Brian Alleyne BSc MSc PhD
Staff details
Brian worked as a photographer and then a computer programmer before studying sociology and development studies at the University of the West Indies.
Academic qualifications
After a period in New York, where he studied sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center and worked as a research assistant at the CLR James Institute, he moved to the UK. He gained a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1999 and began teaching sociology at Goldsmiths in that same year.
For many years he was a volunteer at the George Padmore Institute, in Finsbury Park, North London. That Institute is made up of a collective of activists, writers and activists about whose work Brian wrote a book, Radicals Against Race (Berg 2002), which was awarded the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for the best new single-authored sociological text published in 2002. Brian keeps up his interest in new technologies by hacking code and exploring Linux and other Free Software in his spare time.
Teaching
Brian convenes and teaches the courses Global Development and Underdevelopment and Sociology of Culture and Communication at Undergraduate level. He is also the Programme Convenor for BA Anthropology & Sociology.
Research Interests
Globalisation, social movements, social life of information technology, ethnography, narrative, biographical methods.
Brian is writing a book on Narrative Approaches for Sage. That book responds to a growing interest in stories in popular and academic culture, as well as to the pervasiveness of Web 2.0 in the form of Facebook and Twitter (to name just two examples). The ubiquity of social media calls for a reconsideration of the place of narrative in our collective self-understanding, and on a more specific level, in social research programmes. Moreover, the book will address narrative in light of ongoing developments in computer-assisted data gathering and analysis, drawing upon both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Brian also writes articles on: Free Software; Hacker Cultures; Networked Communities; and Inventive Users.
Publications
Book
Narrative Networks: Storied Approaches in a Digital Age
Alleyne, Brian. 2014. Narrative Networks: Storied Approaches in a Digital Age. London: SAGE Publications Ltd. ISBN 9780857027849
Radicals Against Race: Black Activism and Cultural Politics
Alleyne, Brian. 2002. Radicals Against Race: Black Activism and Cultural Politics. Berg. ISBN 1859735223
Book Section
Computer Hacking as a Social Problem
Alleyne, Brian. 2018. Computer Hacking as a Social Problem. In: A. Javier Treviño, ed. Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems. New York: CUP. ISBN 9781108550710
Anti-racist cultural politics in post-imperial Britain: the New Beacon Circle
Alleyne, Brian. 2007. Anti-racist cultural politics in post-imperial Britain: the New Beacon Circle. In: , ed. Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 207-226. ISBN 9780802086754
Cultural Politics and Caribbean Narratives
Alleyne, Brian. 2006. Cultural Politics and Caribbean Narratives. In: Jean Besson and Karen Fog Olwig, eds. Caribbean Narratives of Belonging: Fields of Relations, Sites of Identity. Macmillan Caribbean, pp. 263-279. ISBN 1-4050-1879-8
Race Relations in Contemporary Britain
Alleyne, Brian. 2006. Race Relations in Contemporary Britain. In: K. Prah, ed. Racism in the Global African Experience. Centre for the Advanced Study of African Societies, pp. 225-249. ISBN 9781919799773
C.L.R. James, Critical Humanist
Alleyne, Brian. 2006. C.L.R. James, Critical Humanist. In: C. Gair, ed. Beyond Boundaries: CLR James and Postnational Studies. Pluto Press, pp. 175-196. ISBN 0745323421
'Race' and Racism
Alleyne, Brian. 2006. 'Race' and Racism. In: Austin Harrington; Barbara Marshall and Hans-Peter Müller, eds. Encyclopedia of Social Theory. Routledge, pp. 490-492. ISBN 978-0-415-29046-3
Article
Challenging Code: A Sociological Reading of the KDE Free Software Project
Alleyne, Brian. 2011. Challenging Code: A Sociological Reading of the KDE Free Software Project. Sociology, 45(3), pp. 496-511. ISSN 0038-0385
CLR James's Revolutionary Politics as Culture
Alleyne, Brian. 2003. CLR James's Revolutionary Politics as Culture. Imprints: a Journal of Analytical Socialism, 7(1), pp. 64-81. ISSN 1363-5964
An Activist Ethnography of Black Cultural Politics: the new Beacon Circle
Alleyne, Brian. 2003. An Activist Ethnography of Black Cultural Politics: the new Beacon Circle. Anthropology in Action, 10(2), pp. 21-30. ISSN 0967-201X
An Idea of Community and its Discontents: Towards a more reflexive sense of belonging in multicultural Britain
Alleyne, Brian. 2002. An Idea of Community and its Discontents: Towards a more reflexive sense of belonging in multicultural Britain. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25, pp. 607-627. ISSN 01419870
Introduction: Framing difference: racial and ethnic studies in twentyfirst-century Britain
Alexander, Claire and Alleyne, Brian. 2002. Introduction: Framing difference: racial and ethnic studies in twentyfirst-century Britain. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(4), pp. 541-551. ISSN 0141-9870
Film/Video
Inside the mind of a hacker - FT World - World & Global Economy Video - FT.com
Alleyne, Brian. 2016. Inside the mind of a hacker - FT World - World & Global Economy Video - FT.com.
Report
Combining Online Research and Participant Observation in a Study of Free Software
Alleyne, Brian. 2018. Combining Online Research and Participant Observation in a Study of Free Software. Other. SAGE, London.