Professor Andrew Smith

  • Professor of Sociology (Sociological & Cultural Studies)

telephone: 01413305267
email: Andrew.Smith.2@glasgow.ac.uk

College of Social Sciences, School of Social & Political Sciences, Adam Smith Building, 1013

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-1514-8553

Research interests

‌My main area of interest is the study of literature, sport and creative cultures more generally, in the colonial and postcolonial contexts, and with a particular focus on what people respond to, understand, and make use of, different kinds of culture in their lives.

In the past I have published a number of articles on the West Indian writer C.L.R. James, culminating in a book - C.L.R. James and the Study of Culture - which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010.  Another essay, which discusses and compares James' writing on culture and black politics was published in the December 2011 issue of Cultural Sociology and was subsequently the winner of the British Sociological Association / Sage Prize for Innovation/Excellence 2012.

In 2013 I helped lead the organization of a conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of C.L.R. James' great work 'Beyond a Boundary'. You can find films from the event here,  thanks to the hard work of the crew of the charity World Write. A new Duke University Press volume, for which I was the lead editor, brings together for the first time a series of original secondary analyses of Beyond a Boundary. Entitled Marxism, Colonialism and Cricket, it was published in 2019. 

Some of my other work considers: the history of the representation of imperial defeats, and of the wider significance of tropes of embattlement, captivity and besiegement in understandings of empire (see this issue of Race and Class); ‌work on the peculiar nature of the social relationship which exists between service sector workers and their customers (see this essay from New Left Review), and an interpretive account of Nigerian e-mail scams in Cultural Studies. My second monograph was a short theoretical discussion of Racism and Everyday Life.

In 2024 I published a new monograph: Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in and around Glasgow, the book explores how working-class readers engaged with, made sense of, and contested a sense of exclusion from, contemporary poetry. In doing so it sheds light on the symbolic enclosure of poetry, on how that enclosure takes shape in the encounter between readers and poems, but also on why poetry continues to matter. Through these conversations, and in further interviews with unpublished poets, it reflects on the creative and expressive affordances of poetry, on what can be done with poetry and what it can make possible.

I discuss the book with our own Matt Dawson as part of the New Books Network podcast series here. 

Research groups

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2001 | 2000
Number of items: 43.

2024

Smith, A. (2024) Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures. Series: Sociology of the Arts. Palgrave/Springer: UK. ISBN 9783031664472 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-66448-9)

Smith, A. (2024) The uses of poetry. Sociological Review, 72(4), pp. 773-788. (doi: 10.1177/00380261241258582)

Smith, A. (2024) Reflections on Wallace’s The Culture Trap. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(3), pp. 543-551. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2220395)

2023

Byrne, B., Garratt, L., Harries, B. and Smith, A. (2023) Histories of place: the racialization of representational space in Govanhill and Butetown. Identities, 30(3), pp. 373-391. (doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2022.2099119)

2022

Smith, A. (2022) Tearing asunder the pretty fancies of capitalism: reflections on Marx and Empire. Journal of Classical Sociology, 22(4), pp. 402-409. (doi: 10.1177/1468795X221105723)

2021

Smith, A. , Byrne, B., Garratt, L. and Harries, B. (2021) Everyday aesthetics, locality and racialisation. Cultural Sociology, 15(1), pp. 91-112. (doi: 10.1177/1749975520949422)

Garratt, L., Byrne, B., Harries, B. and Smith, A. (2021) Resilient resistance? The third sector in the London Borough of Newham at a time of ‘post-racial’ politics. Critical Social Policy, 41(1), pp. 46-67. (doi: 10.1177/0261018319898176)

2020

Smith, A. (2020) Experiments in Exile: C.L.R. James, Hélio Oiticica and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness by Laura Harris, New York, Fordham University Press, 2018, 221 pp., £19.99 (paperback), ISBN 9780823279791. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(8), pp. 1533-1535. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1682178)[Book Review]

Harries, B., Byrne, B., Garratt, L. and Smith, A. (2020) “Divide and conquer”. Anti-racist and community organizing under austerity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(16), pp. 20-38. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1682176)

