Papers by Caroline Knowles
The Labour Party's commonwealth : an analysis of discourses on political community in the 1930s
Theory, Culture & Society, Sep 30, 2014
British Journal of Sociology, Jan 14, 2010
Theory, Culture & Society, Aug 24, 2017
This paper aims to deepen and extend theoretical understanding of mobility by exploring some of t... more This paper aims to deepen and extend theoretical understanding of mobility by exploring some of the mechanisms by which it operates. It introduces the concept and practices of 'tacking' as a as a frame for examining the creative processes of navigation and improvisation through which people approach and reflect on the irregularities and uncertainties of their everyday rounds, enacted or otherwise narrated as spatial biography; lives conceived in mobile-spatial terms. 'Tacking' also travels beyond this frame of reference, i.e. it is 'good to think with' across different substantive contexts of social interaction. Tacking suggests ongoing adjustment and modification that respond to shifting circumstances and may create new facts on the ground, which elicit further adjustments.
Travelling methods
Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks, Jul 21, 2023
Uncertain Landings and Slippery Cities
XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 13-19, 2014), Jul 17, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper probes the connective tissue of globalisation through the lens of a simple ob... more ABSTRACT This paper probes the connective tissue of globalisation through the lens of a simple object, in a pair of plastic sandals. As we follow the flip-flop trail from the oil wells in Kuwait from which plastics originate, to the garbage dumps on the edge of cities like Addis Ababa (a big emerging market for Chinese plastics) to which they are finally consigned, through the larger resonance of a small object it will become clear that globalisation is not what we understand it to be. And neither are the cities it presumes to connect. The cities on the trail – cross cut by multiple intersecting trails of people and objects - were both omnipresent and slippery. While it looked from a distance as if the trail passed through particular cities, closer examination often proved otherwise, as the trail strayed into particular neighbourhoods, urban zones, exurbs, suburbs, and borders between nation-states as zones of unregulated activity. In providing a trail through a city, flip-flops reveal it from an unusual angle: from the little considered vantage points of feet, streams of commerce passing through markets and garbage. It concludes that in the light of this kind of mobile, trans-local, object-led research we need to rethink cities in ways that admit both this slipperiness and streams of everyday life, as well as rethinking globalisation so as to acknowledge its ad hoc, shifting and unstable character.
Por meio da apreciação de pequenas localidades, das micro cenas (locais) que percorrem os rastros... more Por meio da apreciação de pequenas localidades, das micro cenas (locais) que percorrem os rastros da trilha de um chinelo, este artigo persegue uma grande questão: a globalização. Resultado de seis anos de pesquisa etnográfica, seguindo os diferentes caminhos que envolvem a produção, uso e descarte de um chinelo, este artigo demonstra que a globalização não é tão arraigada e robusta como as análises hegemônicas insistem: ao contrário, ela é frágil, inconstante e contextual, gerando múltiplas formas de incerteza nas vidas e cenários que ela, simultaneamente, sustenta e desestabiliza. Palavras-chave: globalização frágil; trajetórias de um chinelo; precariedade global. Trajectories of a flip-flop: micro scenes of globalization Abstract: This paper chases a big issue-globalisation-through some small places: the (local) micro-scenes of the flip-flop trail. The paper suggests that globalisation is not as entrenched and robust as hegemonic accounts of globalisation insists: on the contrary it is fragile, shifting and context specific, generating multiple forms of uncertainty in the lives and landscapes it simultaneously sustains and undermines. The article is based on 6 years of ethnographic research following the trail of a pair of flips-flops from their extraction to their disposal.
British Journal of Sociology, Jun 13, 2017
In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a se... more In this paper I argue that the intersecting sociologies of ethnicity and migration work from a series of interconnected blind spots hindering effective analysis of the current UK situation. Both operate analytically within the limitations of an 'immigrant problem' framework; are overinvested in state agendas; privilege a nation state analysis; are narrowly focussed on distributions of migrant bodies, and on receiving, at the expense of sending, contexts. Exploring these limitations with data derived from a modest small-scale qualitative study of young Chinese migrants in London 2 I argue for a reframing along four dimensions. Firstly, in an era of elite migration, sociology could reach beyond its immigrant problem framework and open up to a broader range of UK migrant ethnicities and circumstances. Secondly, a stronger focus on cities as the scale on which lives are lived, and through which diverse streams of translocal activity are routed, would open new avenues of sociological exploration. Thirdly, including translocal activities connected with distributions of ethnic migrant bodies, such as capital transfers, would broaden its focus, taking migration and ethnicity more centrally into the analysis of globalisation as one of its constituting practices. Finally, paying attention to sending, as well as arrival cities, reveals migrants' thinking and shapes the ways in which they live, as my data shows. The Chinese are both one of the UK's neglected minorities, and one of its fastest growing populations. They are a good example of new UK migrants and they bring globalisation's realignment with the rising significance of China to the UK.
