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How can we live with ourselves?Universities and the attempt toreconcile learning and doingGargi BhattacharyyaPublished online: 23 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Gargi Bhattacharyya (2013) How can we live with ourselves?Universities and the attempt to reconcile learning and doing, Ethnic and Racial Studies,36:9, 1411-1428, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.783925

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How can we live with ourselves?

Universities and the attempt to reconcile

learning and doing

Gargi Bhattacharyya

(First submission October 2011; First published April 2013)

AbstractThis article revisits recent debates about the responsibilities of publicscholarship. The piece argues that writing in a range of fields has engagedwith issues of racism, in particular as racism has been manifested in the‘war on terror’, but that this discussion has been muted within the sub-field of race and ethnic studies. There is a discussion of the impact ofpressures to demonstrate the ‘usefulness’ of research to a wider publicand the limits that this can place on the formulation of research. Thisargument is expanded through consideration of the author’s experience ofresearching and lobbying with community and campaigning groups. Thepiece goes on to consider the implications of the marketization of highereducation for critical scholarship and concludes that there is value in amore ‘private’ sociology that may not be easily accommodated in themarketized university.

Keywords: public scholarship; ‘war on terror’; community-based research;

universities; anti-racism; feminism.

Morality, for Arendt, concerns the individual in his/her singularity. The answer to the

question, ‘‘what ought I to do?’’, she explains, depends in the end on ‘‘what I need to

do to be able to live with myself’’. (Mahrouse 2008, p. 90)

The advent of the war on terror in general and the invasion of Iraq inparticular initiated multiple waves of commentary and critique � andbrought debates about the responsibilities and purpose of scholarship toprominence across disciplines. In different ways, many of us began to askourselves Arendt’s question about personal responsibility. In particular,the invasion of Iraq led to a reinvigoration of debates about the socialresponsibility of scholars. Silence was seen to equal acquiescence, and, in

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2013Vol. 36, No. 9, 1411�1428, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.783925

# 2013 Taylor & Francis

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this climate, various initiatives arose that sought to articulate oppositionto the war as a collective response within the profession.

Submerged in the now too extensive debate about the rights, wrongs,constraints and possibilities of a more public sociology is the responseof the American Sociology Association to the invasion of Iraq.1 Thepassing of this motion of conscience from a body that had been moreassociated with professional practice than with political statementsreopened that ever-present dilemma for scholars � does the pursuit ofknowledge demand distance and disinterest, or immersion in the eventsand politics of the day? For some critics, the move into explicitlypolitical statements undermined the role of such a professional body �sociologists might hold a wide range of political views and thediscipline needed to make space for the professional representationof our scholarly practice. Interestingly, Eric Herring (2006) makes asimilar argument in his criticism of the decision of the Political StudiesAssociation to award Tony Blair the title of 2005 Politician of the Year� in recognition of his ability to win elections and with a wilful silencewith regard to Iraq, Afghanistan, rendition, torture, disregard forinternational law and erosion of domestic civil liberties. Thesecriticisms from differing points on the political spectrum suggest thatpublic credibility is lost when scholars express political opinions thatdo not arise directly from the practices of scholarship. Whatever ethicalrage we might feel, the confusion between our views as a profession andas citizens can appear to reduce scholarly practice to no more thananother expression of opinion. Yet for others, the war in Iraq broughttogether political conscience and professional insight � and the motionof condemnation expressed not only moral outrage but also a view thatwhat we, collectively, had learned about militarism, global relations andthe connection between local and global politics made this militaryadventure unwise and dangerous.

Resisting war and re-imagining race and ethnic studies

The Iraq War and the more nebulous ‘war on terror’ extendeddiscussion of the politics of race beyond the usual disciplinaryspecialisms and into a range of other areas. The state practices ofthe war on terror, internationally, transnationally and within particularnational spaces, resurrected some very old themes in the study ofracism � from the portrayal of treachery as an ethnic, and perhapsphysicalized, trait, to the reduction of some human lives to bundles ofportable and vulnerable flesh � and many noted that we werewitnessing reinvigorated racisms that also seemed all too familiar.Yet there has been a gap between this renewed popular interest in howracism shapes everyday consciousness and the more formalizedpractices of race and ethnic studies � while a range of other disciplines

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(re)discovered the place of racism in their understanding of the world,there is little sense that these alternative debates fed into morespecialized and established work in race and ethnic studies.2 Thebroader anti-war movement, on the other hand, threw up a range ofinterdisciplinary work, some of which brought different approaches tothinking about the politics of race at local and global levels and theinterrelation between these spheres. This is an unruly literature thatspans queer theory (Puar 2007), anti-imperialist feminism (Eisenstein2007), international relations (Keen 2006), politics (Youngs 2010) andall manner of activist literature that bridged academic and polemicalstyles of writing (Sivanandan 2006) � and the commentary on thepolitics of race that emerges from this diverse range of work seesracism as an element in a larger disorder, less a problem to be solvedthrough any short-term pursuit of knowledge and more a symptom tobe analysed to assist in our understanding of how we had sunk so low.

