BONUS: Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Tech and Anti-Racism – from ‘Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism’

A bonus offering for Uncommon Sense listeners! We’re sharing our mini-series, Sideways Sociology: UK Anti-Racism, in which three experts introduce us to three 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.

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 local ones? Here, 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 that of language alone, but through communities of resistance, with an eye 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.”

Episode Readings and Resources: https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.lhcx9119

Episode Credits

• Author: John Narayan
• Producer: Alice Bloch
• Sound: Emma Houlton
• Music: Joe Gardner
• Artwork: Kieran Cairns-Lowe

Production Note: This episode was recorded in 2024.

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