Murji, Karim ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7490-7906 (2026) Racial conjunctures: politics, populism, and authoritarianism, then and now. Sociology & Social Policy, 3 (2). pp. 64-77.

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Abstract

Across the world populism has created an era of intensified antagonisms and the rise of political authoritarianism. In this dangerous and divisive time, openly racist, nativist, and exclusionary politics are evident and prominent in ways they have not been for some decades. What does doing sociology - and what does sociology do - in such troubled and troubling times? This is not a question with any plain or singular answers, but it does invite us to think again about the public roles of sociology and sociologists. As sociologists we do not study race and racism merely as ideas and forces in the world, but because we have some commitment to undermining or reducing racism and racial inequalities and dismantling the structures that sustain racial divisions. My approach is centred on Britain, and it looks back to another time of crisis, and the approach of one key theorist, Stuart Hall to see what we can draw from the past. Hall’s use of conjunctural analysis to diagnose the coming of what in the late 1970s he called ‘iron times’ constitutes an intervention as (political) sociology. Hall and others pointed to the emergence of authoritarian populism, in which race was a central or constitutive motif. I draw from and extend this to explore two main questions: What did it mean to see the politics of race and racism as central to the crisis as it was then? What does that suggest for now, in what might be called a ‘Brexit conjuncture’ in Britain? Looking cross five decades the core argument is that populist authoritarianism is built on race and racism, and thus it may be better characterised as racial authoritarianism.

Item Type:	Article
Identifier:	10.26855/ssp.2026.12.001
Keywords:	Racism; Britain; Thatcherism; Brexit; Riots
Subjects:	Social sciences > Politics Social sciences > Discrimination > Racism
Date Deposited:	24 Sep 2026
Dates:	Date Publication status 3 June 2026 Accepted 9 July 2026 Published
School, department or research centre:	School of Human and Social Sciences
Keywords:	Racism; Britain; Thatcherism; Brexit; Riots
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/15323

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