Rosie Hancock  0:06 
Hi, I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia.

Alexis Hieu Truong  0:09 
And I'm Alexis Hieu Truong in Gatineau/Ottawa, Canada, and welcome back to Uncommon Sense from The Sociological Review Foundation. Each month, we take a theme that's pretty much an everyday word for which there seems to be some kind of consensus on its meaning – say something like anxiety or burnout or Europe – and we bring in an expert guest to help us see it differently or sociologically, ultimately.

Rosie Hancock  0:33 
Now, on this show you've probably heard some of our guests use terms like decentring, which is a word we often use as sociologists to talk about challenging and displacing the things that have been foregrounded. So, they've come to be seen as the norm or we assume that those are the things that deserve the most attention. And today, we wanted to follow that up by talking around the idea of margins and centres, or the idea of centring and decentring. Thinking about the things that have been marginalised and pushed to the edge. Thinking about how margins get created, how they get resisted – you know – and defined, both in terms of places and regions but also theory and knowledge itself, all with a focus on the Caribbean and the term the Global South.

Alexis Hieu Truong  1:24 
So we're lucky to be joined from St. Augustine, on the island of Trinidad in Trinidad and Tobago by Rhoda Reddock, Professor Emerita of Gender, Social Change and Development at the University of the West Indies. For decades, her work's focused on areas including women's social and labour history, and radical Caribbean social and feminist thought. And she's also currently an expert member of the UN CEDAW Committee, on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. So, in this conversation we'll be talking about centring the Caribbean in critical thought, but also a bit about why we should centre gender too.

Rosie Hancock  2:02 
Rhoda, welcome to Uncommon Sense.

Rhoda Reddock  2:04 
Thanks so much for having me.

Rosie Hancock  2:06 
It's great to have you on. At the time of the recording, you've just returned from Geneva where CEDAW was sitting for one of its quarterly sessions. And I mean, I feel like this really gets to the heart of what we're talking about – maybe –because Geneva is usually considered the centre, certainly when it comes to human rights, that's where the UN is based in Europe. Whereas I think – perhaps – Trinidad is often constructed as being far more peripheral or marginal. And so I was curious, what's your experience of moving between those two places?

Rhoda Reddock  2:35 
Well – you know – it's really interesting, because being a feminist activist and scholar for so many years, I really did not know as much about CEDAW as I should have, or the UN human rights system. So, going to CEDAW was really like a new phase of learning for me and I think it was probably good for my brain cells at this stage in my life. But it's an extremely intense experience. And I think that it made me value the UN system and the human rights system much more, and also become aware that it is really at stake and it's something that we really need to fight for. Because the current state of international law and international human rights is not in a place with which most of us are comfortable. So I think it's, it has really given me another lens from which to look at what's happening in the world and what's happening with women.

Rosie Hancock  3:43 
Yeah. So Rhoda, I wonder if you can reflect on how difference is kind of constructed between Switzerland and Trinidad and – you know – are there assumptions being made about, you know, both contexts that you now have experience of and can reflect on?

Rhoda Reddock  3:58 
Well, two things. First of all, I studied in Europe. My graduate work was in Europe, I did my PhD at the University of Amsterdam, and I lived and taught in the Netherlands for six years. So, I have experienced Europe and I've also, of course, experienced my life in the Global South. So, that kind of lens has always been one through which I've understood what's happening. And my doctoral supervisor Maria Mies was one who did critical work on the links between the Global South and the Global North and the historical, exploitative relationship – and therefore a lot of my own work also reflects on that. So Geneva is a very different space. I think its location within the global capitalist system is a bit muted, because it has its own not only history but current situation, in terms of banking, in terms of the pharmaceutical industry, etc. And I think what is also interesting is that it is, it is a centre for international organisations, and therefore there are many international NGOs also located there. And it's very multi-ethnic which is also interesting, because of all the people who work there, all the UN missions that are there, all the international schools that are there, and it's a different experience for me. Now, being in the human rights system, I think what is also important is that the human rights system is really very international. Of course, one could say that – in terms of its leadership – there is a strong northern leadership still in the UN human rights system. But in terms of the treaty bodies, it's extremely diverse, because of the way this system is organised. So, for example, within CEDAW we have persons from a range of countries, we have 23 members, so the Global South is always represented. The Caribbean has a history of membership within CEDAW for quite a few years. But this is the first time that Trinidad and Tobago is a member of CEDAW.

