Notes on: Jogie, M. (2022) Critical Race Theory and Higher Education Research: In the Shadow of Bricolage. Theory and Method in Higher Education Research. 7 .  https://doi.org/10.1108/S2056-375220210000007002

[Lots of material I hadn't encountered before -- I've included the references that look most interesting]

CRT has been widely denounced by US and UK politicians but it has also been used as a framework for research. The point is to offer a decent criticism. One issue is 'its origin as a troubled bricolage of conveniently assembled "tenets"' (1) which do not fit well with 'evidentiary production' required in HE research. It might serve better as an explanatory theory.

A bricoleur is someone who mixes materials into an artisan project and it can also be used to describe methodology [see Levi-Strauss]. CRT is bricolage with different origins. In the USA and South Africa it has arisen from relatively recent segregation, but in the UK and Europe, it is linked more to social progress, colonialism and modernity. In the global South, racism, Western pathology 'since it carries a Heideggerian "will – to – ignorance"' excluding local knowledge.

In different contexts, racism took different emphases. In segregationism it appeared as a dogma referring to '"congenital inferiority"' [citing Benedict], almost as a biological matter and this led to a notion of black power against non-blackness, including 'diaspora unification' (2). The whole biological argument was much reduced by the work on DNA, and critiques of statistical arguments about bell curves. However, there is still some controversy about 'ontological concessions to race'. Feminists see it as the responsibility of the patriarchy [hooks], Marxists as related to modes of production [Cole is the only one cited who I recognised].

Omi and Winant proposed '"racial formation theory"' (RFT) as a process whereby racial categories were determined by social economic and political forces, and race became master category. This is still popular with Americans because they prefer 'meso level analyses that do not get trapped in socio-politics and structure agency problem [sic]' (3) [and it has been substantially ripped off by Meghji].

Racism is still under theorised. Bonilla Silva develops from RFT and sees racism as 'the system of forces' which generates 'stereotypes prejudices and discrimination'. Feagin (2006) develops 'systemic racism theory' which talks about 'an intractable "white racial frame"… A central component of "whiteness" that is more sociological in nature than political' and again this informed American theorisation particularly
Feagin, J. R. (2006). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. London: Routledge.
Feagin, J. R. (2013). The white racial frame: Centuries of racial framing and counter-framing (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
Feagin, J. R., & Hernan, V. (2000). White racism: The basics: Routledge

Cultural studies in the UK and poststructuralism in Europe expressed dissatisfaction with Marxist scholarship and Hall gathered ideas about race ethnicity and nation as matters of 'culture' and cultural identity, as a matter of '"positioning"' [but see this Hall]: those had to be theorised first. Poststructuralists outlined ambiguities in the foundational theories and 'spawned an anthology of discrete works, rather ambiguously known as "race critical" theories (Appiah, 1993; Goldberg, 1990; Miles and Brown, 2003) [all new to me]. Goldberg apparently draws on Foucault and and 'ahistoricist approach to  power', and Bauman on modernity as 'chaotically ambivalent and uncertain'. This leaves race as 'an impossible box to check, being eminently contingent on political and moral orders of discourse' (4). [Which will chime nicely with transracialism at the everyday level].
Appiah, A. (1993). In my father's house: Africa in the philosophy of culture: OUP USA.
Goldberg David, T. (1993). Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Oxford: Blackwell, Oxford.
Goldberg, D. T. (1990). Anatomy of Racism: ERIC.
Miles, R., & Brown, M. (2003). Racism (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

At the more radical practical level, there have been large-scale movements like BLM and Rhodes Must Fall. Marxism has tried to regain ground, and Hall's culturalism has led to new notions of multiculturalism. Meanwhile '"race critical" ideologies have been taken to their natural limits by prominent scholars advocating for a post race world'.