Much of this work is in dialogue with the varied and internationalpublic that formed around the opposition to the wars in Afghanistanand Iraq. In the global public that emerged through this movement,academic work mingled with other voices and, in a manner rare in myexperience, the input of scholars became one more input constitutiveof this public. Here scholarship does not address a public from adistance and professional scholars are not regarded as privilegedactors in the pursuit of knowledge, but there is/was a seriousengagement with what might be learned from a conversation betweenactors of different kinds: from former diplomats to military families,from scholars to former detainees, from those seeking to challengeanti-terrorism laws to those seeking to bring war criminals to justice.

Although much of this work is inspired by a strong sense ofprofessional responsibility � what can learning be if it cannot be acommentary and resistance to these most pressing challenges of ourtime? � I think this moment represents a resurrection of the belief thatscholars enter the public as participants, rather than any sense that webring an external expertise that can address this object, the public.

Much of this activity has taken place with little obvious attention tothe internal demands of the academy. There are outputs that aredirected to academic audiences, and these, presumably, can beassessed, measured and valued as a contribution by whatevermechanism for rating research is in play � but a lot of this work hasbeen more dispersed, or with publishers that straddled scholarly andactivist worlds, or in outlets that are regarded as less valuable in termsof the professional values of the academy. Herring (2006, p. 117)argues, with particular reference to his own field of internationalrelations, that the ethical imperative to use the skills of scholarshipagainst crimes against humanity demands that we refuse the quiet life

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of professional betterment, because: ‘What is best for your departmentis not necessarily best for humankind.’

Burawoy, on the other hand and for all his enthusiastic calls topopulism, is quite explicit in his interest in the institutional politics ofthe academy. Sociology is hampering itself due to a misplaced sense ofinadequacy. Whereas professional sociology has achieved institutionalrecognition (although this might seem more assured in the USA thanin some other locations), ‘it still behaves as though it were in gestation,defensive about its scientific credentials’ (Burawoy 2005, p. 69).

Burawoy blames this lack of confidence for professional sociology’swariness of engaging with publics � because sociologists are fearfulstill of being ‘found out’, revealed as peddlars of profane anddisreputable ways of knowing, not science at all.

A central objective of Burawoy’s public scholarship is, it seems, toregain credibility for the academy and to defend against the instru-mental incursions of state and market. However, sometimes it is not soeasy to defend professional values and still be able to live with yourself.

Can everything be commodified � and does this matter?

In a context where higher education is increasingly commodified andnow, in Britain, a public university system is in the process of beingdismantled and opened to the market under the justification ofconsumer choice for students, the attempt to appeal to any public canbe easily incorporated into the imperatives of marketing. One scholar’sengagement with the community is another manager’s identification ofa new market.

In response to these changes, scholars are increasingly vocal indefending the values and existence of the ‘Public University’3 � a spacethat fosters learning for all as a public good and service � or the ‘ReallyOpen University’4 � an imagined space that reclaims learning as a popularand democratic activity that resists the hierarchies and exploitative socialrelations fostered by education as we know it. Others, understandably,react to these pressures by championing a more disengaged and elitistconception of the university � because the push to make everythingaccessible and popular devalues both the pursuit of knowledge andserious attempts to understand what cannot yet be popularized.

Although not a defence of elitism, John Holmwood’s (2010)warnings about the threatened future of British sociology could beregarded as a warning about the institutional consequences of rushingtowards some kinds of public engagement. He argues that this dangerarises from the conjunction of an all-too-rapid marketization of highereducation, the increasing refocus on an international market inuniversity education and the particular inflection of UK pressures todiscipline the unruly business of the academy into structures that are

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amenable to bureaucratic measurement, for the purposes of bothmanagement and marketing:

If my analysis is correct, we are witnessing the disappearance of sociology in the UK

as a consequence of a ‘‘national’’ agenda for social science. In that sense, it could be

argued that UK social science is becoming more ‘‘state-centred’’, just as it is oriented

to criteria of excellence deemed to be ‘‘international’’. . . the more likely consequence

is not the flourishing of a diversity of voices, but a placing of all voices into the same

register, that of ‘‘the University of Excellence’’. (Holmwood 2010, p. 652)

