in turmoil and this instability was a motivating concern of Tocqueville in his search for the conditions of a more stable order.

• Bhambra, Gurminder K. and John Holmwood 2021. ‘Tocqueville: From America to Algeria’ in Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity

Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2021. ‘The Haitian Revolution’ Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project video lecture.

This session looks at the beginnings of modern European social theory in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The English political philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704), set out a distinction between the ‘state of nature’ and the ‘state of society’ in order to identify rights and obligations associated with private property. Their writings are widely seen in the context of the later development of capitalism, but are much more directly concerned with the justification of colonialism with which they were each directly engaged. In the eighteenth century, writers associated with the Scottish Enlightenment –for example, David Hume (1711-1776), Adam Smith (1723-1790), William Robertson (1721-1793), John Millar (1735-1801), and Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) – developed a typology of different types of society as stages of historical development. In this session, we consider how these ideas contributed to the view that ‘freedom’ was a product of European modernity and that modernity operated in terms of an internal logic from which colonialism was effaced.

• Bhambra, Gurminder K. and John Holmwood 2021. ‘Hobbes to Hegel: Europe and its Others’ in Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity

Modern social theory is a product of the very history it seeks to interpret and explain. In this module, we address the categories that form mainstream sociology in order to reconstruct modern social theory. We focus on five key sociological figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth century – Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Du Bois. Our purpose is to expose the significance of colonialism and empire in the organisation of the thought of these writers and, thereby, in the legacies they bequeath to social theory. Addressing colonial histories is a necessary preliminary to the reconstruction of social theory.

• Bhambra, Gurminder K. and John Holmwood 2021. ‘Introduction: Colonialism, Historiography, and Modern Social Theory’ in Colonialism and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity

The Global War on Terror, which was launched in response to the attacks in America on September 11th, has strengthened approaches to securitisation in its attempt to eliminate terrorism. The figure of the ‘terrorist’ is closely associated with that of the Muslim man who through laws and policies related to counter-terrorism and counter-extremism, such as the Prevent Duty, is constructed as a risk and threat to society. From the Global North to the Global South, racialised communities, especially those racialised as Muslim, experience the War on Terror in their everyday spaces such as in schools and healthcare settings, as the frontlines of the war constantly expand. As we approach the 20-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it is clear that anti-terrorism measures are becoming a permanent feature of society, despite being declared during a state of emergency.

In this lesson, we will explore what the emergence of the War on Terror meant for security and, how the US and the West more generally became viewed as ‘exceptional’ forces. Through a focus on the Prevent Duty, we will examine how the War on Terror deploys pre-emptive measures to tackle the threat of terrorism, all of which contributes to rising levels of Islamophobia in society. We consider how such securitising measures have become embedded within the ‘everyday’ and what the consequences are, specifically those racialised as Muslim.

• CAGE. (2016) The ‘Science’ of Pre-Crime: The Secret ‘Radicalisation’ Study Underpinning Prevent’.

• Ramesh, R. and Halliday, J. (2015) ‘Student accused of being a terrorist for reading book on terrorism’. The Guardian.

• How do pre-emptive security measures increase feelings of insecurity?

Modern society emerged in the context of European colonialism and empire. So, too, did a distinctively modern social theory, laying the basis for most social theorising ever since. Yet colonialism and empire are absent from the conceptual understandings of modern society, which are organised instead around ideas of nation state and capitalist economy.

In Colonialism & Modern Social Theory, Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood address this absence by examining the role of colonialism in the development of modern society and the legacies it has bequeathed. Beginning with a consideration of the role of colonialism and empire in the formation of social theory from Hobbes to Hegel, the authors go on to focus on the work of Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Du Bois. As well as unpicking critical omissions and misrepresentations, the chapters discuss the places where colonialism is acknowledged and discussed – albeit inadequately – by these founding figures; and we come to see what this fresh rereading has to offer and why it matters. This inspiring and insightful book argues for a reconstruction of social theory that should lead to a better understanding of contemporary social thought, its limitations, and its wider possibilities.

In this event, Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood are in dialogue with Michaela Benson and Su-ming Khoo and respond to questions and comments relating to the book and to the canon of modern social theory itself.

Authors:

Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, a Trustee at the Sociological Review Foundation, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She is co-editor of Discover Society, an online social research magazine, and editor of Global Social Theory. She is author of the prize-winning Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination and Connected Sociologies. She is also co-editor of Decolonising the University and the Project Director of the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.