Gilroy cautions against easy re-articulation into democratic forms and sees race as a necessarily permanent subject of critique. Sociologists and activists have continued to disagree on how to make the concepts 'coherent, consistent and complete' ( Golash-Boza, 2016; Winant, 2000)' (5). It can be explained in terms of the paradoxes 'between social cohesion, culture and individual agency within the structure – agency problem' which in turn leads to 'the balance between implicit agreement and explicit coercion in the hegemonic power struggles that are contextualised by race and racism'. Activism oriented scholars in particular have invested in 'the bricolage approach of CRT' to support their campaign's while social theorists 'continue to investigate and trial alternative paradigms for these paradoxes'.

Golash-Boza, T. (2016). A critical and comprehensive sociological theory of race and racism.Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 2(2), 129-141
Winant, H. (2000). Race and race theory. Annual review of sociology, 26(1), 169-185.

CRT can be compared with a 'type I (propositional) theory, in the semantic scheme of Abend (2008)'. This means that the theories have been 'constructed using a set of assumptions considered to be tautologically "true"' with logical connections between 'variables and parameters'. They are threatened if assumptions can't be vindicated by empirical investigation or if deductive logic is flawed. This is common when social theory encounters structure-agency paradoxes, especially with notions of causality which allegedly connect 'society, culture, agency and power'[Archer is one reference here]. We are left with 'overlapping or competing for clarity'.
Abend, G. (2008). The meaning of ‘theory’. Sociological Theory, 26(2), 173-199.

CRT is more like a Type 2 theory that 'attempts to explain a phenomenon by "identifying [ing] a number of 'factors' or 'conditions', which individually should pass some sort of counterfactual test for causal relevance and whose interaction effects should somehow [emphasis added] be taken into account' (6). The term somehow means that there is no necessary capacity of full logical consistency or completeness: 'the empirical value of theory lies formidably in the balance between its explanatory power and predictive power'. The more relevant factors it contains, the greater the explanatory power and the better the factors are weighted and linked, the more predictive power, if explanatory power is to be sought, type II theories can be more useful.

CRT tries to explain race and racism together using 'tenets' which have grown in number and scope especially in HE research, and not all authors recognise the same list. Context seems important. There is an overlap with 'isolated concepts' from type I theories. This produces 'a higher degree of explanatory power but a lower degree of predictive power' than alternatives. There are similarities between type I theorists and CRT through the commitment to explaining rather than predicting [Bonilla Silva is one example. The tenets 'align to different activists and sociologists agendas'.

Racial realism is 'the most fundamental to CRT', associated with Derek Bell, who argues that racism is at the centre of the real lives of black people, inevitable however it is constructed, which has led to the implication that 'racism is institutionalised and must be understood in its historical context (Gillborn 2015 ; Warmington 2019)'. Racial categories are preserved in 'practice discourse and thoughts', implicitly. We no longer need to worry about the metaphysics and can get straight on with discussions about segregation and marginalisation. However this leaves us with an 'unassailable and dogmatic epistemological basis' which has led to criticism including 'its exclusion of an idealist or cultural component (Crenshaw 2010)' (7). Other tenets have been adopted partly to ameliorate this.
Warmington, P. (2019). Critical race theory in England: Impact and opposition. Identities, 27(1), 20-37

