1st Edition

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition Perspectives from Northern Europe

    320 Pages
    by Routledge

    318 Pages
    by Routledge

    Explicitly comparative in its approach, Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition discusses central issues regarding multiculturalism in today's Europe, based on studies of Norway and the Netherlands. Distinguishing clearly the four social fields of the media, education, the labour market and issues relating to gender, it presents empirical case studies, which offer valuable insights into the nature of majority/minority relationships, whilst raising theoretical questions relevant for further comparisons. With clear comparisons of integration and immigration policies in Europe and engagement with the questions surrounding the need for more culturally sensitive policies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers alike.

    1: Introduction; 1: Uneasy Categories; 2: Engaging with Diversity; 3: Race and the Dutch; 4: Should Integration be the Goal? A Policy for Difference and Community 1; 5: National Identity and the Sense of (Non-) Belonging; 2: Cultural Categories in Practice; 6: Discrimination and Cultural Closure at Work; 7: Ethno-Nationalism and Education; 8: Avoiding Culture and Practising Culturalism; 9: Disentangling Culture as Explanatory Factor; 10: What Difference Does it Make? Transnational Networks and Collective Engagement Among Ethnic Minorities in Norway; 3: The Migrant's Positioning and the Public Space; 11: The Process of Hybridization; 12: ‘Mix, Just Mix and See What Happens'; 13: Fallen Angels; 14: Rethinking National Constellations of Citizenship; 15: Representations of the Other in Norwegian Debate Programmes 1989–1997; 16: From Obsessive Egalitarianism to Pluralist Universalism? A Normative Epilogue

    Biography

    Sharam Alghasi is a PhD fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology and Research Director of CULCOM at the University of Oslo, Norway. Halleh Ghorashi is Professor at the VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

    'This volume compares multiculturalist reasonings with national realities, mainly in Norway and the Netherlands, and it thus cuts a critical edge. Focusing on two proverbially liberal welfare states and civil societies, it contrasts them by factors ranging from moral (or moralizing) public policies to popular(-izing) moral panics. Importantly, its well-grounded ethnographies locate themselves in current conceptual and globally comparative contexts.' Gerd Baumann, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands '...Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition gives the reader an accurate and disturbing update on the position of immigrants in Northern Europe and the need to tackle their alienation with future hope for a form of inclusion.' Nations and Nationalism