Critical Social Theory & the Production of Racialized Subjects

Presentations:

Sadiya Akram (Social Policy, University of Birmingham): “On race and the unconscious: Insights from Bourdieu“

Sarah Bufkin (POLSIS, University of Birmingham): “Frantz Fanon, sociogenesis, and the diagnosis of racial pathologies“

Sadiya Akram is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. A specialist in the politics of race, Sadiya’s research explores the varied ways in which racially marginalised groups mobilise. To date her research has explored race-rioting, the politics of the incarcerated, and Muslim women’s experience of racism. Central to Sadiya’s research is a conceptual critique of the core concepts relating to debates on racism, and she has published on unconscious bias, institutional racism in The Metropolitan Police, and decolonisation. She has also written about the implications of a long-standing neglect of racism in both the discipline and practice of British politics.

Sarah Bufkin is an assistant professor of political theory at the University of Birmingham. She works on political theories of racism and racialization, drawing on radical Black political thought, Critical Theory, and Cultural Studies. Sarah has previously written about racial ideology, practices of inequality in racialized markets, death penalty sentencing in North Carolina, the politics of hunger striking, and the diagnosis of social pathologies. Currently, she is working on a book about Frantz Fanon’s sociogenic critique of racial hierarchies.