Smith, A. (2020) Passing through difference: C.L.R. James and Henry Lefebvre. Identities, 27(1), pp. 38-52. (doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2018.1558880)

2018

Featherstone, D., Gair, C. , Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (Eds.) (2018) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Series: The C. L. R. James archives. Duke University Press: Durham, NC. ISBN 9781478001126

Featherstone, D., Gair, C. , Smith, A. and Hogsbjerg, C. (2018) Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. In: Featherstone, D., Gair, C., Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (eds.) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Series: The C. L. R. James archives. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 1-31. ISBN 9781478001126

Smith, A. (2018) The very stuff of human life: C.L.R. James on sport, history and human nature. In: Featherstone, D., Gair, C., Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (eds.) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 191-203. ISBN 9781478001126

Smith, A. (2018) Prising open the contradictions of Empire: The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies. With the pamphlet: The Case for West Indian Self Government, by C. L. R. James. Cultural Critique, 99, pp. 153-168. (doi: 10.1353/cul.2018.0025)[Book Review]

Hirsch, S. and Smith, A. (2018) A view through a window: social relations, material objects and locality. Sociological Review, 66(1), pp. 224-240. (doi: 10.1177/0038026117724068)

2017

Smith, A. (2017) Critical distance and dualism: a tangential response. In: Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Primus Books: Delhi, pp. 357-366. ISBN 9789384082055

Smith, A. (2017) Racism, empire and sociology. Sociology, 51(2), pp. 491-499. (doi: 10.1177/0038038516641856)

2016

Smith, A. (2016) The window and the wardrobe: C.L.R. James and the critical reading of sport and literature. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52(3), pp. 262-273. (doi: 10.1080/17449855.2016.1203100)

Smith, A. (2016) Racism and Everyday Life: Social Theory, History and 'Race'. Series: Palgrave pivot. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. ISBN 9781137493552

2015

Dawson, M., Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (Eds.) (2015) Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge. Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire. ISBN 9781137493637

Dawson, M. , Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (2015) Stretching the sociological imagination in the neo-liberal academy. In: Dawson, M., Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (eds.) Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge. Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire, pp. 246-262. ISBN 9781137493637

Smith, A. (2015) Rethinking the 'everyday' in 'ethnicity and everyday life'. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(7), pp. 1137-1151. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2014.987307)

Smith, A. (2015) Review of Darcus Howe: A Political Biography by Robin Bunce and Paul Field. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(3), pp. 521-523. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2014.943782)[Book Review]

Smith, A. and Simpson, L. (2015) In what ways is Scotland’s ethnic diversity distinctive. In: Simpson, L. and Jivraj, S. (eds.) Ethnic Identity and Inequalities in Britain: The dynamics of diversity. Policy Press: Bristol, pp. 93-106. ISBN 9781447321811

2014

Simpson, L. and Smith, A. (2014) Who Feels Scottish: National Identities and Ethnicity in Scotland. [Research Reports or Papers]

2012

Smith, A. (2012) Hemmed in: on the representation of imperial defeat. Race and Class, 53(4), pp. 1-23. (doi: 10.1177/0306396811433096)

Smith, A. (2012) On shopworking. New Left Review, 78, pp. 99-113.

2011

Smith, A. (2011) C.L.R. James, Vanity Fair and the audience. New Formations, 73, pp. 11-25. (doi: 10.3898/NEWF.73.01.2011)

Smith, A. (2011) 'Concrete freedom' : C.L.R. James on culture and black politics. Cultural Sociology, 5(4), pp. 479-499. (doi: 10.1177/1749975510391588)

Smith, A. (2011) First and second glances: working class Scottish readers and 'Things fall apart'. In: Whittaker, D. (ed.) Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart': 1958-2008. Series: Cross/Cultures - Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English (137). Rodopi: Amsterdam, pp. 149-160. ISBN 978-90-420-3396-2

2010

Smith, A. (2010) C.L.R. James and the Study of Culture. Palgrave Macmillan: London. ISBN 9780230220218

