Robert F. Carley, "Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice" (SUNY Press, 2019)

Sep 23, 2025

Robert F. Carley, an Associate Professor at Texas A&M, specializes in cultural approaches to social movements and racial politics. He discusses how tactics in social movements serve as a public expression of injustice rather than just means to achieve goals. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci, Carley explores the relationship between race and mobilization, emphasizing the importance of ideological contention in shaping movement tactics. He also presents new concepts for analyzing the tactical practices of protests involving race, linking historical insights to contemporary issues.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Tactics As Cultural Practice

Robert F. Carley frames tactics as cultural practices that produce meaning through collective protest.
He argues social movements are cultural performances, not merely means to policy ends.

ANECDOTE

Book Emerged From Dissertation Chapters

Carley recounts his academic path from sociology to cultural studies to motivate the book.
He explains the book grew from two dissertation chapters linking frames and Gramsci.

ADVICE

Use Hall To Recenter Theory And Politics

Make a detour through Stuart Hall to connect micro practices to macro political moments.
Critically engage existing theory rather than only applying it to strengthen analysis.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley argues by contrast that tactics are, above all, what social movements do. They are not mere means to an end so much as they are a public form of expression pointing out injustices and making just demands. Rooted in a highly original analysis of the tactically mediated relationship between race and mobilization in the work of Italian philosopher and revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice (SUNY Press, 2019) demonstrates how tactics impact the organizational structures of social movements and expand the affinities of political communities. Carley looks at how Gramsci used innovative tactics to bridge perceptions of racial differences between factory workers and subaltern groups, the latter having been denigrated to the point of subhumanity by a complex Italian national racial economy. Newly envisioning Gramsci as a theorist of race within a broader context of social struggle, Carley connects Gramsci's insights into the political mobilizations of racialized subaltern groups to contemporary critical race theory and cultural studies of racialization and racism. Speaking across disciplines and drawing on a number of empirical examples, Carley offers a battery of original concepts to assist scholars and activists in analyzing the tactical practices of protests in which race is a central factor.

Author info - Robert F. Carley is Associate Professor of International Studies at Texas A&M University, College Station.

Host info – Michael L. Rosino is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Molloy University, whose work focuses on racial politics, media, and democracy. He recently published the book Democracy is Awkward: Grappling with Racism inside Grassroots Political Organizing and an essay in Time on the importance of cross-racial coalitions in social movements.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology