We live in a visual culture, and visual evidence is increasingly central to social research. In this collection an international range of experts explain how they have used visual methods in their own research, examine their advantages and limitations, and show how they have been used alongside other research techniques. Contributors explore the following ideas: * self and identity * visualizing domestic space * visualizing urban landscapes * visualizing social change. The collection showcases different methods in different contexts through the examination of a variety of topical issues. Methods covered include photo and video diaries, the use of images produced by respondents, the use of images as prompts in interviews and focus groups, documentary photography, photographic inventory and visual ethnography. The result is an exciting and original collection that will be indispensable for any student, academic or researcher interested in the use of visual methods.

"Race, Discourse and Labourism" documents the Labour party's construction of the concept of race in political discourse from the 1930s Indian independence negotiations and the defence of Jews from anti-semitic attack in East London. Caroline Knowles argues that in these historical processes Labour constructed a range of negative significances for black citizenship and multi-culturalism and, despite recasting its approach to race in the 1960s and early 1970s, Labour is still unable to officially sanction the effective representation of black voices in its own ranks. The author aims to show that Labour has not only tolerated racial inequality, it has given it important political direction. "Race, Discourse and Labourism" is about political processes. It is about the theoretical and political analysis of how race was constructed and sustained as a category in British politics.

This collection of original pieces brings together critical perspectives on the intersection of ethnic and gender identities as spatialized forms of embodied social practice, tackling important recent themes such as whiteness, masculinity, the body, sexuality, diaspora and globalization. Designed to bring these debates to students in a way that bridges contemporary theory with vivid case material, this is a lively and wide-ranging text of relevance to a range of social sciences.

Race, Discourse and Labourism argues that the commonwealth of socialism is founded upon a well-concealed history of brutality and repression. Caroline Knowles details the historical conditions of the emergence of race through Labour's dealings with Indian independence negotiations and anti-semitism in the thirties, and the effects of this on the conceptions of black citizenship, multi-racialism and black representation in labour politics.

We live in a visual culture, and visual evidence is increasingly central to social research. In this collection an international range of experts explain how they have used visual methods in their own research, examine their advantages and limitations, and show how they have been used alongside other research techniques. Contributors explore the following ideas: * self and identity * visualizing domestic space * visualizing urban landscapes * visualizing social change. The collection showcases different methods in different contexts through the examination of a variety of topical issues. Methods covered include photo and video diaries, the use of images produced by respondents, the use of images as prompts in interviews and focus groups, documentary photography, photographic inventory and visual ethnography. The result is an exciting and original collection that will be indispensable for any student, academic or researcher interested in the use of visual methods.

What happens when the mad are let out of the asylum and there is nowhere for them to go?
Bedlam on the Streets traces the terms on which the mad occupy the city's streets, homeless shelters, rooming houses, shopping malls and fast food joints. Caroline Knowles situates this social geography of madness within the broader parameters of systems of social welfare and globalization, arguing that the 'community mental health care' system is a system of neglect. A richly textured visual/spatial ethnography, this combines photographic images of people and places with an examination of city space and the voices of 'schizophrenics'. These provide harrowing testimony of the terrifying descent into madness in their stories of daily life marked by vulnerability and dangerousness.

