By Max Farrar on January 4, 2018
I’ve loved the Caribbean carnival in Leeds since 1972. Much of my energy in 2017 was taken up with engaging ever more deeply with this extraordinary form of art and politics:
- Enjoying and photographing the Trinidad carnival in Port of Spain, and participating in its extraordinary J’Ouvert parade With Guy Farrar and Emily Zobel Marshall. Some of my photos here and here. (February 2017).
- Making a photo exhibition about Leeds West Indian Carnival (April). Some photos of the exhibition while it’s on display are here. Commissioned and fund-raised (thanks, Arts Council England!) by Emily Zobel Marshall.
- Co-organising with Dr Emily Zobel Marshall an international conference on the Caribbean Carnival , delivering a presentation on jouissance and the free carnival (available here – scroll down to ‘Carnival Research’), chairing panels, conducting interviews with the founders of carnival and other key people in carnival (available here scroll down to ‘Carnival Conference Interviews’). (May)
- Writing a 17,000 word history of the Leeds carnival, including interviews with key participants. (Based on a version commissioned by Brett Harrison in 2000, for West Yorkshire Archive Services, and including interviews for carnival magazines commissioned by Arthur France MBE.) A PDF of the text can be downloaded History of LWIC PDF. (June)
- Submitting the history of Leeds carnival and about 100 of my photos of LWIC (a documentary project I started in 1973) to the book celebrating 50 years of Leeds carnival, co-produced with Guy Farrar and Tim Smith. (Guy Farrar started writing the funding bid to Arts Council England (ACE) in December 2016. Bid included lots of free copies of the book for Leeds schools and libraries.) It was published in September 2017. More about the book here. Publisher details here. (June-August)
- Helping make carnival costumes featuring David Oluwale and his migrant masqueraders. Photos and text here and here and here. (July-August)
- Performing this with the Harrison Bundey Mama Dread troupe at the 50th anniversary celebration of Leeds West Indian Carnival. (Guy Farrar successfully bid for funds from ACE on the basis of almost 20 years of work with the Harrison Bundey carnival troupe.) Facebook page and photos here. (25-28 August)
- Contributing around 25 photos to the fabulous exhibition at The Tetley (August – October) about Leeds carnival, curated by Sonia Dyer, in a project devised by Susan Pitter and Dawn Cameron and funded by Heritage Lottery. Report and photos in the press here .
- Co-writing an article (with Dr Emily Zobel Marshall and Guy Farrar) about carnival for the journal Soundings, and contributing photos. Titled ‘Popular Political Cultures and the Caribbean carnival’, it was published in December 2017. Link to the relevant issue (67) of Soundings here. Free copy of the article (scroll down to ‘Carnival Research’) here. (October-November 2017)
A busy but productive and enjoyable year, with superb friends and family, in an excellent cause: to raise the profile of the Caribbean carnival as a vehicle for artistic creativity, education, radical politics, multicultural conviviality and joy.
Posted in blog |
By Max Farrar on August 12, 2016
Hizmet, the social movement inspired by the neo-Sufi thinker Fetullah Gülen, is currently being dismembered by the autocratic president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He accuses Gülen of ordering a coup attempt on 15th July 2016, saying it was was led by Hizmet members in the army. This is strenuously denied by Gülen and Hizmet, but the crack-down has nevertheless been enormous in its range (see here for more information and for Hizmet’s response).
I am a supporter of Hizmet. Since 2006 I have enjoyed meeting their members (some of whom did their PhDs at my university), learning about their work and experiencing their hospitality. In every encounter, in Leeds, London, Istanbul, Seoul and São Paulo, I have found their members (male and female) to be sincere, intelligent, open-minded, humorous and kind.
In May this year (2016) they invited me to speak at their academic conference in Brazil on the role of Hizmet as a social movement. Because they are a huge, world-wide social movement inspired by Islam but largely engaged in educational and charitable work (Gülen has said we have enough mosques, what we need is more schools), I wrote a paper which suggested they enlarged their remit to address five challenges facing the world today:
• Climate change
• Globalised economies that are increasing the polarisation of wealth and income
• Mass migration
• Increasing political violence, claiming religion as its justification
• Decreasing social solidarity
Here is the paper I wrote up after the conference: Hizmet Conference paper It includes more detail of my work with Hizmet; more importantly it contains a lot of detailed factual information on the scale of these challenges.
Already Hizmet does important work on some of these issues. If it survives Erdogan’s onslaught, it will no doubt do more. As a movement inspired by religion but committed to secular, democratic government that respects universally-agreed human rights and prioritises modern, high-quality education for all, Hizmet can contribute to progressive change in Islamic countries. It has much to offer to multicultural society across the globe. I do not believe that Gülen ordered the coup attempt.
(To save time on reading the paper, you could look at the slides I used in the presentation Max Farrar Hizmet Conf paper slides PDF.)
Posted in blog, engagement, public sociology, Public talks | Tagged climate change, Fetullah Gülen, Hizmet, migration, social movements, social solidarity, violence, wealth income inequality |
By Max Farrar on December 9, 2015
I wrote this article with Dr Rumana Hashem, prompted both by the death threats issued against Rumana, a Bangladeshi-born Muslim academic at a British University, and the disagreement I had earlier (supported by Rumana and other feminists) with British academics who support the organisation called Cage.
It forms part of my ongoing investigations into Islamism, and it sits alongside my life-long opposition to racism, xenophobia and its variants (e.g. discrimination against, and hostility to Muslims and Jews).
On the day the article was published in opendemocracy (3.12.15) I gave a talk at the monthly event organised by Leeds Taking Soundings based on the arguments developed in the article. The slides I used can be accessed here Islamist terror-dilemmas PDF
Posted in blog, journalism and media, writing | Tagged Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Islamophobia, terrorism |
By Max Farrar on October 4, 2015
This is so important that I’m uploading a PDF of the article in the Independent on Sunday last week explaining the abominable actions of the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT). The ABT have already murdered several people simply for their rationalist, secularist views. These violent Islamists have now issued a list of people they intend to kill, including Dr Rumana Hashem, a Bangladeshi Muslim feminist working at the University of East London in the UK.
For some reason the IoS has not uploaded this article, so I’m placing it here for wider circulation. Karen Attwood Bangla Hit List 27.9.15
Posted in blog | Tagged Islamism, jihadis, terrorism, violence |