Alexis Hieu Truong  6:21 
Bouncing back on this idea of the Global South that you mentioned and also coming back to Trinidad, we're interested in decentring and troubling the way in which the Global South – or particularly the Caribbean as part of the Global South – is often talked about and defined, and how knowledge production from that region has been typically regarded and positioned. So I was wondering, Rhoda, can you tell us how you specifically define Global South?

Rhoda Reddock  6:48 
Okay, well, for me the Global South is a political definition. And it really came out of the discourse on the North, the Brandt commission report, which shifted the global language away from the First World-Third World division – First World, Second World, Third World division – that had existed before, and introduced the notion of the North and the South as geographically but also politically structured. So I think that the Global South, therefore, is a term that came to represent all these countries, primarily post colonial – although not all of them were post colonial in the same way, but –who had this relationship of inequality with the Global North. So, for me, the Global South is a very important concept. Although I know that there is some debate and I think that this is something that we could debate, what is the South? Is it a political concept? Is it a geographic concept? But for me, the Global South is a political concept that relates to the global inequalities and the countries that have historically been in situations of – I wouldn't even say marginalization – inequality, power relations, unequal power relations, in relation to the historically dominant economic powers.

Rosie Hancock  8:27 
Rhoda, you're also a feminist activist scholar, located in the Global South and a social historian – and you've written over the years on things like contestations about culture, class, gender and identity in Trinidad and Tobago, you've mapped the development of women's organisations and movements in the region, and you've traced the development of radical Caribbean thought. I understand what's known as historical materialism has been important to you. How do you define that approach in the most simple terms and, and what does it give you?

Rhoda Reddock  9:03 
Right. Well, I was around at a time when socialist and Marxist thought was still very central to sociology. That was also a time when there were socialist parties, there were communist parties, it was an entirely different period. But I was also part of the critique of – you know – mainstream Marxism, especially as represented in many of the male dominated political organisations that existed at the time. And many of the feminists of that period with whom I was associated, we had many debates with the brothers on many issues, both in terms of feminist issues – the so called woman question – but also in relation to the very hierarchical and, you know, the ways in which, the kind of ways in which organisations were structured at a time. So, I was like a critical Marxist in my youth and therefore – for me – historical materialism, which is, which I was exposed to at university and in my activist work, was very important because history I felt was necessary. Because you really needed to understand the processes that contributed to present situations. But because of that concern with materialism, and materialism – I understand – not just as economic. I think this was one of the things we debated, the material was not just economic, the material resource. So bodily, women's bodies, it was the, the land, the relations of production – it was much broader than just the economic and we always felt that those who saw the material as only the economic had it wrong. And therefore, in most of my work – including my current work – a lot of my work has been historical and I've always sought to look at what were the underlying factors, the social, the economic, the material, the, the physical, the biological, what were these factors? And how did they contribute together to what we're experiencing, or what we're trying to understand? But I think that using that method has been one of the strengths of my work, and that it becomes the way in which I analyse information, the kinds of information that I use. Also, I think the Caribbean – at that period, when I was younger – many of the feminists came out of socialist oriented organisations, and a lot of the feminist organisations emerge and critique of those organisations. So that Caribbean feminism in the 70s, and 80s, up until the 90s, was always what we now call intersectional but also materially grounded. So issues of work, issues of labour, alongside issues of sexuality, issues of sexual reproductive health and rights, issues of culture, the arts, all of those were part of our movement, in a way that they are not today for younger feminists and in a way in which they were not for some feminists in other parts of the world.

Alexis Hieu Truong  12:58 
And really, what you say about – kind of – having this historical approach seems especially important for regions that have been colonised, like the Caribbean, but are also like so relevant when thinking about any context, especially those that are being put at the centre. And I'm wondering if we can like kind of wind back a bit, so Rhoda I'm wondering how has the Caribbean typically been characterised and approached, both in the mainstream but also in sociology and academia, which you address in your paper 'Radical Caribbean social thought' from 2014?