The register of the ‘University of Excellence’ can accommodate somepublic engagement � if this public voice complements the priorities offunders and can be incorporated into the chosen marketing strategy ofthat institution. However, the unpredictable and occasionally riskywork that has marked the most activist-inclined research of recentyears, including work in race and ethnic studies broadly defined, isunlikely to fit such criteria easily. For example, the University ofNottingham, one of a group of UK universities that have expendedconsiderable resources in assuring their position as one of these‘universities of excellence’, has sought to police the reading lists ofparticular disciplinary areas such as international politics, in order toforestall any possible disruption to the institution’s internationalbrand (see Gallagher 2011). In the process, previously accepted valuessuch as academic freedom are, if not forgotten, conveniently ignored.For those studying the politics of race in a place where such debatesare intertwined with concerns about security, borders, disorder and theabuse of human rights, universities of excellence may not be receptiveor hospitable locations. In particular, there may be little space orappetite for imagining racial justice in any wider context. Researchwith ‘impact’ privileges immediate recommendations over the lessquantifiable ‘outputs’ of vision or dreams.

The limits of anti-racist technique in the imagining of just futures

Writing of histories and futures of black radical thought and politicsin the USA, Robin Kelly (2002, p. x) also asks where the exhilarationof radical potential has gone in contemporary anti-racist and blackpolitics:

What had happened to the dream of liberation that brought many of us to radical

movements in the first place? What had happened to socialism the way we imagined

it? What had happened to our New Eden, our dreams of building a new society? And

what had happened to hope and love in our politics?

In Britain also there has been a move away from radical imagination inthe politics of race, towards either highly institutionalized activity

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designed to measure and correct differential outcomes, or to ethnicparticularity that challenges racism faced by a particular group butrarely links this activity to other struggles or a vision of an alternativesociety. However necessary these forms of organization may be �because institutional outcomes continue to harden inequality betweengroups and mobilization needs to take place where people are, buildingon the affiliations that make sense to them � the loss of a larger visionand set of aspirations diminishes what anti-racist politics can be. Kelly(2002, p. xii) goes on to specify the loss that arises from too exclusive afocus on matters of institutional detail or immediate politicking:

Without new visions we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not

only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical, but we forget that making a revolution

is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics but a process that can and must

transform us.

This new revolutionary subject is unlikely to emerge from the mundanetechniques of management that have come to typify ‘useful’ research inthe field of racism.

In response to the formulation of recent research funding in the UK,research in the field of race and racism that connects with ‘users’ hastended towards the technical.5 Much of this is shaped by the demandthat research demonstrate its own ‘impact’, that is, shows its usefulnessto an audience beyond academia, often before any findings are madeand in order for time and money to be allocated.6 For the field of raceand ethnic studies, this demand brings a model of knowledge astechnique � often management technique. Whether racism is seen toarise from communicational barriers between groups or from flawedinstitutional practices, the solution is presented as alternative practices� do this and others will adapt their behaviour in these ways.

If this were the extent of the imaginative failure, things would not betoo bad. After all, universities rarely include the most exciting of ideasuntil the excitement can be rewritten as tradition. Sometimesbanishment from the academy can help to get a different and moreenergetic audience for ideas that aspire to change our world. However,the politics of race seems to be institutionalized in an even more tightlyconfined logic in the spaces outside the academy. There may be awidespread recognition that racism demands an institutional response,but this is ripped away from any larger political narrative altogether.

As a result, the attempts by scholars to address a public also tend tobe limited by the narrow demands of such technical or legalisticapproaches to what anti-racism can and should be.

There is a dilemma here. For scholars who wish to connect with so-called practitioners � and who, perhaps, consider this world ofequalities practice as their ‘public’ � research is likely to become

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focused around these questions of technical organization. Of course,many of us still seek to document and explore the complexity of racismand its impact in the world � but the focus for this endeavour becomessegmented by institutional focus and, often, a rush to make‘recommendations’. Access to research funding in Britain, increasinglythe only route to creating space for scholarly work, demands thatresearch delivers this ‘impact’ of immediate and usable advice. At thesame time, the ‘public’ of practitioners � a group here that isoverwhelmingly concentrated in organizations tasked with deliveringservices to diverse populations, whether through statutory services orthe third sector � appear to understand the role of the intellectual onlyas this kind of technical adviser.7 Useful research becomes only thisresearch that can enable alternative and potentially more effectiveoperation of bureaucratic practices of one kind or another.

