Interview with Professor Tariq Modood (Part 1)

Summary

The host, Matthew Wilkin, introduces the Sociology Show and explains that his interview with Professor Tariq Modood is divided into two parts. This first part focuses on Modood’s upbringing, education, route into sociology, and intellectual influences.

Upbringing and education

Modood was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and moved to Britain in 1961, aged eight. When he arrived, he knew only a few phrases in English.

He attended a working-class secondary modern school after failing the 11-plus exam. During his time there, the school’s population changed substantially: it went from being predominantly white to having a majority of African Caribbean pupils and a significant South Asian minority. Modood recalls racist bullying and the wider climate of anti-Asian violence and intimidation at the time.

Despite the school’s limited academic resources, it offered sociology. Modood took a school-level sociology qualification, which he describes as his highest formal qualification in the subject.

He went on to study philosophy and politics at Durham University, followed by a master’s degree in political theory and a PhD at Swansea. His doctoral work examined the English philosophers R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott.

A circuitous route into sociology

Modood’s early academic career was disrupted by cuts to philosophy and social-science jobs during the Thatcher years. After temporary academic work, he became unemployed and trained as a tax inspector.

He found aspects of bookkeeping and tax law intellectually interesting but did not want to pursue them as a career. Encouraged by his wife, he moved into equal-opportunities work in local government and later worked at the Commission for Racial Equality.

In those roles, he questioned an approach to anti-racism that used “political blackness” to group all non-white people together. He felt this could override people’s own identities and self-understandings.

Modood also wanted racial equality to mean more than opposing racism. He argued that it should allow people to express and adapt their identities, address the needs of different groups, and make belonging to Britain compatible with those identities. He describes multiculturalism as a way of reshaping citizenship, equality, and national identity so that minority identities can be included in shared public life.

Events that shaped his thinking

The Rushdie Affair, following the publication of The Satanic Verses, brought Muslim identity and political participation into public debate. Modood felt that frameworks focused mainly on black–white relations could not adequately account for this development.

His growing involvement in social-science research gave him a route back into academia. At the Policy Studies Institute, he led a national survey of ethnic minorities, working with experienced survey and race-relations researchers despite having no formal training in quantitative research or sociology.

He particularly valued the survey’s work on culture and identity. It examined not only cultural practices such as language, dress, and religious attendance, but also people’s identities, religious affiliations, and whether they considered themselves British.

Intellectual influences and approach

Modood identifies the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein as a major influence. He draws on Wittgenstein’s ideas about the social character of language and thought, and about concepts being defined through overlapping similarities rather than a single fixed essence.

From Collingwood, Modood says he learned to attend to history and change. From Oakeshott, he learned to respect the particularity of different societies and circumstances rather than forcing them into overly broad generalizations.

Political philosophers Bhikhu Parekh and Charles Taylor influenced his attention to culture, identity, ideas, and political contestation. He also names philosophers and political theorists Alasdair MacIntyre, Will Kymlicka, David Miller, and Jeff Levy, as well as sociologists and social theorists John Rex, Michael Banton, Stuart Hall, Bob Miles, and Roger Ballard.

As Modood characterizes them, these thinkers contributed to analysing structural racial disadvantage; understanding ethnic relations beyond a simple black–white binary; treating identities as dynamic and contested; explaining race through social processes; and recognizing that minority groups have their own changing perspectives and ways of acting.

Overall, Modood presents his sociology as interdisciplinary, drawing on philosophy and political theory as well as sociological research.

The episode ends by noting that the second part will focus on Modood’s research.

Speakers and sources featured

Speakers

• Matthew Wilkin — Host of the Sociology Show.
• Tariq Modood — Interview guest and Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at the University of Bristol.

People and intellectual influences mentioned

• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• R. G. Collingwood
• Michael Oakeshott
• Bhikhu Parekh
• Charles Taylor
• Alasdair MacIntyre
• Will Kymlicka
• David Miller
• Jeff Levy
• John Rex
• Michael Banton
• Stuart Hall
• Bob Miles
• Roger Ballard
• Salman Rushdie
• Margaret Thatcher
• Keith Joseph
• David Smith
• James Nazroo
• Satnam Virdee

The subtitles render one survey collaborator’s name unclearly (“Richard bad to”), so that person is not identified with certainty here.