'A latter-day Canterbury Tales ... Serious Money has a serious mission' The Times 'Eye-opening ... part guide, part indictment of a yawning wealth gap' Misha Glenny, Financial Times London is a plutocrat's paradise, with more resident billionaires than New York, Hong Kong or Moscow. Far from trickling down, their wealth is burning up the environment and swallowing up the city. But what do we really know about London's super rich, and the lives they lead? To find out more about this secretive elite, sociologist Caroline Knowles walks the streets of London from the City to suburban Surrey. Her walks reveal how the wealthy shape the capital in their image, creating a new world of gated communities and luxury developments. Along the way we meet a wide and wickedly entertaining cast of millionaires, billionaires and those who serve them: bankers, tech tycoons, Conservative party donors, butlers, bodyguards, divorce lawyers and many more. By turns jaw-dropping, enraging and enlightening, Serious Money explodes the fiction that wealth is a condition to aspire to, revealing the isolation and paranoia which accompany it when the plutocrat's recompense - a life of unlimited luxury - ultimately proves hollow. It is a powerful reminder that it is not just the super-rich who get to make the city: we make it too, and could demand something different. Because serious money is good for no one - not even the rich. 'An eye-opening, deeply disturbing, fast-moving journey through the lives, homes and affairs of the filthy rich of London' Danny Dorling, author of All That Is Solid 'A wonderful and vital account of a city ruled by, and for, extreme wealth' Anna Minton, author of Big Capital

*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2015* This book follows the global trail of one of the world's most unremarkable and ubiquitous objects - flip-flops. Through this unique lens, Caroline Knowles takes a ground level view of the lives and places of globalisation's back roads, providing new insights that challenge contemporary accounts of globalisation. Rather than orderly product chains, the book shows that globalisation along the flip-flop trail is a tangle of unstable, shifting, ad hoc and contingent connections. This book displays both the instabilities of the 'chains' and the complexities, personal topographies and skills with which people navigate these global uncertainties. Flip-Flop provides new ways of thinking about globalisation from the vantage point of the shifting landscape crossed by a seemingly ordinary and everyday commodity.

*Shortlisted for the BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed Award for Ethnography 2015* This book follows the global trail of one of the world's most unremarkable and ubiquitous objects - flip-flops. Through this unique lens, Caroline Knowles takes a ground level view of the lives and places of globalisation's back roads, providing new insights that challenge contemporary accounts of globalisation. Rather than orderly product chains, the book shows that globalisation along the flip-flop trail is a tangle of unstable, shifting, ad hoc and contingent connections. This book displays both the instabilities of the 'chains' and the complexities, personal topographies and skills with which people navigate these global uncertainties. Flip-Flop provides new ways of thinking about globalisation from the vantage point of the shifting landscape crossed by a seemingly ordinary and everyday commodity.

"Re-Situating Identities" signals a crucial move away from the extremes of statistical reductionism and textual preoccupation which have marked race and ethnic studies. Instead, inspired by an insistence on concrete social and political change, these essays seek to re-energize the field by systematic and empirically grounded investigation of the production of identities in power relationships. Working with ethnographic data, life histories, and historical documents, sociologists, anthropologists and cultural theorists from Britain, Canada, and the United States present a diverse array of scenarios from courtrooms and classrooms to diasporas, communities, state memorials, and media representations. Each scenario raises an array of critical questions of existing theory and policy: What is the impact of multiculturalist policies? Should the term "race" still be used? What are the controversies surrounding the concept of "black cultures"? What part do race and ethnicity play in the construction of collective memories? What part do notions of home play in the organization of racial exclusion? What can we learn about racism from life stories? How is nationalism mediated by the local experiences it attempts to supersede? And what does the local mean and what is its relationship to globalization?

In 1997 the United Kingdom returned control of Hong Kong to China, ending the city's status as one of the last remnants of the British Empire and initiating a new phase for it as both a modern city and a hub for global migrations. "Hong Kong" is a tour of the city's postcolonial urban landscape, innovatively told through fieldwork and photography.
Caroline Knowles and Douglas Harper's point of entry into Hong Kong is the unusual position of the British expatriates who chose to remain in the city after the transition. Now a relatively insignificant presence, British migrants in Hong Kong have become intimately connected with another small minority group there: immigrants from Southeast Asia. The lives, journeys, and stories of these two groups bring to life a place where the past continues to resonate for all its residents, even as the city hurtles forward into a future marked by transience and transition. By skillfully blending ethnographic and visual approaches, "Hong Kong" offers a fascinating guide to a city that is at once unique in its recent history and exemplary of our globalized present.