2009

Smith, A. (2009) Nigerian scam e-mails and the charms of capital. Cultural Studies, 23(1), pp. 27-47. (doi: 10.1080/09502380802016162)

2006

Smith, A. (2006) 'Beyond a boundary' (of a 'Field of cultural production') - Reading C.L.R. James with Bourdieu. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(4), p. 95. (doi: 10.1177/0263276406065116)

Smith, A. (2006) 'A conception of the beautiful': C. L. R. James' Glasgow Herald cricket articles, 1937-1938. International Journal of the History of Sport, 23(1), pp. 46-66. (doi: 10.1177/0263276406065116)

Smith, A. (2006) 'If I Have No Money for Travel, I Have No Need': Migration and Imagination. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(1), pp. 47-62.

Smith, A. (2006) Migrance, hybridité et études littéraires postcoloniales. In: Lazarus, N. (ed.) Penser le Postcolonial: Une Introduction Critique. Editions Amsterdam: Paris, France. ISBN 9782915547276

2005

Smith, A. (2005) Ben Okri and the freedom whose walls are closing in. Race and Class, 47(1), pp. 1-13. (doi: 10.1177/0306396805055079)

Smith, A. (2005) Distance between you and your home: the estrangement of postcolonial writing. Sociological Review, 53(2), pp. 275-293.

Smith, A. (2005) Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslims: the public performance of Pakistani transnational identity politics. Theory, Culture and Society, 22(6), pp. 149-151. (doi: 10.1177/0263276405059579)[Book Review]

2004

Smith, A. (2004) Reading against the postcolonial grain : migrancy and exile in the short stories on Kanchana Ugbabe. Research in African literatures, 35((3) fa), pp. 62-75.

2001

Smith, A. (2001) Exile and African Literature edited by Eldred Durosimi Jones and Marjorie Jones Oxford: James Currey, 2000. Pp. 152. £11.95 (pbk.). Journal of Modern African Studies, 39(3), pp. 558-559. (doi: 10.1017/S0022278X01283712)[Book Review]

Smith, A. (2001) Reading Wealth in Nigeria: Occult Capitalism and Marx's Vampires. Historical Materialism(9), pp. 39-59.

2000

Smith, A. (2000) Imaginative knowledge: Scottish readers and Nigerian fictions. African Research and Documentation, 83, pp. 23-36. (doi: 10.1017/S0305862X00016216)

This list was generated on Mon Mar 24 20:23:54 2025 GMT.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Book Reviews | Edited Books | Research Reports or Papers
Number of items: 43.

Articles

Smith, A. (2024) The uses of poetry. Sociological Review, 72(4), pp. 773-788. (doi: 10.1177/00380261241258582)

Smith, A. (2024) Reflections on Wallace’s The Culture Trap. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(3), pp. 543-551. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2023.2220395)

Byrne, B., Garratt, L., Harries, B. and Smith, A. (2023) Histories of place: the racialization of representational space in Govanhill and Butetown. Identities, 30(3), pp. 373-391. (doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2022.2099119)

Smith, A. (2022) Tearing asunder the pretty fancies of capitalism: reflections on Marx and Empire. Journal of Classical Sociology, 22(4), pp. 402-409. (doi: 10.1177/1468795X221105723)

Smith, A. , Byrne, B., Garratt, L. and Harries, B. (2021) Everyday aesthetics, locality and racialisation. Cultural Sociology, 15(1), pp. 91-112. (doi: 10.1177/1749975520949422)

Garratt, L., Byrne, B., Harries, B. and Smith, A. (2021) Resilient resistance? The third sector in the London Borough of Newham at a time of ‘post-racial’ politics. Critical Social Policy, 41(1), pp. 46-67. (doi: 10.1177/0261018319898176)

Harries, B., Byrne, B., Garratt, L. and Smith, A. (2020) “Divide and conquer”. Anti-racist and community organizing under austerity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(16), pp. 20-38. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1682176)