This framing of anti-racist research transforms the kind of politicsthat can be imagined for this intellectual endeavour. This is anti-racismas a matter of organizational adaptation, not any wider socialtransformation. Perhaps some believe that transformation occursthrough the collective impact of these many small organizationalchanges � that has certainly been the unspoken implication of anti-racist work since the Lawrence Enquiry � but, whatever the benefits ofimproved institutional practices, if these in fact have been achieved,this approach abandons any sense of political movement. We may beproducing work that connects with a public, but the aspirations ofboth scholars and public seem less than they were.

Everything starts somewhere

What fool does not understand that state-funded institutions areunwilling to support and fund the work of revolutionary movements orto promote ideas that propose their own demise? I am not completelysilly and I understand that all of us make choices about the politicalwork that we do and the possibilities that may be opened through evenquite modest initiatives. Scholars make tactical decisions about thepolitical efficacy of either engaging in large-scale high-profile move-ments, such as the protests against the Iraq War, or the smaller-scalebut perhaps more tangible gains of working through the compromisesnecessary to support local organizations. Many attempt both � in theunderstanding that these activities represent different aspects ofprofessional responsibility. Alongside these ethical and tactical con-siderations, the types of engagement that can gain institutionalrecognition � and meet immediate instrumental needs of organizationson the ground � may allow some more-resilient connections to bemade. Those connections offer the small opportunities for opening thedebate and for expanding a shared understanding of what can count as

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tactics between different players � scholars, activists and scholar-activists alike.

There are two factors to consider here. In Britain, the absence of anational movement for racial justice forces activist tendencies amongscholars into the local. Whereas previously there have been nationalnetworks of local campaigns and an ability to mobilize nationallyaround particular issues � a history outlined here by Max Farrar �more recently, there has been an absence of a national arena in whichto voice concerns about racism. Networks from the 1990s, such as theNational Civil Rights Movement, the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns and United Families and Friends, continue toexist, but have less visibility in both mainstream and minority media.

At the same time, Britain seems not to have space in publicdiscourse for an intellectual discussion of race and belonging. Whereasother parts of Europe, as seen here from the description of Frenchdebates given in Steve Garner’s (2013) interview with Eric Fassin, orthe profile given to Thilo Sarrazin’s (2010) best-selling diatribe againstthe impact of multiculturalism in Germany, continue to conduct somekind of public debate about belonging and identity, albeit often interms that cannot imagine the dangerous others in question asinterlocutors, Britain eschews such theatrics in favour of ongoingmedia vilification of migrants and occasional government speeches,such as Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech denouncing multi-culturalism delivered on the same day as a major mobilization by thefar-right English Defence League (Helm et al. 2011). Although racecontinues to be a constant referent in British public life, there is littlespace for scholarly interventions in such discussion, not least as aresult of British scepticism towards scholarly interventions of all kinds.In response, British-based scholars restrict themselves to providingevidence that things are not as the racists say, or to reviewing historyto remind ourselves how we came to be here together. There seems tobe no space in public life for a more philosophical debate about theterms of race and belonging.

In the absence of an effective national stage for such debates, localwork with organizations becomes one of the most effective homes forengaged research, promising both tangible outcomes and an oppor-tunity to rebuild a public space where ideas from the academy mightengage others and in ways that matter to the pursuit of justice.Sometimes this is not work that registers with our employers. Longago, as a much younger and more energetic scholar and before anyinkling that we might be required to demonstrate the ‘impact’ of ourresearch, I put together a lottery funding application for WestMidlands Anti-Deportation Campaign (which was awarded in 1996).We had discussed the pros and cons of this approach in our meetings �and decided that, if I felt able to complete what then seemed a highly

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onerous application process, we should give this a try as a tactic thatcould extend our capacity to support an ever-increasing number ofcases and provide a point of contact for the extremely isolated anddisempowered new folk devil, asylum seekers. In retrospect, anddespite extreme vilification in the popular press, I think the fundingdestroyed the group, transforming us from a campaigning organiza-tion of volunteers to a service provider where employees gave advice,with the demands of maintaining a funded service leaving too littlespace for the open participation and responsiveness of a socialmovement. However, I also know that that grant signalled animportant shift for the National Lottery � the first to recognize theneeds of asylum seekers as falling within its charitable aims � and, forall the sensationalist coverage, an important moment in the ongoingbattle to acknowledge asylum seekers as human. I think that oftenscholars offer their services to further the immediate interests ofcommunity-based organizations because, although this work rarelyrepresents the heart of our own research interests and can be directedto very instrumental and short-term goals, it creates a space ofexchange where academic debates can join other ideas about whatpeople want and how these things might be achieved. I have notthought about these events for a long time � in part embarrassed byanother painful political mistake, but also because I had never thoughtbefore that this had anything much to do with my professional life.Now I think that even this misplaced endeavour contributed to a widernegotiation about need, human rights and our societal responsibilitiesto refugees and asylum seekers. Once the lottery grant was awarded,other organizations and other funders could open a debate about theirrole and reach, and, for a while, various locally based funded projectsemerged to support asylum seekers who were being made destitute bythe country in which they were seeking sanctuary.