Rhoda Reddock  13:38 
Right. But I think that not only the Caribbean, I think the main point I was trying to make is at the centre of sociological thought, is a Northern centre. And therefore, the work of those of us who are located in the South, it's either absent or very difficult to be seen as globally relevant. And I think it was there before, but recently it has become even more important in my work. Now, the Caribbean is unique in a way because of our – kind of – colonial experience we had. We had English literacy very early, even though sometimes in like middle classes, but in some instances, even among working classes, you had English literacy, and a tradition of writing and literary scholarship. So that the Caribbean, therefore – for its size – has made a significant contribution to global thinking. The problem though is that to make that contribution those people have had to move to the North. In other words, there are very few thinkers or scholars or writers who are able to achieve global recognition if they stay in the region, and I think that is not just for the Caribbean but for many other parts of the world. So, if we think of the people who have originated in the Caribbean, if we think of like Marcus Garvey, Henry Sylvester Williams – you probably don't know him, he was the father of Pan Africanism, he was actually from Barbados and Trinidad – of course the famous CLR James, George Padmore, you know, so we could go on and name quite a few. But they're all located in the North. And of course, from Africa you also have a number of our important scholars coming out of Africa, but all located in the North. So, in a way, it's difficult because what we are doing is missing the contributions of very important thinkers globally. And also, we are missing the opportunity – I think – to learn from these global experiences. And that's why my article on women and slavery, I think that when I wrote it, that was a time when there was so much discussion of reproductive rights. And in Europe at the time, that was a time when there was large scale migration from Turkey and Morocco to the Netherlands. And there was a concern that White, Dutch women were not having children, and I remember there was, at that time in Holland they changed their maternity leave laws, you could get up to one years maternity leave with full pay, and your job is kept if you decide to stay longer. There was a whole maternalist campaign taking place while I was a student, and then reading this, getting this information out of my research on enslaved women, it was a very interesting contrast. And I thought of the ways in which states manipulate their policies, on pronatalist or antinatalist policies, in keeping with specific needs, at specific times, and periods in history. So that was why it was so important, when I wrote this piece, to see the global significance of that information, that study on women and slavery, and the shift in ways and the shift in approaches to their fertility and, and how that changed in keeping with economic and political circumstances.

Rosie Hancock  17:50 
Rhoda, can we just clarify what era or decade you were speaking about when you were talking about the changing sort of policy landscape in the Netherlands?

Rhoda Reddock  17:59 
Yes, this was in the 80s, I would say, the late, very late 70s and the 80s.

Rosie Hancock  18:06 
And we just wanted to kind of ask again or, or sort of get you to reflect on how the Caribbean has been typically characterised and, and approached within both sociology, academia, as well?

Rhoda Reddock  18:21 
Well, if I think about global sociology, I don't think it has been approached in any way. It's just kind of missing. You know, I, I have been a member of the International Sociological Association, I joined very early, like about two years after graduating with my PhD. I was like the only Caribbean person at the time, there were very few people of colour. I mean the ISA usually has – let's say – between 3000 and 5000 people at their meetings and in those days you might have two people of colour, and I might be one of them. So the Caribbean certainly was just not there. I remember once I went to a meeting – I am an editor of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies and we had our ISA meeting in Gothenburg – and I went to the book table of Taylor and Francis, they had all kinds of journals. I said, 'how come this journal isn't here?'. And I went to the President, I said you know 'how come this is a Taylor and Francis journal? Why isn't it here?'. He said 'well, you know, this institution is primarily European'. So I said 'but its international!', you know. And I remember always being concerned about this. And I was a member of Research Committee-32 (Women and Society) and it was a committee of committed feminist women. who were really concerned with making sociology global. And that was where I felt comfortable, I think if I had joined another committee I may not have lasted so long. But still – you know – there are still many challenges within global sociology.

