Revisiting the crossroads: returning to The Empire Strikes Back

Abstract

This essay provides a critical reflection on the intellectual and political questions raised by The Empire Strikes Back. It argues that thirty years after the collection helped establish the politics of race at the centre of mainstream scholarly debate; these have now been pushed to the periphery of British sociology. The discussion begins by setting the book against its prevailing political economy, before commenting on the virtue and authenticity in its type of critical scholarship. The essay then moves to spotlight some of the ways in which the collection may be deemed both pioneering and limited, how we might recall the collection today.

Keywords:

• political economy
• race
• intersectionality
• nation
• cultural studies
• sociology

Notes

1. See also the longitudinal research by David McCrone, especially McCrone (2002).

2. Not only is context important, but several authors also subsequently revised their positions as their views developed, something that cannot be addressed in this short contribution (for a full discussion, see Meer and Nayak 2013).

3. Reflecting on Policing the Crisis, the late Stuart Hall (2012) observed that: ‘Almost casually, almost by chance, we hit on the moment of two major conjunctures’.

4. While few other people see W. E. B. Du Bois as a pioneer of misrecognition (Meer 2010), I am not alone in thinking W. E. B. Du Bois a pioneer of intersectionality (see Hancock 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nasar Meer

NASAR MEER is a Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Research Fellow and a Reader in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Strathclyde.