Staging ethnicity in a professional voice but for tactical reasons

I think anything you write as a faculty of color if it’s about your community, is an

activist piece . . .everything you choose that is representative of your community is

deliberate. (respondent quoted in Urrieta and Mendez Benavidez 2007, p. 230)

In the negotiations that Michael Keith (2008) characterizes ascomplicity with the bureaucracy through which much politics oper-ates, the role of the scholar is, at best, changeable, ranging fromplaying the expert to trimming knowledge to fit the demands andattention span of the audience, to speaking in whatever dubioustongue will achieve the desired end. Keith argues that our responsi-bility is to evaluate the performative weight of various presentations of

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knowledge. Arguably, the value added by scholars is the ability tomove between different presentations of knowledge with some under-standing of which register will yield influence and with whom.Whether this judgement is an outcome of intellectual work or anindication of the slightly different skills that can develop when learningto deploy academic knowledge in public arenas, a set of skills thatmight be characterized as owing more to political than to scholarlyjudgement, is left undecided.

In the struggle to reach racial justice, these judgement calls can leadthe would-be engaged scholar into some murky waters. At the end of2009, I and a colleague assisted a local Asian women’s group with areport on experiences of maternity services and post-natal depression �for the tactical objective of influencing the local health trust to supporttargeted services for Asian women in that area. In the writing of thereport, both I and the group understood the need to stress particularrecognized ‘needs’, such as language and (despite some argument on mypart) the more nebulous ‘culture’. In our wider discussions it was clearthat what was being demanded was a service that responded to verylocal needs of women with extensive caring responsibilities and limitedmobility and who found existing services unresponsive and oftendisrespectful � language played a part for some of these women, butflexibility and attention to their particular circumstances was the moregeneral need. The decision to present these needs as requiring servicestailored to particular cultural and linguistic needs was shaped primarilyby a reading of what was likely to work � and what was likely to achievea service that was sufficiently local and that could employ local women.Whether or not the funders believed this articulation of need � orwhether they too understood this to be a necessary fiction to overcomethe barriers to accessing decent services for poorer parts of the city � thereport fulfilled the bureaucratic requirements of all concerned and thepilot project went ahead. Strategic essentialism shows its pragmaticusefulness again and a particular staging of ethnicity as lack becomesjustified as the means by which resources are allocated to people whoare, undoubtedly, needy. So far, so justified, no? Yes, the depiction ofethnic identity deployed in this micro-negotiation (just one more tinypiece of theatre in the business of a busy city and overstretched andpainfully bureaucratic public services) borders on the reductive and iscarefully edited to meet the requirements of the exercise, but, what elseis there to do? This is no more than another example of the day-to-dayplay on the fictions of stable identity and community boundarydemanded so often in the pursuit of social (if not, perhaps, racial)justice in urban Britain today.

In my wider discussions with this group, members complainedvociferously about their treatment at the hands of South Asian‘professionals’ � with their most strident criticisms directed at the

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middle-class Asian women that they encountered through health andmaternity services and who appeared unable to treat Asian womenfrom this neighbourhood (marked in local imagination as closed, low-income and home to a particular and close-knit Pakistani community)with the respect necessary in any professional relationship.

At least one articulate and vocal young woman (and it is worthnoting that I feel impelled to tell you this in case the earlier strategicrepresentation of Asian women from this neighbourhood as needingremedial assistance clouds the story) explained that, after terribleexperiences of maternity care, if she encounters a woman doctor shejust leaves because she prefers to see a man.

I asked the group about this issue repeatedly � until they thoughtthat I was obsessed with Asian women professionals (no doubtbecause I was positioned in this role myself, as possessor of thetactical expertise necessary to present their demands as a formal reportto funders). Why would you want to construct a service with thepotential to create another layer of disrespectful Asian health workerswho cannot behave professionally to those they perceive to be of alower status? The response seemed to be, although never quite madeexplicit, that cultural knowledge here could be used to ensureemployment for local women with direct experience of some of theissues identified. The desire was to disrupt the inadequacies ofprofessionalism in favour of some more equal footing between workerand ‘client’ � and ethnicity, culture and locality offered a means offraming this other desire in a manner that could be comprehensible tothe health trust.

