Stuart Hall, a peerless mediator

The authors discuss Stuart Hall's lifelong critical engagement with Marxism - though his was a complex, subtle, agonistic, Marxism, where nothing is taken for granted. This engagement continued even as postcoloniality, ethnicity, race and identity steadily came to the centre of Hall's attention, constituting ways of thinking that in some ways represented a departure. Hall can be seen as a mediator, both within Marxism - for example structuralism versus culturalism - and between Marxism and other discourses, finding areas in common as well as difference, respecting aspects of a position without endorsing whole positions; and in so doing transforming the problem under consideration. He is also discussed as an organic intellectual, who - though with no assumption of a shared class or shared party - sought to create a collective self-consciousness, a coalition, that could offer an effective challenge to the state. The concept of conjuncture is an important part of these ideas. These aspects of Hall's work are discussed further in relation to racialisation and racism, where Hall is seen as committed to both analytic and practical observation, and to humanism as well as Marxism: the people at the centre of the analysis are agents not categories. Hall was not aiming to bring things to a rounded, validity-seeking coherence, but to always leave some strands open: his thinking is constitutively open. At the same time his underlying, very simple, message is that, in some way or another, the many issues we face are all connected, and we should never give up the integrative pluralism of political thinking. The great danger is fragmented pluralism, where the politics of difference, wherever the differences are, leads to political de-alignment rather than coalitional unity.

Beyond equality of opportunity: from 'common sense' to 'good sense'

This article addresses the Labour Party's apparent inability to capitalise on the ready availability of good, progressive ideas. It suggests the key is to be found in the idea that the Labour Party no longer represents working-class people, a disjunction that can be best understood using Gramsci's distinction between 'common sense' and 'good sense'. Good sense is a more coherent development of everyday, commonsense thinking, based on its 'healthy nucleus'. However, it must never lose contact with common sense and become abstract and disconnected from life. Using this distinction, a critique of the common-sense notion of meritocracy follows, since the educational disconnect between Labour politicians and their working-class supporters is one of its malign results. This critique builds from the evidence of working-class rejection of meritocracy - the healthy nucleus that recognises the inadequacy of its justifying principle of equality of opportunity. To this is counterposed a good-sense notion of equality - one that embraces equal access to the means for achieving a flourishing life. This notion of equality is then used to explore a number of currently circulating political ideas concerned with equality, both their relationship to common sense and their potential to meet good sense criteria. These ideas include universal basic income, the Conservatives' proposed 'levelling up' agenda, and the demands of Black Lives Matter for racial justice, including the demand to 'defund the police'. A second thread is focused on the relationship between these discourses of common or good sense and the social forces with which they can be connected.

The historical significance of the 2019 Hong Kong revolt

This essay discusses why the Hong Kong 2019 revolt means so much for future democratic movements despite its tragic defeat and its weaknesses. This was a massive democratic movement, with entirely legitimate demands: the dropping of an extradition bill which could legalise Beijing's attempts to prosecute Hong Kong citizens under the Mainland legal system; and the honouring of its commitment of granting universal suffrage to the Hong Kong people. This massive movement naturally brought with it multiple tendencies and contradictions. Taking advantage of the absence of a left labour movement, and a young generation who were newcomers to politics, right-wing and anti-Chinese voices became more vocal than their organisational strength might have indicated - though not strong enough to alter the fundamental character of this revolt as a democratic movement. In the last analysis, however, the balance of forces means that Hong Kong has little chance of preserving its liberty unless the Mainland situation begins to change. Success will ultimately depend on a united front between democratic forces in the Mainland and Hong Kong, an issue which the 2019 r evolt has not thought sufficiently about. However, the 2019 revolt, which helped to consolidate democratic consciousness among millions in Hong Kong, itself constitutes a new starting point for the future of democratic struggle, both in the Mainland and in Hong Kong.

The crisis of social reproduction and 'Made-in-China' feminism

Crises of care and social reproduction have led to new debates and social movements around the world, but there has been little scholarly scrutiny in the global North on these issues as they are unfolding in China. Facing rapid population ageing and historically low birth rates, the Chinese government believes the country is suffering from a demographic crisis. Yet, the so-called population question is fundamentally a political one: who is bearing the brunt of biologically and socially reproducing the Chinese labour force who have fuelled the Chinese economy in the last four decades? As this essay unpacks, the country's long-existing urban-rural divide and the unchecked patriarchal-capitalist mode of accumulation have produced uneven consequences among different social groups, intersectionally defined by class, gender and urban/rural citizenship, and thus have exacerbated existing inequalities. Rural migrants and the urban poor, mostly women, have become domestic servants for urban middle-class families, at the cost of their own well-being and of their families and communities. Across social classes, Chinese women are making their voices heard and taking actions to protest against systemic appropriation and exploitation of their care and reproductive labour, in what is a hostile political environment. Ranging from organised protests to individuals' spontaneous complaints, 'made-in-China' feminism can shed new light on future feminist movements and solidarity building with feminists in the international community.

