By Max Farrar on April 6, 2021
This article joins the storm of criticism that greeted Dr Tony Sewell and his Commission’s report when it was published on 31.3.21. It makes some specific criticisms, but it provides a broader context than most of the responses I’ve read so far. Firstly, it aligns the Commission with the ‘culture war’ the current UK government is waging over Britain’s place in the world (and specifically its ‘success’ in responding to racism). Secondly, it shows the intellectual impoverishment of the Commission’s implied analysis of the causes of racism.
In writing for the general reader here, I’m trying to distill a lifetime of reading, writing and demonstrating in the field that sociologists used to called ‘race relations’.
The main article is here. (Quite a long read, about 4,000 words.)
Why Sewell’s 2021 Commission Report is so wrong
I am working with the #RememberOluwale charity on a project designed to transform visitors’ experience of the place in Leeds near where David Oluwale was hounded to his death by two Leeds policemen in 1969. This led me to think about how all ‘places’ could be transformed if we applied a full understanding of the causes of racism that are set out in the above article. So I’m uploading the chart I made here. It’s a quick read. All comments welcome.
Action PLan for Tranforming Place
Posted in blog, culture and politics, public sociology, writing | Tagged BlackLivesMatter, Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, culture wars, Dr Tony Sewell, racism |
By Max Farrar on May 6, 2020
Here are our memories of those heady days. I guess you’ve got to be about 70 and still infected with the Virus68 to be much bothered with this, but there are, thankfully, lots of younger people brimming with enthusiasm for radical social change, so please read on.
(Published by the journal Northern History.)
Immense thanks to
#ChristianHogsbjerg for putting all this together and for the great intro, analysing to the 1968 Leeds University Union sit-in, and reminding us of the nefarious
#JackStraw
Posted in blog, culture and politics |
By Max Farrar on January 6, 2020
-
-
Max Farrar and Ken Brown in Potternewton Park at the start of Leeds Carnival 1999. Photo © Guy Farrar
-
-
Family and friends performed “Windrush Bacchanal” by Harrison Bundey Mama Dread Masqueraders at Leeds Carnival 2018. Photo © Max Farrar
-
-
Family and friends preparing at home for “Remembering Athaliah, Mama Dread” at Leeds Carnival 2016. Photo © Max Farrar
MF The Caribbean Carnival – Yearning for Freedom
This article is my latest effort to think about the Caribbean form of carnival as I’ve experienced it over nearly 50 years, mainly in Leeds, and occasionally in Trinidad. It emphasises the regenerative, satirical and playful elements of carnival, utilising the work of the great Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin.
It was written for the academic journal Caribbean Quarterly, excellently edited by Dr Kim Robinson-Walcott, so it has some of the flavour demanded by universities. But it should be fairly readable, especially to those who love the bacchanal. Download here:
MF The Caribbean Carnival – Yearning for Freedom
This special issue of Caribbean Quarterly (Vol 65, No. 4) on carnival was edited by Dr Emily Zobel Marshall and it contains lots of other interesting work on this topic. You can see the list of articles on the CQ link above. If you have free access to the journal online please download them. If not, email me and I’ll send you them as PDFs. (This issue is on the Caribbean Quarterly link above.)
Some time ago I co-authored with Emily ZM and my brother Guy another article on carnival for the journal Soundings. It’s less academic than the CQ article and it makes a slightly different argument. You can download it from their site or (to save money) you may download this PDF.
Popular Political Cultures Carnival marshall farrar
All comments are welcomed.
Posted in blog, culture and politics | Tagged bacchanal, Caribbean Carnival, Carnival, HBMDM, Leeds West Indian Carnival, masquerade, Mikhail Bakhtin, Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago Carnival |
By Max Farrar on April 4, 2019
Sensuous materialism
The Transformation page, admirably edited by Michael Edwards for the impressive openDemocracy website, kindly published my journalistic effort to promote an idea — I hesitate to call it a philosophy — that came to me while writing the concluding chapters of the book on Big Flame that I’m writing with Keven McDonnell.
I call it sensuous materialism
At first I called it ’emotional materialism’ but I thought people would laugh (overtones of excessively excited leftists crying over the class struggle?). I took ‘sensuous’ from Karl Marx’s early philosophical writing where he is breaking with idealism and positing everyday human activity — as humans everywhere make their material and social world — as the fundamental unit of society.
If you want to read a longer and more academic version of this argument, here’s an extract from Chapter 10 of the book that will hopefully come out next year: Max Farrar & Kevin McDonnell, Big Flame: Rethinking Radical Politics, London: Merlin Press (forthcoming) Sensuous materialism from BF book
Posted in blog, culture and politics, journalism and media, writing | Tagged emotion, Karl Marx early writings, sensuous materialism, Sigmund Freud |