Some years ago, I had another experience of being asked to assist awomen’s group to access funding. Then it was a request to help draft atender document that could elicit research about the needs of Muslimwomen, with particular attention to access to services. I tell this storyas an indication of how clueless I have been � because at that time Iwrote back saying that I would be pleased to help but I was not surethat Muslim women could be shown to have shared needs as Muslimwomen. Birmingham’s Muslim population is very ethnically diverse,ranging from communities with a long history of settlement in the cityand a visible presence in local politics (whatever the unhelpfulnepotism of some of this representation) to very recent arrivals whoface challenges accessing any public service. These communities aredispersed unevenly across the city � a factor that itself can shapevisibility in local political imagination. Despite the overall vulner-ability to poverty of the most readily identifiable Muslim communities,in common with most large cities Birmingham is also home to someMuslim groups who are well represented in professional occupations.What would it mean to formulate a proposal based on the assumptionthat women from these diverse groups had the same needs that could

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be serviced by one city-wide group? Of course, I did not hear fromthem again � because I had made it all too obvious that I did not get it.The objective was to form a Muslim women’s group at a time whensuch a development could, conceivably, access some start-up support.The language of needs was no more than the tactical fiction prescribedby (possibly imagined) funders. The shared need was not for enhancedaccess to services. In a time of frightening Islamophobia and in a citywith one of the most sizeable and noticeable Muslim populations ofany British city but where public life of all kinds is overwhelminglymale, riding the conjunction of popular fears and public-sectorbureaucracies of allocation could allow a temporary creation of apublic space and possible voice for Muslim women. The point was thepossibility of intervention, not how many people could be signpostedto relevant benefits. Even my slow self could understand this, but Icould not make the leap from this tactic to the fictional staging of needon the basis of an already older and probably unsustainable model ofcommunity representation. More fool me.

I am pretty certain that this same group did access fundingsuccessfully, under the auspices of the highly controversial Preventprogramme. Prevent was the title of the Labour government’sdomestic anti-terrorism and anti-extremism programme, focused,allegedly, on preventing the circumstances that might harbourextremism and possible violence (see HCCLGC 2010). In practice,funding was siphoned to a highly diverse range of projects that madelittle overall sense (see Kundnani 2009). Some of the initiativesfurther alienated Muslim communities � but some others wereinitiated by community organizations that recognized that purport-ing to address the extremism agenda was one of the few remainingavenues for state support for community services. The performanceof identity required for this funding regime refocused from ethnicityto religious identity (although many of the local groups that receivedfunding emerged from initiatives that had grown from particularethnic communities in particular areas) and from needs to civicparticipation. Whereas the needs model, institutionalized mostfamously in the legislative response to the Lawrence Enquiry, createda space where groups sought to demonstrate their disproportionatedisadvantage in accessing one or other public services as the lever toaccess attention, resources and recognition, Prevent representedMuslim communities as an ever-present danger that needed to bereshaped. Better to assist these people to become citizens because,otherwise, who knows what might happen? In both cases, fundingrests on somewhat demeaning performances of identity � look howabject and/or dangerous we are.

I understand the overarching pragmatism of local organizations.Their priority is to navigate whatever terrain local power and politics

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offers and to achieve some gains in the process, by whatever meansnecessary. It is unsurprising that they are disinterested in seeking todisrupt racist imaginaries, because this much more uncertain projectthreatens to distract from achieving some local gains on the ground.At worst, attempts to complicate local folk understandings of race andethnicity (and it is these folk understandings that shape institutionaldecision-making) can be deployed to sustain existing inequalities � ifAsian women are not the needy creatures of this depiction, then nolocal post-natal support is necessary; if Muslim women are a highlydiverse group with varying access to public life, then why offer anyassistance to create a public space for them?

At my most cynical, this can seem like an update of the infamous‘race industry’ that Gilroy (1987) critiqued so forcefully in the 1980s.When seeking to cooperate with any emerging public towards the goalof racial justice, it can seem that the anxious scholar has no option butto feed the tendency to solidify and simplify ethnic identity for short-term ends because this staging of identity remains a central aspect ofnegotiating with public institutions in this time and place.

I do not want to argue that these tactical performances are notnecessary, or that scholars should devote their energies to complicatingunderstandings of the constitution of identities. As David Goldberg(2008) has argued convincingly, the critique and attempted disman-tling of the category of ‘race’ has been incorporated effectively bythose who wish to silence all talk of racism. However, the imperative tobe comprehensible to existing regimes of power, however localized andtemporary their influence, seems to lead to a privileging of tactics overknowledge. We might not believe the portrayal of the world that wepresent to decision-makers for tactical reasons, but outcomes trumpunderstanding, not least because the confusions of understanding canlead to the maintenance of things as they are.

