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Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. Publisher’s statement: Please refer to the repository item page, publisher’s statement section, for further information. For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: [email protected]. warwick.ac.uk/lib-publications After Michael Banton: Some Reflections on his Contributions to the Study of Race John Solomos Abstract In this paper the focus is on the contributions of Michael Banton to the study of race and ethnic relations. Over a period that begun in the 1950s and continued until his death in 2018 Banton continued to make important contributions to a number of scholarly areas, including the study of race relations in urban communities, the history of racial thought, policing and community relations and the understanding of race equality policies. His work in all of these areas has helped to shape a field of scholarship and research and is likely to remain a point of reference for future generations of researchers. In reflecting on Banton’s varied contributions the paper argues that there is much to be gained from engaging with his work. It concludes by exploring some of the critiques of his key contributions. Keywords: Michael Banton; race and equality; race relations; racial thought; racism; antisemitism Beginnings The death of Michael Banton in 2018 at the age of 91 brought to an end a formidable academic career that has its origins back in the 1950s. His death was marked by a wide range of tributes - 1 - that testified to his standing within sociology and anthropology and his contributions to specific fields of study. In the period since his death there has also been recognition that his body of scholarship since the 1950s needs to be critically assessed in order to bring out both the range of his contributions as well as to differentiate it from other key thinkers in his fields of interest. Given the longevity of his academic career it is not surprising that there have already been a number of efforts to reassess his contributions to sociology and the study of race relations in particular 1-3. It is with this core concern in mind that this paper will attempt to review Banton’s key contributions to the study of race and ethnic relations and the implications of his scholarship for both current and future research agendas. Before embarking on this account of Michael Banton’s contributions to the study of race and ethnicity it is also important to comment on his personal attributes as a fellow sociologist and scholar. I first really got to know Michael well towards the end of his formal academic career, after he had become an emeritus professor at the University of Bristol. My main contact with Michael from the 1990s onwards came about through his involvement with the journal I helped to edit and on which he served as a member of our International Editorial Board, namely Ethnic and Racial Studies. Given his long and varied career Banton developed relationships with all the key journals in the field of race and ethnic studies, including Patterns of Prejudice, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and numerous others. Yet what was noticeable about Michael was both the diligence of his work for the journal as a reviewer as well as the seriousness with which he seemed to read the various papers we published. He often had strong views on both the quality and the substance of the papers published by the journal, but he remained fully engaged with the work of the journal and was always keen to attend our annual editorial board meetings as well as to provide advice on a wide range of articles submitted to us. It is also important to note that Michael remained actively engaged with the work of professional bodies such as the British Sociological Association well into his eighties. He had - 2 - a strong interest in engaging with the work of new generations of scholars, even when he disagreed with their work. He was not enamoured by what he saw as the turn to cultural studies in sociology or the turn to post-structuralist modes of analysis, but he retained an interest in talking to those who expounded such ideas. Indeed, for those of us who came to know him somewhat later in life it was amazing to see Banton engaged in submitting his work for academic review and rejection well into his later eighties. His commitment to championing the role of sociology within the social sciences and in society more generally remained undimmed to the end. As we shall argue in the rest of this paper Banton can be seen as one of the key foundational figures for scholarship on race and ethnicity in British sociology and anthropology. But in addition, he made substantial contributions to the study of the origins of the idea of race, the role of the police in society and the role of international measures to promote racial equality and justice. Like many scholars of his generation he did not focus on one narrow field of research to the exclusion of other interests, and his contributions therefore are spread across a range of both conceptual and empirical research arenas. In this paper we shall begin by focusing particularly on his early contributions to the study of race relations, which involved research on race relations in urban contexts in the UK and West Africa during the 1950s. From there we move on to explore his efforts to develop a conceptual framework for the study of race and ethnic relations. This is perhaps the central focus of his scholarly research from the 1960s onwards, and something he returned to regularly throughout his work. We shall also highlight the contributions he made towards unravelling the historical development of the idea of race and modes of racial thinking. The paper will then conclude by exploring Banton’s key contributions from the perspective of how we can utilise them both to understand the history of racial thinking as well as to make sense of key issues we face in the present conjuncture in relation to questions about race and racism in the twenty-first century. - 3 - Early research The social scientific study of race and ethnic relations in British society can be traced back to the period of the 1940s and 1950s. At the time scholarship on issues such as race, ethnicity and racism was very much in its embryonic stages within the context of British society, and there was relatively little theoretical work on which to draw in framing research agendas. It was during this period that early pioneering studies were produced that explored the changing role of colonial migration and of the migrant communities that were becoming a feature of the wider society. Such studies were produced by scholars who at this stage situated their work within the traditions of social anthropology rather than sociology, including Kenneth Little and Anthony Richmond 4-6. Many of these studies were focused on explorations of race relations within the setting of local communities and were framed by a concern to analyse the relations between minority and majority communities in specific locales and were largely empirical in orientation. They were shaped in many ways by the preoccupations of the time, particularly with issues about the constructions of what was talked about at the time as the ‘colour problem’ and more generally by the presence in the major urban conurbations of growing numbers of migrants from the West Indies, South Asia and other parts of the Empire 6. In this sense it is not really possible to comprehend Banton’s work from this period in isolation from the wider set of social transformations that were occurring in British society and beyond. It was in this wider context that Banton’s research career begun to emerge. His first major contribution was a study that he started in 1950 of the ‘coloured quarter’ in London’s East End 7. Framed around the concern to explore the everyday living conditions of colonial migrants in this part of London it was part of a wider literature that emerged during the 1950s and 1960s that was focused on studies of newly arrived migrant communities and the urban localities in which they settled 6, 8-10. Reading Banton’s work from this period it is perhaps clear to see that it was both shaped by the concerns of its time and was largely empirical in focus, which is - 4 - somewhat against his oft-repeated view that what distinguishes sociology from other social sciences is the importance it places upon theory and concept formation 11.