Lecture 1: Introduction
Literature: Anthias (2013) & Healy (2020)
Anthias (2013)
The dominance of culture and the problem of belonging: the culturalization of social
identities.
- There are common assumptions to notions of integration and diversity. In the process
there are two entities that lurk at the centre: society (conflated with community), on
the one hand, and culture (elided with identity/belonging) on the other.
- The culture is divorced from the structural and material, and ‘othered’ populations are
endowed with culture seen as a thing which people carry with them. This is a kind of
rucksack view of culture which fails to look at the processual levels of practice and
social engagement in a located way and its material underpinnings. There is also an
assumption that all members of a specific ‘cultural’ group are equally committed to
that culture; such a notion constructs organic and homogeneous communities.
- One significant hurdle in the debate on diversity and integration is seeing culture as
mechanically tied to belonging, and treating difference and belonging as mutually
exclusive. However, you may identify but not feel that you ‘belong’ in the sense of
being accepted or a full member. Alternatively you may feel that you are accepted and
‘belong’ but not fully identified. Belonging has experiential, practical and affective
dimensions. It relates to how we feel about our location in the social world which is in
turn related to formal and informal experiences of belonging. In addition it is also
about practices: we articulate our belonging through our practices and our practices
give rise to our sense of belonging.
Diversity and integration: hailing good and bad difference and sidelining equality
Diversity
- In current discussions on diversity, there is usually a concern with the balance of two
aspects: the maintenance of ‘good difference’, on the one hand, and the pursuit of a
harmonious society with core values
- If we want to continue using the term diversity it should not be referring to the ‘other’
(which is the way in which it makes its entry in the political and theoretical debates
usually). Diversity is not just something between us but also within us.
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,Integration
- Although there have been various ‘integration’ approaches. Integration as assimilation
is a preferred model of ethno-cultural accommodation in the current climate.
Assimilation approaches tend to see migrants as essentially adapting to the society of
reception and achieving full embeddedness and social mobility within it.
- A distinction is often drawn between structural and cultural assimilation. Seen as
structural assimilation into the labour market and polity, is here counter-posed to
assimilation at the cultural level. A distinction between the structural and the cultural
also often underpins the notion of integration. However, this assumes that the domain
of the so-called cultural is not involved in the public space of integration
Intersectionality
- Intersectionality has been: enormously effective in challenging the singularity,
separateness, and wholeness of a wide range of social categories.
- The potential of an intersectional framing, the complexity of social identities means
also that social divisions are irreducible and dialogical. irreducible: they cannot be
explained through a process of reduction to other categories. However, this does not
mean that they operate as stand-alone categories in the realm of social practice but
rather that they operate dialogically: producing fissures at times as well as
amplifications of inequality. The emphasis on irreducibility and the dialectical nature
of combinatory or complex articulations is able to recognize contradictory
articulations of difference and identity.
- In relation to issues of diversity and integration, interrogate the ways in which
positions and locations which crosscut ethnic markers function either to destabilize or
provide avenues towards dialogue and negotiation around meanings, values and
practices in a modern multidimensional global world. This can aid in providing
processes and mechanisms which facilitate the resolution of potential conflicts,
conflicts that are neither derived solely or cohere solidly around issues of cultural
difference, but in which cultural difference and ethnicity often act as vehicles for
projects of exclusion/legitimation and usurpation/resistance that are underpinned by
power inequalities of different kinds in our globalizing world.
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,Healy (2020)
Two concepts of belonging
- Belonging, when used as a political concept, is generally accepted as being both
multidimensional and multi-layered. In such cases, belonging can be a ‘thicker’
concept than citizenship alone. Two distinct strands have commonly been highlighted
“as a personal, intimate, private sentiment of place attachment”
- Most modern western democratic societies tend to mark the membership belonging of
individuals through the status of citizenship. As such, citizens acquire particular social
and political rights from the state, balanced by reciprocal duties and obligations.
These cooperative behaviours are considered more likely amongst people who do not
see each other as strangers and who share some of the same values and expectations
of social life.
- Belonging is not without internal problems: to be perceived by others as belonging is
very different in kind to perceiving oneself as belonging. Discovering that how we
perceive ourselves in this dialogue is not how others perceive us can be painful.
Not belonging
Interpretation 1
- A person may see herself as deeply bonded to the polity, may recognise and value the
institutions of that polity, but see no sense in associating with fellow citizens beyond
their specific community. Similarly, a person may see herself as deeply bonded to her
fellow nationals, develop contact across a variety of other cultural or interest groups,
yet remain suspicious and lack trust in the polity itself
- For some, this may become an intensely felt localised belonging, but rejection of a
national belonging. For others, it may form part of a more generalised not-belonging
anywhere.
Interpretation 2
- Not-belonging can also be a considered stance adopted by individuals who believe
that their belonging is only a matter of words with little effect on their lived reality. In
other words, the group may see her as belonging but she does not feel this matches
her lived experience.
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, - Here not-belonging can function as a weapon to address the boundaries of everyday
or institutionalised discriminating practices. In other words, the national group may
see formal membership as being sufficient, but the individual (or minority
community) wants belonging to have the same practical application as for all others.
Interpretation 3
- This form of not-belonging, similar to interpretation 2, can begin through the
experience of being seen as separate, unwanted or different to the group. Where it
differs, is that neither party may be completely committed to seeing the other as
belonging: it is always qualified or open to revision. This sense of being perceived by
others as not belonging here can be re-enforced by wider social structures and routine
practices in a society, all of which can communicate powerful exclusionary messages.
- The main point is that a self is not a simple construct that comes into being entirely of
itself, but is constituted reflexively in relation to others and dependent on their
actions.
Lecture 2: Interdisciplinarity and ontology
Literature: Wilthagen, Ton, Aarts, Emile & Valcke, Peggy (2018) & Tracey (2019)
Wilthagen, Ton, Aarts, Emile & Valcke, Peggy (2018)
Other Forms of Transcendence of Disciplinarity
- Interdisciplinarity is a noun describing the interaction of two or more different
disciplines. This interaction may range from simple communication of ideas to the
mutual integration of organizing concepts, methodology, procedures, epistemology,
terminology, data and terms organized into a common effort on a common problem
with continuous intercommunication among the participants from the different
disciplines.
- Multidisciplinarity (sometimes called pluridisciplinarity) is generally described as a
joint or separately organized form of researching of an issue looked at from the point
of view of several disciplines, whereby the disciplines continue to work with their
own standard disciplinary frameworks (Barry & Born, 2013a, p. 8; Klein, 1990 p. 56).
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