John Holmwood is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham. He was expert witness for the defence in misconduct cases brought against senior teachers falsely accused of a plot to Islamicise schools in Birmingham. Together with Therese O'Toole, he is author of Countering Extremism in Birmingham Schools? The Truth about the Birmingham Trojan Horse Affair (Policy Press, 2018).

Discussants

Professor Michaela Benson is a sociologist with expertise in migration, citizenship and identity. In particular, her research focuses on Britishness and belonging among Britain’s emigrants and overseas citizens at moments of major political transformation including Brexit and decolonisation. Her current position as Professor of Public Sociology at Lancaster University (from 1 June 2021), builds on nearly twenty years of teaching in universities around the UK and her service since 2016 as Editor-in-Chief of The Sociological Review. She has published several academic monographs including The British in Rural France (Manchester University Press, 2011), and Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama (co-authored with Karen O’Reilly; Palgrave, 2018) and numerous journal articles. In recent years, she has developed a profile as a public social science communicator, with a portfolio that includes freelance writing for major outlets, public speaking, and podcasting. Her current research for the project Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit (MIGZEN) is funded by the ESRC.

Dr Su-ming Khoo is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and Sociology, and leads the Environment, Development and Sustainability (Whitaker Institute) and Socio-Economic Impact (Ryan Institute) Research Clusters at NUI Galway. She researches and teaches on human rights, human development, public goods, development alternatives, decoloniality, global activism, and higher education.

This event is hosted by the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project which seeks to make available open access resources for the teaching of sociology. It emerges out of discussions about the need to broaden our understandings of the past – to be inclusive of colonial and imperial histories – in developing our understandings of the present. The Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project is funded by the Sociological Review Foundation.

Black Feminism draws attention to the ways in which racialised, gendered and classed structures and discourses interact to position women differently in relation to white supremacist and patriarchal systems of oppression. In Britain, Black British Feminism offered not just a challenge to the white feminist theoretical claim to universal womanhood but offered a political space through which racialized women were able to develop their own political frames and build their own campaigns and struggles. In this session we consider the lessons that can be learnt from Black British Feminist theories and struggles. The session also raises some epistemological questions about what histories we have access to or not, the gap between the ‘facts of what happened’ and ‘that which is said to have happened’ (Trouillot 1995) and ways to remedy some of these gaps, by drawing on insights from a project funded by the Feminist Review Trust. While the session does not provide a detailed account of Black British Feminist thought and action, the resources listed below offer fascinating insights for Black Feminist enthusiasts.

• Amos, Valerie, Lewis, G., Mama, A. and Parmar, P. (eds.). 'Many voices, one chant: black feminist perspectives'. Feminist Review, Autumn 1984, Issue 17.

BCA –Heart of the Race Oral Histories.

Ruckus Archive Project.

Remembering Olive Morris Collective.

George Padmore Institute.

Sisterhood and After

1. What can we learn from Black British feminist thought and modes of struggle?

It has long been argued that the enclosure of land in England facilitated the agricultural and industrial revolutions that transformed Britain into a modern capitalist state. Yet the connections between land enclosures within England and the English-led colonial enclosures that were taking place at the same time have been less explored. This session examines connections between the enclosure of land and people within England and within the colonial world (from the 16th century). In contrast to nation-bound understandings of English capitalist modernity, which focus on land enclosures, the Industrial revolution, and the formation of a new class society within England, this session is concerned with English colonial enclosures on a global scale, and with understanding Britain as an Imperial State, whose multiracial class society was forged through Empire.

Keywords. Enclosure, Agrarian Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Slavery, Indenture, Waged Labour, Colonialism, Capitalism, Plantation, Factory

• Baptist, Edward. 2014. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.

A Short History of Enclosure in Britain.

National Archives Enclosure Maps:

Right to Roam Campaign.

Casualties of History podcast from Jacobin magazine focusing on EP Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class.

Slavery and its Legacies Podcast.

The 1619 Project podcasts – The Economy That Slavery Built.

• What are enclosures?

