‘How did we get to where we are now?’ Reflecting on Stuart Hall in Birmingham

ABSTRACT

In this piece I reflect on the city of Birmingham – as one trajectory in Stuart Hall’s life among the many described in Familiar Stranger – for the significance it holds in terms of the development of race theory in the UK. Birmingham is often remembered among students, activists and scholars working or interested in the areas of race, ethnicity and culture, as the place that hosted Stuart Hall and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) over half a decade ago. Here I consider the charged atmosphere of race relations associated with this period and place and how this marked a point of suture in Hall’s thinking so far. I end by reflecting on the significance this has had in shaping the field of race and ethnic relations in ways that were significant then and now.

KEYWORDS:

• Birmingham
• place
• migration
• race
• race relations
• identity

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Claire Alexander for discussions leading to the writing of this piece and for comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. (Hall 2017, 122).

2. A remarkable facet of Hall’s thought and work has been it as a collective enterprise, in dialogue with a wide array of philosophers, activists and events as charted in the chapter entitled Politics.

3. ‘Life was like conducting a permanent native ethnography’ (Hall 2017, 209).

4. “..being displaced, or out of place, is a characteristic experience of mine. It’s been all throughout my life”. (Hall and Back 2009, 669).

5. ‘I have avoided incidents; I have avoided anything that could create an incident. I have been as inconspicuous as possible in seeking to nourish my interests’ (Malcolm X 1992, 66).

6. https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/census.

7. Steven Emerson: The Fox news expert who thinks Birmingham is ‘totally Muslim’’, The Guardian 12 January 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2015/jan/12/steven-emerson-muslims-birmingham-error-fox-news.