Smith, A. (2020) Passing through difference: C.L.R. James and Henry Lefebvre. Identities, 27(1), pp. 38-52. (doi: 10.1080/1070289X.2018.1558880)

Hirsch, S. and Smith, A. (2018) A view through a window: social relations, material objects and locality. Sociological Review, 66(1), pp. 224-240. (doi: 10.1177/0038026117724068)

Smith, A. (2017) Racism, empire and sociology. Sociology, 51(2), pp. 491-499. (doi: 10.1177/0038038516641856)

Smith, A. (2016) The window and the wardrobe: C.L.R. James and the critical reading of sport and literature. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52(3), pp. 262-273. (doi: 10.1080/17449855.2016.1203100)

Smith, A. (2015) Rethinking the 'everyday' in 'ethnicity and everyday life'. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(7), pp. 1137-1151. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2014.987307)

Smith, A. (2012) Hemmed in: on the representation of imperial defeat. Race and Class, 53(4), pp. 1-23. (doi: 10.1177/0306396811433096)

Smith, A. (2012) On shopworking. New Left Review, 78, pp. 99-113.

Smith, A. (2011) C.L.R. James, Vanity Fair and the audience. New Formations, 73, pp. 11-25. (doi: 10.3898/NEWF.73.01.2011)

Smith, A. (2011) 'Concrete freedom' : C.L.R. James on culture and black politics. Cultural Sociology, 5(4), pp. 479-499. (doi: 10.1177/1749975510391588)

Smith, A. (2009) Nigerian scam e-mails and the charms of capital. Cultural Studies, 23(1), pp. 27-47. (doi: 10.1080/09502380802016162)

Smith, A. (2006) 'Beyond a boundary' (of a 'Field of cultural production') - Reading C.L.R. James with Bourdieu. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(4), p. 95. (doi: 10.1177/0263276406065116)

Smith, A. (2006) 'A conception of the beautiful': C. L. R. James' Glasgow Herald cricket articles, 1937-1938. International Journal of the History of Sport, 23(1), pp. 46-66. (doi: 10.1177/0263276406065116)

Smith, A. (2006) 'If I Have No Money for Travel, I Have No Need': Migration and Imagination. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(1), pp. 47-62.

Smith, A. (2005) Ben Okri and the freedom whose walls are closing in. Race and Class, 47(1), pp. 1-13. (doi: 10.1177/0306396805055079)

Smith, A. (2005) Distance between you and your home: the estrangement of postcolonial writing. Sociological Review, 53(2), pp. 275-293.

Smith, A. (2004) Reading against the postcolonial grain : migrancy and exile in the short stories on Kanchana Ugbabe. Research in African literatures, 35((3) fa), pp. 62-75.

Smith, A. (2001) Reading Wealth in Nigeria: Occult Capitalism and Marx's Vampires. Historical Materialism(9), pp. 39-59.

Smith, A. (2000) Imaginative knowledge: Scottish readers and Nigerian fictions. African Research and Documentation, 83, pp. 23-36. (doi: 10.1017/S0305862X00016216)

Books

Smith, A. (2024) Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures. Series: Sociology of the Arts. Palgrave/Springer: UK. ISBN 9783031664472 (doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-66448-9)

Smith, A. (2016) Racism and Everyday Life: Social Theory, History and 'Race'. Series: Palgrave pivot. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. ISBN 9781137493552

Smith, A. (2010) C.L.R. James and the Study of Culture. Palgrave Macmillan: London. ISBN 9780230220218

Book Sections

Featherstone, D., Gair, C. , Smith, A. and Hogsbjerg, C. (2018) Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. In: Featherstone, D., Gair, C., Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (eds.) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Series: The C. L. R. James archives. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 1-31. ISBN 9781478001126

Smith, A. (2018) The very stuff of human life: C.L.R. James on sport, history and human nature. In: Featherstone, D., Gair, C., Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (eds.) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, pp. 191-203. ISBN 9781478001126

Smith, A. (2017) Critical distance and dualism: a tangential response. In: Pathways of Creative Research: Towards a Festival of Dialogues. Primus Books: Delhi, pp. 357-366. ISBN 9789384082055