How much did the British gain from their empire? According to some calculations, Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India alone between 1765 and 1938: seventeen times more than the total annual GDP of the UK today. This huge amount of wealth was transferred unilaterally from India to England via trade, banking and administrative mechanisms. While India got nothing in return, the colonial drain played an important role in both the so-called primitive accumulation of capital in England and the reproduction of its industrial system. Only part of this wealth was reinvested in India, and in a way that kept India in a subordinate position within the British colonial empire. This lecture will look at the early theorizations of the colonial drain and discuss the importance of understanding it as part of the overall development of the global capitalist system. Crucially, processes of colonial extraction and dispossession pushed more and more people into the reserve army of English capital, forcing them to emigrate either to other British colonies, as in the case of India, or to England itself, as in the case of Ireland. But does this framework still hold true today, when formal colonial empires seem to be closing their borders to prevent immigration, at huge human cost? Looking beyond the surface of European rhetoric of border controls and its presence in Africa reveals the enduring presence of processes of colonial extraction – of both wealth and labour. 

• Hamza Hamouchene (2019), Extractivism and Resistance in North Africa, Transnational Institute

• Exodus – Escape from Libya, episode 0 (2018)

• What is the colonial drain?

The main role of organized anti-slavery during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was to both legitimate and reinforce deeply rooted hierarchies which saw European states and their peoples position themselves at the moral and racial apex of ‘civilization’. Centuries of death and destruction associated with Transatlantic slavery firmly dispatched to the past, despite their continuing and catastrophic effects, thereby enabling Europeans to be reborn as abolitionists rather than enslavers. The foundational premise of organized anti-slavery – no one should be enslaved – would come to be primarily understood in terms of paternalistic ‘protection’, with ‘civilized’ Europeans justifying unprovoked wars of colonial conquest as ‘humanitarian’ missions to prevent ‘savage’ and ‘backward’ peoples in other parts of the globe from enslaving each other. Appeals to moral and religious enlightenment (the ‘civilising mission’) and altruistic sacrifice (the ‘white man’s burden’) proved to be hugely important. By treating their non-European subjects as ‘backward children’, who were said to be unable to make decisions for themselves, Europeans were able to both justify and excuse any number of external actions and interventions. Tragically, these actions included countless examples of death, exploitation, extraction, violence and abuse, which exposed the fundamental hollowness of European pretentions towards moral superiority. Slavery would be banished symbolically via legal abolition while many of its defining features continued alongside everyday forms of violence and exploitation. In case after case, governments who congratulated themselves on abolishing slavery would continue to justify and defend numerous acts of violence and coercion directed against ‘inferiors’ and ‘outsiders’.

The material presented here is primarily based upon the following paper:

• Joel Quirk, ‘Political Cultures’, A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking in the Age of Global Conflict, Henrice Altink (ed.) (London: Bloomsbury, in press). Minor changes in language are possible prior to publication.

Other useful reading materials include:

• Joel Quirk, Uncomfortable Silences: Anti-Slavery, Colonialism and Imperialism, Historians Against Slavery, 13 February, 2015.

• Slave Voyages (essential starting point for the history of Transatlantic enslavement)

• Colonialism was primarily driven by economic and political interests, yet was frequently justified and defended using appeals to a ‘higher purpose’. What does the close relationship between anti-slavery and European colonialism say about the politics and prospects of humanitarianism and altruism more broadly?

What is a ‘gang’? Whilst the disciplines of Criminology and Sociology have long grappled with this question, the answer is increasingly of no relevance to criminal justice policies that claim to address the problem of violent crime across England and Wales. Within the context of contemporary policing and law enforcement, the ‘gang’ has evolved as a ‘transcendental signifier’ (Alexander 2008) and today serves to legitimise intrusive and harmful policing practices as part of a gang-industry (Williams 2014). Of particular concern to this session, a cursory glance at police gang databases reveals that those who are ‘suspected’ by the police as ‘gang members’, associated to gangs or are ‘at risk’ of gang violence are from minoritised groups and particular black young men. In this session, we explore the factors which have given rise to the racialised construction of the ‘gang’ and consider the harms experienced and endured by those who are policed with suspicion.

• Alexander, Claire. (2008). (Re)thinking 'Gangs'. Runnymede Perspectives.

• Scott, Stafford. (2018)The War on Gangs or a Racialised War on Working Class Black Youth. London: The Monitoring Group.

1. Consider the multiple ways in which the gang label is (mis)used in contemporary policing and law enforcement practice.