Programme full

Friday 17 April 2015 15:15 - 16:45
PAPER SESSION 8
(CSOs) often cite data and evidence from many sources and comprising different types. But for what purposes and to
what ends? Navigating these terms' meaningfulness and perceived relevance to CSOs requires an appreciation of the
opportunities as well as challenges that they present for the sector. Research from science and technology studies
among other sources has usefully shown how policy-making bodies use evidence not only to inform decision-making
but also signal certain organisational values or characteristics. However, part of what is missing from existing
knowledge about the role of evidence and data in influencing social change is a fuller picture of the language and
perceptions that specifically pertain to CSOs' understandings. This paper presents findings from an ongoing project to
examine: (1) the discourses surrounding 'evidence' and 'data' as exemplified by civil society organisations working on
migration or social welfare issues, and (2) how these discourses relate to perceptions about what social research can
and should accomplish in CSO contexts. It draws upon corpus linguistic analysis of a textual dataset comprising eight
UK CSOs' public materials from 2007-2014 which contains 2,704 items totalling nearly 10 million words, as well as
eleven qualitative semi-structured interviews with key staffmembers of those CSOs.
The Missing ‘Wave’ of Mixed Race Research
Campion, K.
(University of Manchester)
Over the past two decades there has been a proliferation of research on mixed ethnic identities (Caballero,
Puthussery, & Edwards, 2008; Mahtani, 2002; Song & Aspinall, 2012; Twine, 2004). It is suggested that this research
is part of a 'new wave' of research which often seeks to normalise and celebrate mixedness (Caballero 2005). This
'new wave' has marked the move away from the 'first wave' of historical interwar research on mixed race in Britain,
which pathologised mixed race people and communities (Caballero 2005). These historical studies in the mid 20th
century were concentrated in British port towns such as Liverpool and Cardiff (Christian, 2000; Edwards & Caballero,
2011). The suggested threat of the 'half-caste' and arguments for mixed race leading to degeneracy found currency in
the eugenics movement. There is far less exploration of the period in between these two waves of research. This
paper seeks to discuss the period of post- Second World War Britain. It will particularly focus on the 1970s and 1980s
when the identification of Black was utilised as a form of political resistance for ethnic minorities and consider the
implications of this for mixed race identity. It will discuss why mixed race fell off the agenda in the construction of these
Black identities and at other times became salient in the policy of adoption and foster care. The paper will highlight
why engagement with this period will allow for a more concrete historical narrative and theorisation of mixed race.
An Object in Transition? Understanding the Datafication of Race
Skinner, D.
(Anglia Ruskin University)
A growing range of theorists have highlighted how the digital realm is now a crucial arena for the construction and
debate of human differences. However, the full implications of this for race knowledge and expertise and the ways in
which this knowledge and expertise emerges through communication networks, codes, databases, and other
associated socio-technologies remain to be fully explored.
This paper considers how racialization takes place through systems of data collection, storage, and management. It
develops three case studies: debates in biomedicine about interventions targeted at particular ethnic groups; the use
race categories in police databases and associated controversies about the future of 'ethnic monitoring'; and lastly the
management of borders and migration. By looking across domains often discussed in isolation from each other, the
paper highlights the emergence of new ways of knowing and working with 'race'.
These cases show how, in the contemporary setting, 'race' objects are bio-social-data hybrids that depend on their
mutability and overt contingency to operate across institutional boundaries and locations. We also see the emergence
of modes of knowledge (e.g. profiling, prediction and monitoring) that are discriminatory but, because they are coded
in other terms and/or they are embedded in automatic algorithms and everyday techniques, are not easily accessible
to conventional forms of anti-racist critique.
301 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University