Rosie Hancock  20:20 
So – I mean – I think that's thinking about the representation, or lack of it perhaps, of the Caribbean in academia. But I mean, I also want to touch on the fact that in the mainstream, there's another problem of – sort of – how colonialism has impacted the region and the fragmentation that it causes, like how the region's been broken up into different linguistic blocks, which I'd imagine presents challenges today in terms of forging solidarity and cross cutting ties. And I know that you write of the Caribbean as – and I'm quoting you here – 'a complex construction, too often simplified'. Can you explain that via an example?

Rhoda Reddock  21:00 
Yes, I think that the Caribbean is a really small area. But of course, it was such a historically important area during the period of industrialisation and enslavement. And I think one of the points I want to make is that the Global South is always connected to the Global North, so I don't – the notion of periphery I sometimes question because even though there's inequality, there's been this historic and continued interrelationship which I think we should always remember. So the Caribbean is a very diverse place, it's linguistically diverse, different colonising powers. And that's why it's difficult to have one history of the Caribbean, one history of the Caribbean. And of course, the different histories also brought different cultures, different languages. For example, I have been recently doing a lot of work on race and ethnicity and if you look into different colonial sections – for example, in Suriname, it's different from in the Anglophone Caribbean, in the Anglophone Caribbean it's different from the Hispanic Caribbean, and the Francophone. So, even though there's similarities and commonalities, there are different ways in which that colonial structure was established. And always, when we speak of the Caribbean, we often highlight our section of the region. And I think that's one of the big problems and I think it happens in Africa too possibly, so the Francophone region has very strong ties with France, of course they're still departments of France, except for Haiti – of course – which is another issue. Then, of course, the Hispanic Caribbean has very strong links with continental Latin America, and sometimes less with the Anglophone Caribbean. So in terms of scholarship, the Caribbean Studies Association – of which I am a life member – you know, sought a lot to work through those linguistic and cultural and academic differences, to really come up with a notion of the Caribbean and of Caribbean scholarship. So I think perhaps we have been able to achieve that at some level but at other levels, we have not. So in terms of, of the Caribbean as a complex reality, Trinidad and Tobago, now one nation state, two completely different histories prior to 1890. And that's why our two islands still there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of political tension between the two countries, because Britain just brought them together. They said, oh, these countries are very close to each other. We can put them together for administrative purposes.

Alexis Hieu Truong  24:02 
Speaking of like regions with, with complex realities, or, or histories – and also you've, you've mentioned gender,  language, ethnicities – I think you wrote some years ago of how a white audience tends to be centred, essentially, like, for example, relations between the different populations of Trinidad go broadly undiscussed while the focus tends to be put broadly on relationships between black and white communities. Could you tell us more about that, and whether this kind of remains the case?

Rhoda Reddock  24:37 
Well, the thing is that I'm, I'm currently working on a book where I'm trying to tease out those issues. Because, of course, like all post colonial countries, our region is very racialised and – of course – the hegemony of whiteness and the subordination or the oppositionality of blackness is something that is common to the entire region, and all of the Americas, and probably elsewhere. However, I think in different locations it's manifested differently. And being in our part of the world we are heavily influenced by US writing, US analysis on race, ethnicity etc. And therefore that, that black-white dyad is central and it's also important for us. But what I've been trying to do in some of my recent work is to tease out the specificities of our ethno-racial systems. For example, the southern Caribbean, Ghana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, we also have a large population of people of Indian origin – you know – migrants, not actually migrants but they came as bonded labourers to the region. And also in Suriname, you also have Japanese so there's more ethnic diversity in what we refer to as the southern Caribbean.

Alexis Hieu Truong  26:14 
Can we talk a bit more about like these kinds of imbalances? So, imbalances when it comes to knowledge production as a whole. Like, do you think scholarship from thinkers working actually in the Global South is sometimes unjustly perceived – maybe – as not being globally relevant, as somehow regionally specific?

