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The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on race and place.

The approach used by the authors is to combine an overview of sociological debates on place within a framework that makes the case for a relational approach to race, space and place.

The overview provides an account of place in sociology, of the relationality of race and place, and the making of race and place in sociological work.

The Introduction sets the papers in context, providing a short account of each of them; it also aims to present an argument for attention to race and place in sociology in a setting characterized by racism and reaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the inter-relationship between target setting, racial categories and racism via the case of a race employment target set for the police. Drawing on and extending public administration and governmentality perspectives, the work explores the shifting politics of enumeration and categorisation within a set of organisational manoeuvres.

The data are qualitative and mainly based on interviews with senior figures involved in managing the organisational response to the target, as well as some documentary sources.

The discussion reveals that both racial enumeration and categorisation are contested rather than fixed, but that debates about it ebb and flow in variable and uneven ways. They are the subject of manoeuvring around the number itself and of what counts as race. This indicates the complexity of governing race targets, which appear set but are made fluid in various ways.

The research is based on interviews with senior and prominent figures involved in governance who spoke “off the record”, as described in the paper. These conversations are not in the public domain and the justification for using them is that they reveal the thinking behind the public debate about the black and minority ethnic (BME) target, as well as a process of negotiation and manoeuvring.

The BME target has been the subject of considerable media and political attention, plus some academic research. The paper presents a new and unique account of the target as it was implemented. It is of value to researchers interested in racism and policing interested in the organisational background that shaped the public debates about the target.

In Metro Vancouver, Vaisakhi celebrations are organized by local Sikh gurdwaras to mark the Punjabi harvest season and the anniversary of the Sikh Khalsa, which was formed in 1699. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Vaisakhi celebrations have become mechanisms for state institutions to refigure and extend their racial authority over Sikh places and populations through their coordinated appearances at these public events. These appearances are analyzed to reveal how contemporary racial states are characterized by complex conditions of visibility and public identification that obscure and foreclose the racial conditions of their authority.

The data analyzed for this paper were generated through observational fieldwork at Vaisakhi celebrations and extensive archival and media research on the changing racial governance of Sikh and South Asian populations.

The results show that, in Metro Vancouver, racial modes of governance have created “post-racial” relations between the state’s public visages of diversity and accessibility and its expanded legal regulation of the social and political places of local Sikh populations.

The concept of political appearances is developed to explain how contemporary racial states reproduce and augment their authority through discursive practices of public engagement with minority populations as well as the specific aesthetic conditions of these engagements. The paper also offers important cautions against state practices that expand the presence of law enforcement within marginalized communities by showing how this enhanced visibility can engender forms of racialization.

The purpose of this paper is to draw a map of the general features of epistemological and critical concerns in contemporary Islamic philosophy. This study will not be confined to the domain of academic philosophy or to those who are professionals in the field of philosophy.

The paper adopted the critical rational approach in dealing with contemporary Islamic philosophy in the Arab world. The scope will include scholars from different fields of epistemology who tried to present a “vision” of the attitude that should be adopted in facing the challenges of the age and the problems of the nation on the epistemological level or the political, economic and social levels.

There is a need for a philosophy of action and progress rather than a philosophy that is based on abstract ideas and theories and of words/rhetoric. The ethics required to accomplish this ought to identify the attributes of the citizen who can reach self-actualization through legitimate means based on a progress agenda with theoretical and philosophical foundations.

Because a critical rational approach can be dealt with from different perspectives, this paper will adopt the classification of the principal intellectual trends: the reformist, secular and liberal.

This paper covers a long time span to determine whether the philosophical projects have been effective.

This paper, which criticizes the philosophic projects that are theoretically unsound and that do not address real social problems (like poverty), argues the need for a philosophy of progress and action. This will lead to devising an agenda that addresses the challenges the society is facing and to finding alternative and creative solutions resulting in development.