In this situation, one of the demands on the would-be scholar-activist is to not say too much or be too eager to demonstrate therange and extent of their knowledge: just enough from the world ofscholarship � and not a word more.

(almost) Private sociologies � contemplation, imagination and whatcannot be learned in public

Crudely put we need both the forms of technocratic knowledge that might make the

workings of the bureau transparent both to itself and to its public . . .and the forms of

ethical knowledge that might challenge the status quo itself. (Keith 2008, p. 327)

Michael Keith suggests that a public scholarship needs to movebetween these registers of technocratic knowledge (which of course,

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will have varying demands according to location and objective) andethical knowledge. I wonder if, as well as this attention to what is beingdone and what can be done and the other question of what should bedone, there is another division between the scholarship that seeks toknow the world as it is (and which may combine or move between thetechnical and the ethical in this endeavour) and another aspect ofintellectual life that seeks to imagine an elsewhere. The ethical mayimply this elsewhere to some extent � but the terms of ethical critiquemay also be constrained by what is, because this imperfect presentforms the basis of describing what is lacking and what could be. Theimaginative elsewhere that I am thinking of can be envisioned onlywhen there is a momentary move away from focusing on theconstraints of the here and now.

In most of the spaces that I know (British-based, refracted throughthe demands of a very local politics, appealing to the ‘community’ as ameans of legitimation), there is a demand that knowledge for politicalpurposes is suitable for quick summary, contains only limited ambiguityor uncertainty, is targeted and comprehensible to the desired audience,and can be demonstrated as ‘true’ in a manner that is convincing tosceptical audiences of limited specialist education. The criticisms of thedemand that research should demonstrate its ‘impact’ echo a number ofthese points � not least in arguing that the demand for accessibility maymilitate against originality or complexity. To have an impact, researchmust banish some of the uncertainty that necessarily accompaniesalmost any scholarly endeavour.

In an echo of some strands of anti-capitalism, the refusal ofmarketization, even using the language of former elites, may contributeto a reclaiming of learning as an activity undertaken between thosestruggling to become human. This continues the desire to escape theinstrumentalization of all human relationships that accompanies theintensive marketization of our lives. It is not hard to see that the publicengagement of scholars or even the hybrid creature, the scholar-activist, can be easily accommodated within the institutional impera-tives of the marketized university.

For all the tactical benefits of performing scholarly expertise inpublic arenas, such performances cannot fulfil the range of ourresponsibilities to learning or to politics. Arguably, the ability tochoose different registers of scholarly performance in pursuit ofparticular tactical ends is itself a skill that arises from practices thatcannot be encompassed in the terms of public engagement. Thebalance between professional expertise and populism, the ability toplace the tactics of that moment in a historical context, an anticipationof the consequences of some performances and a consideration of howthe most local of concerns is connected, often unknowingly, to a widerworld where the tactics of immediate need may take on another

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significance � all of this requires times of contemplation away from thenoise of immediate instrumental demands.

One of the many discomforts arising from the marketization ofuniversities is the will to transform all knowledge into easily digestiblelumps of product. There is less and less room to suggest that knowing isdifficult, sometimes arduous and that understanding requires intensiveapplication from the audience, not only from the scholar. Not alllearning is amenable to a quick summary that can be repackaged for avariety of marketing purposes � and, more importantly, without someinstitutional tolerance for the messy, time-consuming and uncertainpractices of scholarship, the marketable commodity of expertise,including in sound-bite form, can never emerge.

Perhaps inevitably, the pressure to produce knowledge in a mannerthat can meet such demands shapes scholarly life, including themanner in which scholars seek to connect with publics. For thisreason, I want to end with a defence of the most lonely and privatepractices of scholarship.

In another period of extreme violence and economic crisis, somesought to imagine otherwise through the active refusal of orderly formand a wilful remaking of the terms of meaning. The experiment withform and fracturing of meaning that we name as modernism combineda commentary on and a critique of a mass-produced world, reusing theeveryday languages of commodification in order to render themstrange. Whereas some of the leading exponents of high modernismwere unabashed about their adherence to elitism, they also understoodthe corrosive impact of the market when it becomes the measure of allhuman worth and capacity. The dance of twentieth-century culturaldebate, from modernism to postmodernism and late modernity,returns repeatedly to these questions, to the pacifying impact ofunderstanding our lives through explanatory narratives modelled onmarketing slogans and, equally, the uncertainty and elusiveness ofmeaning in such an intensely commodified world (for a discussion ofthese debates, see Huyssen 1986). Whatever else, who could read,watch, see or listen to any art from the last 100 years and believe thatwhat human beings can know about themselves and each other isamenable to being summarized and reproduced in short accessiblebursts that can be transferred across marketing forms? Sometimesunderstanding important things can be laborious, and the labour is animportant component of developing understanding.