Transcendence

An interview with musician Shabaka Hutchings, leader of the bands Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming and Shabaka and the Ancestors. The conversation starts with a discussion of multiplicity and unity, and the imperial habit of reducing multiplicity down to a single dominant unity, whether through imposing one religion, one view of empire, or one recognised form of art music. It looks at the different ways of viewing culture in the West and in African countries. And it discusses the relationship between jazz and classical music; improvisation; musical dialogue; South African music; transcendence through music; and musical healing.

Painting historiography: Meleko Mokgosi's Democratic Intuition

This interview focuses particularly on Democratic Intuition (2013-20), Meleko Mokgosi's epic, eight-chapter painting cycle, the title of which references Gayatri Spivak's lecture on the necessary relationship between education and democracy. Education, reflection on theory and practice and engagement with young practitioners are all important parts of Mokgosi's work. The interview discusses the way the chapter format of Democratic Intuition is influenced by film processes, and the research and critical analysis on which his work is based; this includes historiography; the western genre of history painting; narrative tropes and the work of Hayden White; and painting techniques that more accurately construct Black skin tones. It also discusses discourses of race and assumptions about whiteness in the western canon; and whether there is a possibility for the Black subject to inhabit allegorical representational space without being overdetermined by histories of Blackness and race discourse. Stuart Hall's work has been important to Mokgosi because of its analysis of the complexities of the discourses within which cultural production and consumption is located. This has been helpful for reflecting on the location of the western art tradition within discourses of the Enlightenment and western humanism, which provide specific rules of circulation and consumption, and structures of authority. Such discourses assume that the viewer has the necessary tools or literacies to read in order to arrive at the meanings proposed in cultural objects. Mokgosi is engaged in continuous reflection on the extent to which, in spite of this, he, as a particular subject from Botswana, has managed to locate meaning within the narrow practice of painting.

Sociological podcasting: radical hope, care and solidarity in a time of crisis

Sociological podcasting is a radical way of communicating scholarship and assisting in the kinds of knowledge production needed in a heightened period of political calamity. It is part of a vast body of scholarship, work and art produced to contest the grand narratives which have come to dominate our understandings of society. It has the potential to make more legible the interconnections that underpin our most pressing issues as a society. This article discusses its role as public sociology, looking at the work of Michael Burawoy as well as some of his critics such as John Holmwood, Avi Goldberg and Axel van den Berg. It also discusses its creativity in taking listeners beyond the (academic) written word, and its potential for resisting and countering 'presentism' (accounts of events that are unhistorical and contextfree). Sociological podcasting has the capacity to generate hope and care, and here the work of Patricia Hill Collins is seen as exemplary, as is the work of Bev Skeggs and the Solidarity and Care collective. The dialogical characteristics of sociological podcasting are strengthened by the possibility it offers of drawing on real life examples of events, people and collectives. The authors - the people who produce the Surviving Society podcast - are resistant to positioning such projects as anything other than a collective endeavour, but are also mindful that, as Black creatives, podcasters and academics, their method and praxis can be overexposed to processes of co-option, plagiarism and erasure.

'When you score you're English, when you miss you're Black': Euro 2020 and the racial politics of a penalty shoot-out

Through an analysis of the fortunes of the England national football team in the Euro 2020 tournament, this article offers a critical assessment of the politics of race, nation and belonging in sport. While racist reactions to three Black players who missed penalties in the final revealed the contingent belonging of Black footballers within racially exclusive definitions of Englishness, the article argues that it also provided an opportunity for an alternative politics of national belonging to be expressed. This takes at least two significant forms: firstly, the political confidence with which Black players and their white allies are speaking out publicly against racism; secondly, the support and solidarity shown to Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho resulting in an English solidarity that is expressed through an avowed rejection of racism. The article concludes that a shared solidarity in sport maybe found, not in the arrogance of national pride or success, but rather, in how players, managers and fans conduct themselves in moments of failure.

Caught between two superpowers: Taiwan's left in an age of US-China tensions

Taiwan's major social movements in the past decade were reacting against the possibility of Taiwan's democratic freedoms being lost to China or its domestic proxies. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), currently led by Tsai Ing-wen, have challenged the Kuomintang for power, but have not been able to move beyond the binary of for or against independence. The Sunflower movement and 'Third Force' parties sought to create a space for left and democratic politics, but this appears to be closing down. The Trumpian figure of Han Kuo-yu has been a major problem for the left. There is no easy way out of these dilemmas in an era characterised by increasing US-China tensions.