Here and there
Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010
Race, Discourse and Labourism
This book documents the Labour Party's construction of the race concept in political discours... more This book documents the Labour Party's construction of the race concept in political discourse from the 1930s Indian independence negotiations and the defense of Jews from anti-semitic attack in East London.
Reimagining Chinese London
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2017
Race and Social Analysis
© Carline Knowles 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored... more © Carline Knowles 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the ...
Duke University Press eBooks, Jun 10, 2022
Changing Works: Visions of a Lost Agriculture
Sociological Research Online, May 1, 2002
... Douglas A. : visions of a !ost agricul1ure / Dougias Harper p. cm. ... At Cornell's Depa... more ... Douglas A. : visions of a !ost agricul1ure / Dougias Harper p. cm. ... At Cornell's Department of Rural Sociology, Tom Lyson and Gil Gillespie set the stage for this project in their own research, and 1 hope they see this as a con-tinuation of their good work. ...
Sites of race
Ethnic and Racial Studies, Oct 21, 2015
play an active role in the Tea Party. Burke unpacks their seemingly contradictory place in the mo... more play an active role in the Tea Party. Burke unpacks their seemingly contradictory place in the movement as well as their motivations for participating. As with race, the ideologies central to the Tea Party resolve important tensions around gender roles and expectations for its adherents. In keeping with conservativism generally, and often evangelical Christianity particularly, its participants embrace essentialized notions of gender. These notions, according to women in the movement, enhance, rather than constrain their agency, giving them a sense of empowerment. While race and gender play primary roles in the Tea Party, its adherents often downplay class, even as they have expressed real concerns about the fate of the middle class. Like her informants, Burke has less to say about class. She does, however, see in class openings for coalition building that neither race nor gender send to as easily offer. Throughout, Burke writes in clear prose, producing an approachable and engaging account. While this makes it appropriate for classroom use, scholars concerned with racial ideology, political movements, and intersectionality will benefit greatly from it as well. The paucity of theory here may leave some wanting. Nevertheless, Burke provides a framework for future inquiry. She gives us a model of how to demonstrate the relationships between extreme and established racial politics. Moreover, she demonstrates the importance of stepping beyond our comfort zones to study repugnant and/or demonized others. And, in light of the shifting demographics and racial politics of the USA and Europe, Burke offers a template for future engagements with mainstream and marginalized articulations of race, especially whiteness, and resentment.
Conceptualising cities and migrant ethnicity
Routledge eBooks, Feb 25, 2020
Visual Studies, Apr 1, 2005
This paper is from a project called "Landscapes of Belonging in which British sociologists Caroli... more This paper is from a project called "Landscapes of Belonging in which British sociologists Caroline Knowles and Pauline Leonard, and American sociologist and photographer Douglas Harper explore cultural aspects of global mobility, the means by which people attach themselves to culturally unfamiliar landscapes, and the pervailing spectre of history over the lives of global lifestyle migrants. In the following images and text we explore the relationship between an old British soldier and the places and people shaping his present life as a migrant in Hong Kong. The old soldier's life includes a cast of ghosts produced by empire and war. To these are added the ghosts and memories brought by his Chinese wife, Poly, who fled China in the Cultural Revolution. In the background of this paper is the contemporary significance of the British empire. It suggests the spatial dynamics of globalization in the context of personal biographies and the historical landscapes on which they operate. It suggests that white Britishness has a complicated and unexplored relationship to empire and the contemporary forms of migration. Jack takes the bus everyday from his 27 th floor flat on City One Estate, a high-rise housing estate the size of a town (50,000), in the New Territories, to the Royal British Legion-now renamed (post 1997) the World war II Veteran's Association. This is a difficult journey. It takes over an hour and involves at least two hot, noisy and crowded buses moving through the dense Hong Kong traffic. Since his fall last year, his wife Poly travels with him each day. Here Jack services the living: … We cater for about 900 [ex-service] men [mainly Chinese] who use the clubhouse ... they come and play mah-jong and meet and just a place to gather, it's a welfare place … we look after them when they go sick. And archives the dead: … picking up the pieces … all the enquiries, trying also to fill in the gaps, because there is no end of gaps to be filled in ... people who would like to find the answer … I'm like an encyclopaedia they say. I know exactly where to put my hands on the enquiries I still get, for relatives, people who were buried here.
Making Race Matter
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc eBooks, 2005
This collection of original pieces brings together critical perspectives on the intersection of e... more This collection of original pieces brings together critical perspectives on the intersection of ethnic and gender identities as spatialized forms of embodied social practice, tackling important recent themes such as whiteness, masculinity, the body, sexuality, diaspora and globalization. Designed to bring these debates to students in a way that bridges contemporary theory with vivid case material, this is a lively and wide-ranging text of relevance to a range of social sciences.
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Papers by Caroline Knowles