Rhoda Reddock  26:36 
Yes, I think for example – you know – scholars in the North, would sometimes criticize scholars in the South for having an underdeveloped racial consciousness or understanding of race. And this is because they bring their understanding, and do not take the time to understand the specificities of the local situation. So, the reason why I was speaking about colour is because where I am right now, is that the US racialised system, even though they speak of colour, is really based on rules of ancestry and hypodescent. And I think that colour is much less important than in our region, where colour is the basis of our ethno-racial system, so that when we try to speak of the complexities of colour in our own context, many Northern scholars would say, that's incorrect, really you're not addressing the key issue, which is the black white division, which of course in the US is understood in terms of rules of hypodescent. But in our part of the world, is understood as a hierarchy of colour differentials. And that is the basis of our ethno-racial differentiation. Now, it may seem unimportant to some people. But I think it's important for us to tease out the specificities of our system, because other than that we don't really understand what's happening in our part of the world. But I think that often when these kinds of arguments, or this kind of data is put forward it's usually, it could be understood as an underdeveloped understanding of phenomena, and not new ways of understanding reality that can add to our global understanding.

Rosie Hancock  28:38 
I mean, I think that, I think that's a really great way of showing how there's so much that we can learn from the region that's really not specific to or shouldn't be – you know – seen as contained to or niche to the region, like it's not just particular it actually has general relevance for, for sociology as a whole. And we're going to come back in a moment to talk about a thinker who's inspired you and to hear, and also to hear your advice to new researchers. But first, a word from our producer Alice.

Alice Bloch  29:11 
Hi, I hope you're enjoying today's episode with Rhoda Reddock, joining us from the island of Trinidad in Trinidad and Tobago to discuss margins, centres and critical thoughts. It's part of the third season of Uncommon Sense, and whether you're joining for pleasure, work or study, or just out of curiosity, we really hope you find the podcast to be a valuable resource. If you've had chance to go to thesociologicalreview.org, perhaps to look up some readings that are in our show notes or to find our other podcasts, you might have noticed The Sociological Review Foundation is a charity. We're all about advancing public understanding of sociology and you can say that this year – still – that's needed more than ever. So, we have a favour to ask. If you can, please consider making contribution to help the Foundation keep bringing this podcast to you, head to donorbox.org/uncommon-sense. That's donorbox.org/uncommon-sense. You can also find that link in our show notes, and there you can make one off or repeat donations to directly support the making of Uncommon Sense. It's all really gratefully received and – obviously – we're just grateful for you simply listening in. Any feedback or suggestions, find us at Uncommon Sense at thesociologicalreview.org. Thanks for listening.

Rosie Hancock  30:34 
Okay, so here's where we want to turn to hear about a thinker that gave or perhaps still gives you some uncommon sense, who makes you think differently. It could be someone's entire life and work, just a single book, or perhaps even a paragraph or line that changed your perspective forever.

Alexis Hieu Truong  30:57 
Rhoda, as you discuss in your paper 'Radical Caribbean Global Thought', the Caribbean has produced a number of world class thinkers and social activists, among them CLR James – author of Black Jacobins – or the journalist Claudia Jones, whose work we'll put in our show notes. But not all have been equally recognised. I believe that today you want to talk about Oliver C. Cox, a scholar from Trinidad and Tobago, trained all in the US where he settled in law, then economics and then sociology. Rhoda, can you tell us more about Cox himself?

Rhoda Reddock  31:35 
Yes, I think I first came across Cox somewhere I was and I saw this old copy of something called 'Caste, Class and Race', and it said Oliver C. Cox. And I started reading it and then somewhere along the line I found out he was from Trinidad and Tobago and I said, you know what, I should really find out more about him. And then one day, I was at a conference in Trinidad on Henry Sylvester Williams, and a guy walked up to me and said, 'I'm Oliver Cox's cousin'. And I said, 'what?' and – you know – strangely enough, I didn't take his information and I've been trying to find him since then. But since then, I started doing some of my own work, looking at his, his 'Caste, Class and Race' which – of course – was a classic published in 1946. It won an award immediately and then after that it was marginalised. And I tried to find out more about him and then I came across his niece. So, she was able to tell me about him. He was born in 1901, two middle class parents, and went to study in the US. But when he went to study in the US, his education in Trinidad was not recognised. So he had to do an extra two years of education in order to get into the system. His plan was to study law and return to Trinidad to practice, but he developed polio. And then as now, Trinidad is not very equipped, persons with disabilities. So he remained in the United States. And because of his disability, I think he spent a lot of time researching and writing. What is interesting about him also is that his PhD research was on sex roles, marriage and the family among African Americans. And some of that early sex roles work is what – for example, in the US – is often identified as some of the beginnings of feminist sociology in the US. So that I think he had a very broad range, and in his book on caste, he dealt a lot with women in Hinduism, and marriage and how that affected women in the Hindu caste system. His argument being caste was a different system and should not be seen as the same as race. They are two different system, although – as myself and others have shown – they have influenced each other because of the colonial process.