Perhaps scholarship cannot adopt such poetic approaches easily �and the jolt in consciousness of those modernist experiments can neverbe repeated for us. If what is required is an experiment in form, then itmust take a shape for our time. However, sometimes at least, perhapswe should choose ellipsis over transparency, suggestive fragments overtoo tidy narratives, a writing that reveals the painstaking processes of

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learning and that demands a similar level of scholarly attention fromthe reader.

Scholarly writing is, and often should be, a private affair. There maybe occasional moments of clarity when there is an urgent andaccessible message to publicize. Sometimes a lifetime of work yieldsa way of understanding that can be reworked for popular commentary.But the business of reading, analysis and writing to learn, which iswhat I take most scholarship to be, is a far more lonely, time-consuming and haphazard process.

Sometimes perhaps the point about public scholarship is not somuch the ability to produce scholarly work as the commitment tobeing part of the public. There have been times, even in my politicallifetime, when it seemed fairly clear that there was a movement, or anetwork, or, at the very least, a collection of people who together wereengaged in activities that we hoped would change society. If and whenacademic work was produced by some members of this group, it wastolerated or viewed with passing interest. If things were written bythose not recognized as part of the larger activity, this work wasviewed with bemusement or disinterest. To be honest, almost no onewho has met me in any political campaign will be familiar with what Iwrite � and most have no idea what I do for a living. Writing offers aspace of contemplation for me. This is where I can think about thedilemmas of political life without the pressure of having to dosomething. Although I also conduct research for funders who demandimmediate recommendations, most of my writing is not programmatic.A lot of it is barely academic � but I know that it has a relation to mypolitical life, although this may be meaningful to no one but me.

So there you have it.Try to be a half-decent comrade. Do not rush to commentary before

you are able to do everyday work � the kind of political work that anolder comrade described by saying that another person was no longerwith us because he had said that he did not want to do this donkeywork any more, when in fact donkey work is all there is. Use yourenergies to become part of the public; forget trying to address somepublic that you scarcely know. Enjoy the luxury of writing when youcan, but do not write with that painfully self-conscious sense of‘analysing the movement’. Focus on becoming your own public �because in such an unjust world, most people cannot afford theluxury of sociology and, unless we can cut the working day andprovide childcare, our badgering will not change that.

Do not restrict our thinking and ambition to tinkering with what is.Dare to dream the future when we can. At the same time, try to explainwhy knowledge is painful but necessary. Make space to practise livingwith knowledge while imagining something else. Most of all, admit that

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we can know what is and what has been, but not what could be, becauseit is in the ‘could be’ that all of our salvations lie.

Notes

1. See http://www.asanet.org/press/20030801_3.cfm

2. Between 2001 and 2011, I cannot identify any article in Ethnic and Racial Studies that

takes the War on Terror as its central theme � one spoke of ‘an era of global terror’ (Stone

and Pizova 2007); one mentioned, briefly, the impact of antiterrorism legislation (Cole 2009);

another discussed the ‘British jihad’ (Bhatt 2010); and there was a notable shift towards

analysis of Muslim communities. However, the overarching frame of a ‘war’ that spans

international military engagement and domestic reworking of security legislation does not

seem to have been a central organizing theme for contributors to this leading journal.

3. For an indication of this activity, see http://publicuniversity.org.uk

4. See http://reallyopenuniversity.wordpress.com/what-is-the-rou/

5. Others have critiqued the impact of such technical approaches to race equality, for

example Ahmed (2007) and Creegan et al. (2003).

6. The REF system to evaluate research outcomes across universities has introduced the

controversial criterion of ‘impact’ � who cares about your research and what can it do for

them? UK scholars have campaigned against this criterion as an erosion of academic

freedom and a further degradation of the university. For details of the system, see http://

www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/impact/

7. Equality legislation in England and Wales tasked public bodies with a duty to promote

equality � and much research is focused on how such duties may be achieved. Private-sector

organizations have no positive duty to promote equality and, therefore, research that focuses

on private-sector activity tends to consider the business benefits of diversity and the barriers

to progression for particular groups.

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GARGI BHATTACHARYYA is Professor of Sociology at the Uni-versity of East LondonADDRESS: University of East London, Romford Road, London E154LZ, UKEmail: ucugargi@gmail.com

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