Gurminder K Bhambra

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BA (Sussex), MA (LSE), DPhil (Sussex)
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Professor of Sociology
Director of the Social Theory Centre
DTC Coordinator for Sociology

R2.35, Ramphal Building
g.k.bhambra@warwick.ac.uk
www.warwick.ac.uk/go/gkbhambra
Twitter: @gkbhambra

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Research Interests

  • My research addresses how, within sociological understandings of modernity, the experiences and claims of non-European ‘others’ have been rendered invisible to the dominant narratives and analytical frameworks of sociology. In challenging the dominant, Eurocentred accounts of the emergence and development of modernity, I have put forward an argument for the recognition of ‘connected histories’ in the reconstruction of historical sociology at a global level. While my research interests are primarily in the area of postcolonial historical sociology, I am also interested in the intersection of the social sciences more generally with recent work in postcolonial studies. For further details, see:
  • These arguments have been further developed in the context of understandings of ‘global sociology’. This involves engagement not just with the changing conceptual architecture of globalisation, but also with recognition of the epistemological value and agency of the world beyond the west. I suggest that it is only by acknowledging the significance of the 'colonial global' in the constitution of sociology historically, that it is possible to understand and address the postcolonial (and decolonial) present of a ‘global sociology’. For further details, see:
    • 2013 ‘The Possibilities of, and for, Global Sociology’ Political Power and Social Theory (in press, due out in early 2013)
    • 2012 Reframing Colonialism and Modernity: An Endeavour through Sociology and Literature Journal of Contemporary Thought summer pp78-81
    • 2011 ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Postcolonial Condition' in Maria Rovisco and Magdalena Nowicka (eds) The Ashgate Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Aldershot: Ashgate.
  • A related strand of my research engages with the African American tradition in US sociology. The rarity with which scholars such as WEB Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, Oliver Cromwell Cox, or other ‘African American Pioneers of Sociology’ (as Saint-Arnaud calls them) are presented as core sociological voices within university curricula is a matter of great significance from the point of view of histories of our discipline. However, it is not simply an issue of the presence of African American sociologists, but how mainstream sociological concepts have been structured in the absence of an address of African American sociology and its different interpretation of canonical themes. For further details, see:
  • More recently, I have begun to address contemporary understandings of citizenship, arguing that citizenship is not only to be understood in terms of abstract categories and the contemporary struggles to achieve it, but also in terms of the historical narratives that frame its conceptualisation. Following Said, I suggest that the failure to address the historical complexity that is the condition for the emergence of conceptual categories leads to a problematic contemporary politics; including, in this case, a problematic politics of citizenship. I focus on the histories of indigeneity and settler colonialism as well as enslavement and forced labour as constituting the wider context for the emergence of ideas and practices of modern citizenship. Publications from this theme are currently in process.

Other Recent Publications


(For full details of my publications, click here).

Research Activities


Doctoral Supervision

Gurminder welcomes applications for doctoral supervision in her areas of expertise.

Current students supervised:

  • Carl Mallett ‘Cross-Racial Solidarities: a Sociological Examination and Analysis’
  • Roxanne Burke 'Race in Modernity: The Dialectic of Possession and Dispossession'
  • Katy Harsant 'Responsibility and Human Rights'

Past students supervised:

  • Rodrigo Cordero Vega 'Diremptions of the social: The ideas of crisis and critique in contemporary social theory'
    Passed October 2011
  • Lucy Mayblin 'Historical Institutional Orders and the Development of British Asylum Policy'
    Passed May 2013

 

Current Teaching


 


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Summer Schools

28 May - 2 Jun; 18-22 Sept. Research Director, with Dr Nico Slate (CMU), of a DPDF workshop on Postcolonial Identities and Decolonial Struggles, University of Warwick & SSRC, Cambridge, MA

15-19 Jul Co-organiser, with Drs Alex Smith & Claire Blencowe, of an IAS summer school on Contesting Claims for Expertise in a Post-Secular Age: In Search of Intellectual Life, University of Warwick

International Talks

mid-Aug. 'Emancipation and the Sociological Tradition: The African American Contribution' American Sociological Association annual conference, New York

Forthcoming Visits

Sept. 2013. Visiting Professor Department of Sociology, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Brasilia, Brazil


Podcasts

Citizens and Others: Beyond Orientalism
Talk at the Symposium on 'Deorientalising Citizenship?' - listen here.

Whose Island Story?
Roundtable discussion on competing narratives of what constitutes British history - listen here.

Black Emancipation
I contributed to Radio 4's programme, Thinking Allowed, on 'Black Emancipation' - listen here.

Postcolonialism: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue
Together with Prof Shirin Rai (Politics & International Studies) and Prof Neil Lazarus (English & Comparative Literatures), I took part in a roundtable discussion on 'Postcolonialism'. The podcast of this discussion is available here.

'Theory for a Global Age' Series

This is a new series published by Bloomsbury Academic and for which I am Series Editor together with Professor Robin Cohen. For further details about the series, please see here.
For a proposal form, please click here


 

Department of Sociology
University of Warwick
Coventry, CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)24 765 28178

Fax: +44 (0)24 765 23497