Race, Taste, Class and Cars: An Ethnographer's Reflections

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Event details

In this talk, Dr Yunis Alam will explore a range of themes that he encountered whilst researching car cultures within the contexts of 'race', class and taste.

He will spend some time exploring his approach to the research he is still, opportunistically and occasionally, undertaking. The salience of researcher identity, including politics, insiderness and the idea of banal (and not so banal) multiculture will be given some attention.

The critical issues he will seek to examine, however, all revolve around notions of race and racism/s, as well as the extent to which capitalism elicits at times unusual and unpredictable responses from consumers and producers.

Framing his talk is the city of Bradford which has, over several decades now, been subjected to a series of wider narratives that have developed around its identity which includes reference to the problematics of ethnic diversity.

Please note that this is a hybrid event. You can find the Zoom join details in the booking confirmation.

About the speaker

Dr Yunis Alam

Dr Yunis Alam is Head of Department in Sociology and Criminology at the University of Bradford. His teaching and research interests span a range of themes and issues including social cohesion, counter-terrorism and the extent to which Muslims are invariably framed as a threat.

More generally, he has written about multiculture as well as popular culture, sport and postcolonial literatures. He is an ethnographer and his most recent work explored how the car becomes a means of transmitting ideas and stereotypes that connect ethnicity, faith and class with criminality and racialised threat (Race, Taste, Class and Cars with Policy Press).

He has recently published an ethnographically grounded research monograph, entitled Race, Coloniality and the Academy: An Ethnography (Bristol University Press, 2025), and contributed a short story to The Book of Bradford (Comma Press, 2025) entitled 'The Ends'.

Over many years, he has written several novels and short stories exploring ethnicity and racism through the lens of crime fiction.