Dawson, M. , Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (2015) Stretching the sociological imagination in the neo-liberal academy. In: Dawson, M., Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (eds.) Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge. Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire, pp. 246-262. ISBN 9781137493637

Smith, A. and Simpson, L. (2015) In what ways is Scotland’s ethnic diversity distinctive. In: Simpson, L. and Jivraj, S. (eds.) Ethnic Identity and Inequalities in Britain: The dynamics of diversity. Policy Press: Bristol, pp. 93-106. ISBN 9781447321811

Smith, A. (2011) First and second glances: working class Scottish readers and 'Things fall apart'. In: Whittaker, D. (ed.) Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart': 1958-2008. Series: Cross/Cultures - Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English (137). Rodopi: Amsterdam, pp. 149-160. ISBN 978-90-420-3396-2

Smith, A. (2006) Migrance, hybridité et études littéraires postcoloniales. In: Lazarus, N. (ed.) Penser le Postcolonial: Une Introduction Critique. Editions Amsterdam: Paris, France. ISBN 9782915547276

Book Reviews

Smith, A. (2020) Experiments in Exile: C.L.R. James, Hélio Oiticica and the Aesthetic Sociality of Blackness by Laura Harris, New York, Fordham University Press, 2018, 221 pp., £19.99 (paperback), ISBN 9780823279791. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 43(8), pp. 1533-1535. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1682178)[Book Review]

Smith, A. (2018) Prising open the contradictions of Empire: The Life of Captain Cipriani: An Account of British Government in the West Indies. With the pamphlet: The Case for West Indian Self Government, by C. L. R. James. Cultural Critique, 99, pp. 153-168. (doi: 10.1353/cul.2018.0025)[Book Review]

Smith, A. (2015) Review of Darcus Howe: A Political Biography by Robin Bunce and Paul Field. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(3), pp. 521-523. (doi: 10.1080/01419870.2014.943782)[Book Review]

Smith, A. (2005) Imagined diasporas among Manchester Muslims: the public performance of Pakistani transnational identity politics. Theory, Culture and Society, 22(6), pp. 149-151. (doi: 10.1177/0263276405059579)[Book Review]

Smith, A. (2001) Exile and African Literature edited by Eldred Durosimi Jones and Marjorie Jones Oxford: James Currey, 2000. Pp. 152. £11.95 (pbk.). Journal of Modern African Studies, 39(3), pp. 558-559. (doi: 10.1017/S0022278X01283712)[Book Review]

Edited Books

Featherstone, D., Gair, C. , Hogsbjerg, C. and Smith, A. (Eds.) (2018) Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket: C. L. R. James's Beyond a Boundary at Fifty. Series: The C. L. R. James archives. Duke University Press: Durham, NC. ISBN 9781478001126

Dawson, M., Fowler, B., Miller, D. and Smith, A. (Eds.) (2015) Stretching the Sociological Imagination: Essays in Honour of John Eldridge. Palgrave Macmillan: Hampshire. ISBN 9781137493637

Research Reports or Papers

Simpson, L. and Smith, A. (2014) Who Feels Scottish: National Identities and Ethnicity in Scotland. [Research Reports or Papers]

This list was generated on Mon Mar 24 20:23:54 2025 GMT.

Supervision

I have supervised more than 20 PhD students to completion and am always interested in considering supervision in relation to projects in these areas: cultural sociology including the sociologies of sport and literature; empire, imperialism and postcolonialism; the sociology of racism and anti-racism; the sociology of everyday life; Black radical social theory.

  • Yin, Zhaowei
    Hybrid identity of second-generation British Chinese middle class

Teaching

Honours

I have contributed various sections to our Level 1 course (including on the sociology of everyday life, understanding popular culture, and the sociology of racism); as well as to our Level 2a course (introductory 'classical' sociology) and our Level 2 course (introduction to social theory). At Honours level I teach courses entitled: Black Radical Social Thought and the Sociology of Poetry. 


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