Critique of liberalism supports racial realism. It can take the form of a critique of meritocracy and equal access to opportunities, or colourblind approaches, which can themselves be seen as ideological. There is work in HE on 'the training of teachers to develop "politically correct shields" (Lander, 2014)', opting for neutrality rather than discussing race. There is also '"colourism"' which favours people of mixed race heritage if they have white parents — the claim is that they are 'inherently advantaged' [extraordinary references here]. Liberals might respond that this sort of argument brings about '"equality fatigue"' as seen in reactions like All Lives Matter, or the arguments that society has become '"post race"' (8). There is 'some normative vision of justice (Rawls, 2001, Sen, 1987)' implied in these debates.
Lander, V. (2014). Initial Teacher Education: The Practice of Whiteness. In R. Race & V. Lander (Eds.),Advancing race and ethnicity in education (pp. 93-110). UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement (E. Kelly Ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: HarvardUniversity Press.
Sen, A. (1987). Commodities and Capabilities. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
Experiential knowledge, based on reworking of historiography and memories studies and 'transitional justices'. Ethnographic methods are used and have been expanded to take in all sorts of family histories, parables, testimonials and the rest [Solorzano and Bernal 2001)'. This has led to counter story, first inaugurated as a first person singular voice in black literature, now seen as a privileged approach to research countering neutral or objective epistemologies. However, CRT has also adopted methods such as 'allegory and composition' which is seen as less rigourous and have flirted with 'a completely deconstructive approach', attracting the reservations even of Ladson Billings (2005) [there is also a mention of Richardson and the problems of evaluation and judgement in auto ethnography]. Counter stories still important in understanding 'faculty apartheid (Bernal and Villalpando, 2002, and racial micro-aggressions (Linder, Harris, Allen and Hubain, 2015)'
Bernal, D. D., & Villalpando, O. (2002). An apartheid of knowledge in academia: The struggle over the" legitimate" knowledge of faculty of color. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35(2), 169-180
Linder, C., Harris, J. C., Allen, E. L., & Hubain, B. (2015). Building inclusive pedagogy: Recommendations from a national study of students of color in higher education and student affairs graduate programs. Equity & Excellence in Education, 48(2), 178-194

Intersectionality, the experience of unique groups cutting across the usual social groupings. Introduced by Crenshaw, but usually represented 'in the philosophically dilute form' [I am not sure I have understood this -- there seems to be a problem with multiple oppressions and trying to understand them in terms of the discrete source identities]. An analysis of trans students in racialised HEIs [Stewart andNicolazzo 2018] found that the students were oppressed through tacit exclusion rather than marginalisation and that an emphasis on multiplicity can fail when applied to liberalism. It also depends on 'oppressive forces being epistemologically recognisable' (9). Perhaps the true power of intersectionality can be seen in 'the paradox in game theory, the prisoner's dilemma': — policies aimed at single marginalised group can also favour majority members like white ones and therefore exclude black ones. This would be a good case to apply notions of intersectionality.
Stewart, D.-L., & Nicolazzo, Z. (2018). High impact of [whiteness] on trans* students in postsecondary education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 51(2), 132-145.

CRT talks about hegemonic projects which is a particular problem for activists because it changes form in different power struggles. Activists also often 'tend to take a "lesser of evils" approach to dealing with hegemony'. CRT has an advantage here in that does not pick particular sides but opposes all racialising hegemonic projects. However, the two tenets referring most to hegemony are rooted in 'post-Marxism and the work of Antonio Gramsci' (10). Interest convergence is based especially on the Supreme Court decision on segregation which preserved white democracy against communism, and and other examples in HE which practice tokenism.

The second hegemonic project is the idea of '"whiteness as ideology"'. This overlaps with Feagin ( 2103) and 'the "white racial frame"' and was understood first as '"white supremacy"' and, later, '"whiteness as property"'. This tenet was applied especially to education by Ladson Billings and Tate (1995). Gillborn retained the notion 'for dramatic effect but tailored its meaning to reference the unintentional political norms carried through whiteness as being mainstream and embedded in educational policy-making' (10). DiAngelo added 'white fragility'as a way of avoiding discussions of racism and that is now been incorporated as a way of the need to call out racism. One offshoot has been 'Critical Whiteness Studies' (Leonardo, 2009) and 'a reflexive methodology for higher education research ( Corces-Zimmerman and Guida 2019)'.

Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, whiteness, and education: Routledge
Corces-Zimmerman, C., & Guida, T. F. (2019). Toward a critical whiteness methodology: Challengingwhiteness through qualitative research. In Theory and method in higher education research: Emerald Publishing Limited

However, not all forms of conflict and discrimination involve 'obvious interactions with some form of hegemonic infrastructure that can be accessed by marginalised groups'. This is like the idea of '"subaltern" classes' who have been excluded and denied but have not come to full awareness of the injustice. Hence the commitment to social justice and the all round activism and social inequality.