Rosie Hancock  34:25 
Great, we're gonna put some of those extra sources into our show notes. But thinking about the book 'Caste, Class and Race', can you explain a bit more about why it was ahead of its time perhaps?

Rhoda Reddock  34:38 
Well, first of all, I'm not sure it was ahead of its time. I think it was timely but it just was not accepted. For example, there was a Caste School of Race Relations in the US that argued that the problem in the US was not one of race but of caste, and this was like in the 1930s in the US - and Gunnar Myrdal's book used that approach. He was invited to do a study on race relations in the US and he wrote this book, and that was his main theoretical or conceptual frame, that what was taking place in the US was not an issue of race, was one of caste. And, therefore, Cox wrote this critique of that book. In the book, he looked at caste itself, he looked at race and he looked at class. And then he looked at how they intersected in the US system, of basically saying caste was irrelevant to the US system and what was important in the US was really an issue of race and class. He was published – I think – by Doubleday in 1946. So that should show – I mean – that it was a book of some substance. But then it immediately kind of disappeared for about the next 50 years, until his work began to be resurrected in the late 80s and 90s. And then, of course, people became then aware of his work on capitalism as a system, the foundations of capitalism, and in those work  that's where he began to look at capitalism as a world system and in a way predating some of the work of Wallerstein. What I also found important in 'Caste, Class and Race' was how Cox already was looking at, at race as socially constructed. I think that was also way before the social constructionist turn on understanding race as a construct, as a social construction that came much later in the 20th century. So I think his work really has a lot of a – it's very broad, and a lot of food for thought. Unfortunately, because it was suppressed for so many years, he wasn't able to influence the scholarship in a way that it could have.

Alexis Hieu Truong  37:10 
So, really brought in a social lens to the study of things. Rhoda, actually in our episode last year on Europeans with Manuela Boatcă she celebrated Immanuel Wallerstein's world systems approach, which you mentioned earlier. It basically argues that labour and the benefits of capitalism is divided on a global scale between core countries like the US, as semi core countries like South Africa and peripheral countries like Papua New Guinea. And to majorly simplify it, core countries get rich at the expense of poor countries. How does Cox tie in to that approach?

Rhoda Reddock  37:54 
Well, the thing is that that whole notion is one that was also there in the, the Latin American dependent, these countries and in the work – I would say  – of Waltner Rodney, for example in his classic book 'How Europe underdeveloped Africa', because what Rodney argued is that development was not like a process where you went from underdeveloped,  developing, to developed which was the classic. But actually, that the European engagement with Africa actually made it underdeveloped and affected it's eventual develop. In other words, there were like two sides of a coin, as opposed to a process. So, I definitely would agree with what Wallerstein said and I think Cox would agree, as well. But I think what is important is that connection, that the, that the world system, the ways in which the countries of the South continue to have that link with the countries at the core and how they continue to shape what's happening today, as we're seeing now in what's happening in our global situation presently. So for Cox, I think Cox began at a much earliest stage and I'm not sure, he came to the period of colonialism but I think he dealt with it in a much earlier phase of the foundations of capitalism. So I think that he did recognise capitalism as a world system and he did recognise the various locations and the ways in which they fed into that world system. But I think at the time when he was writing which was – of course – much earlier in the century, some of the realities of the post colonial world were not as stark as they are now. Remember, when he was writing most of our countries were steal British or European colonies.

Rosie Hancock  40:05 
Thanks for taking us through  – kind of  – the, the life and some of the highlights of Cox's work because I've, I've certainly read sort of Wallerstein and really like his world systems approach but haven't, haven't come across Cox before. And I also want to point out that Cox was at the University of Chicago sort of in the late 20s and through the 30s, which was a period – he was right in the middle of the action, certainly in terms of sociology, that was when, sort of similar period when Saul Alinsky was there. So, he seems like a really interesting figure and I'm kind of looking forward to digging into some more of his work. But before we close Rhoda, we normally grab a pop culture tip from our guests, but we wanted to try something a bit different with you and ask for some career advice instead – if we may – given, given the breadth of your work and your experience. Because we mentioned earlier that you're currently an expert member on the UN CEDAW Committee and – you know – having that kind of impact as a sociologist is such a huge deal, and something a lot of us dream of. And I guess it kind of also counters the common sense idea that sociologists might be stuck in an ivory tower, in their books and libraries, and so on. So what advice would you give to people who want to make their work relevant to and read by the world beyond the university? Is it a matter of networks, or the subject matter that you study? Or your style of writing? Do you have any tips for us?

Rhoda Reddock  41:28 
All of the above! I would say that – um – first of all, you do your work, and you do it well, and you don't be afraid to innovate. I find today many young people – you know – they're thinking so much of tenure, promotion, they want to stick to the tried and tested etc. But I think that don't be afraid to be creative and to innovate. And don't be afraid to think deeply, so that you can really get to the bottom. Understand – you know – I always tell my students you have to  question why and you search for the underlying causes and contributing factors always. I love a historical approach. and I think everyone would benefit from it. And I've always been a scholar activist, not everyone can do that, so therefore my scholarship I also see it as activism, as contributing knowledge for social transformation.

Alexis Hieu Truong  42:30 
And Rhoda, what advice did you receive or perhaps resist as to where you should be based? Cox trained in the US, as we mentioned earlier, but nearly a century ago and I'm wondering whether academics have to be trained or located in the Global North in order to be recognised and validated. Have you seen that shift play out over the decades in a specific way?

Rhoda Reddock  42:58 
Of course, I think almost all the brilliant scholars, thinkers that we have on our list, all migrated to the Global North. And it continues today and not just from the Caribbean, but Africa. I mean, the Global North really benefits a lot from some of the best minds and thinkers of the South, and I sometimes wonder how much we lose from that but also – you know  – some scholars try to have feets in two places so that we also benefit from the scholarship. But I think that was one of the things that really set me thinking, why do we have to migrate in order to be relevant, in order for our work to have meaning? I think that – of course – it's very difficult living and working in the Global South, we don't have the resources always, we don't have the facilities. But at the same time, I think that there's a lot of value for those of us who stay here, because we can ensure that our, our societies are studied and understood. And there's insider knowledge and there's outsider knowledge, and I think that both are important. Now, this is not to knock those people who have migrated to the North, certainly not. I value their work and collaborate with them. But I just think that the knowledge that we produce is also important and needs to be recognised.

Rosie Hancock  43:00 
I think that's a really good sort of reminder to end on Rhoda about kind of those of us who work in academia, our responsibility when we're doing things like writing our papers and setting our reading lists, about thinking outside the sort of norm, the, the big name scholars from Europe and trying to really think about knowledge from the Global South and sort of democratising knowledge a lot more.

Alexis Hieu Truong  45:08 
Anyway, Rhoda. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Rhoda Reddock  45:14 
Thank you so much for having me. I got a lot of food for thought and you allowed me to think through many things. So, thanks for this opportunity.

Rosie Hancock  45:25 
We'll be sure to put the different readings and thinkers who Rhoda mentioned into our show notes. We will also put the link to that episode with Manuela Boatcă on Europeans. It can all be found in the app you're using to hear this and on the podcast page at thesociologicalreview.org. At that site, as ever, you can also take a look at our themed magazine, our other podcasts, the Sociological Review journal and much more.

Alexis Hieu Truong  45:50 
We'll be back soon with more Uncommon Sense. Thanks for listening. Bye

Rosie Hancock  45:56  
Bye!