The theoretical 'de facto lack of hygiene' (11) has made CRT an easy target for criticism, especially in the UK [Hayes, 2013, and Parsons 2016], and even American scholars have preferred type I theories. However, it might find a place in other bricolage type theories including those 'in the organisational design and function of HEIs'.
Hayes, D. (2013). Teaching students to think racially. Retrieved from https://www.spiked-online.com/2013/03/19/teaching-students-to-think-racially/
Parsons, C. (2016). Ethnicity, gender, deprivation and low educational attainment in England:political arithmetic, ideological stances and the deficient society. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 11(2), 160-183.

It might help focus on regulatory structures and opposition to '"white governmentality"', policies which other racialised citizens, say by adopting 'globalised forces through policy borrowing'. Ball has always argued that educational policy-making is a process of bricolage, ramshackle policies, compromise and so on [presumably the micro-politics book]. This makes it unlikely to pursue equality reliably. Bell has also argued that the US judicial system can do no other than reproduce racism because there is no meaningful way to put black rights at the centre of it. It is doubtful that HEIs will ever be able to set a deracialising agenda in accordance even with liberal policies.
Ball, S. J. (1998). Big policies/small world: An introduction to international perspectives in education policy. Comparative education, 34(2), 119-130.

Even when policies are formed, they get 'integrated within the HEI organisational culture' in unpredictable ways (12). Policy regimes differ as to organisational cultures. We might even think of them in Deleuzian terms as an assemblage of unstable relations and possibilities [!]. We might use the notion of intersectionality here at least in its improved game theoretic form for exposing these 'systematic distortions' in apparently simple organisational truths. (12). There is always organisational improvisation, 'an agentic bricolage that is performative, goal oriented and strategic'. For example, uplifting 'excellence, egalitarianism, efficiency' may have the effect of subduing and deconstructing 'racialised experiences of students and staff'. Counter stories would help break through any apparent 'common knowledge' [and expose, I think, experiences that appear to be 'simultaneously gendered and racialised'].

Racialised ideologies also have 'distinct genetic make-ups… Mutually exclusive "orientations" with respect to their underlying policy frameworks' (13) [not sure I understand this again — something to do with equilibria being achieved in ideology despite this complexity?] Gramsci apparently recognised this in his work on power and hegemony and Hebdige has argued  that 'similar dynamics apply to expressions of race, ethnicity and nationality as a whole'. What results is a series of expressions that get 'merged and assimilated into our identities via a bricolage style series of cumulative and recursive social practices'.

These practices allow different normative dimensions of hegemony to manifest themselves through change. CRT gets to this by addressing hegemonic instability and re-stability under the tenets of interest convergence and whiteness as ideology [not very well — it's as simple reproduction argument really]. Others have pointed to other dimensions — 'Nimako (2016) explains that there is an epistemological components of racialization in universities that reinforces the exclusion of minority knowledges, over and above hegemonic exclusion of minority ethnic identity'. Only a wide commitment to social justice can expose these [is this the old epistemic violence arguments?].
Nimako, K. (2016). About Them, But Without Them Race and Ethnic Studies Relations in Dutch Universities. In R. Grosfoguel, R. Hernández, & E. R. Velásquez (Eds.), Decolonizing the Westernized university: Interventions in philosophy of education from within and without (pp. 17-26). Lanham: Lexington Books

CRT has found its niche and its bricolage style has not prevented this. Others also have a bricolage style — critical pedagogy, postcolonial studies and other frameworks addressing marginalised groups, including the offshoots of CRT. Alternatives trying to systematise and go back to type I theories are still difficult, 'likely to be redundant'(14). Better to try and stabilise it, to break the tenets to allow for 'specific dimensions equality orientations and hegemonic projects'. There is also a need to develop the right balance of tenets in other states. In the USA there is already a 'neo-pragmatist framing of sociology' which is a natural fit for bricolage. CRT might wish to commit itself more to the approach offered by Critical Realism so that it can achieve some integration 'with the core issues of gender, class and culture relevant to the socialisation of higher education' (14).