‘Veils and wooden clogs don't go together’

The present discourse on Islam can be regarded as a cultural racist discourse. The construction of Muslims as the ‘Other’ necessarily implies constructing a ‘Self’. This article deals with the dialectical process of reification by studying Dutch female converts to Islam. Ruptures in the relationships between converts and their relatives can illuminate Dutch national and cultural identity. Converts change important markers of identity such as name and appearance. They also trespass Dutch values connected to cultural practice such as food, feasting and funerals. The most important construction of Dutch national and cultural identity vis-à-vis converts is related to sex and gender. Veiled Muslimas in particular express that they cannot longer be ‘real Dutch’. Veiling is subordination and oppressed women are the ‘ultimate others’ of Dutch self-perception.     

Controversy,Islam and politics: an exploration of the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ affair through the eyes of British Muslim elites

In September 2012, a video entitled ‘Innocence of Muslims’ was uploaded to YouTube. The fourteen-minute clip featured actors playing the Prophet Muhammad, his companions and wives, and while production values were amateurish, aided by airings on Egyptian national television and others elsewhere, the video went viral. Recalling the Rushdie affair two decades beforehand, angry protests took place across the world. In the UK, the response from Muslims was markedly different. This article traces the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ affair from the eyes of those involved in formal Muslim-governmental relations. It explores what the new controversy tells us about the representation of Muslim communities in the process of political engagement since the Rushdie affair. It considers the experiential disconnect that exists between Muslim and political actors in contemporary Britain before exploring three important political factors – the cultural, representational and geopolitical – that influence and impact upon Muslim–governmental relations.     

Concepts of race vanishing,movements of racism rising? Global issues and Austrian Ethnography

This article discusses a contradiction: while notions of race are disappearing from public and academic discourses, numbers of racist socio-political movements are rising. This paradox is examined, first, on a conceptual and methodological level, and some different uses of the relevant terms (e.g., ‘race’ and ‘Rasse’) between English- and German-language spheres are explored. Then, the paradox is assessed through an ethnographic case from Austria. The rise of racist and xenophobic attitudes during the 1990s is discussed for one region where explicit racist language was nevertheless minimal. The analysis relates this to the persistent reproduction of certain cultural practices. Local perceptions of ‘warrior monuments’ are taken as an example to argue that changes in official terminology may conceal, rather than disrupt, the emotional continuities of supremacist nationalism.     

The making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain: conversations with British Muslim ‘elites’

The common nomenclature of ethnicity, race and colour has been found wanting in theorizing and dealing with the Muslim presence in Britain. This study of 24 prominent British Muslims – including political, policy and academic/intellectual ‘elite’ – explores the making and representation of Muslim identity in Britain. We explore this through three considerations: Muslimness as a ‘master status’; leadership and representation in relation to British Muslims; and the public performance of Muslimness during ‘key moments’.     

Exclusive recognition: against reductionism and distortion

This article analyses two dominant discourses of racial politics in Hawai'i and the work they do naturalizing haole (white people or whiteness in Hawai'i) in the islands. The first is the well-worn discourse of racial harmony representing Hawai'i as an idyllic racial paradise with no conflict or inequality. Frequently contrasting the islands with the ‘racist mainland’, this discourse circulates among many communities and is widely referenced. There is also a competing discourse of discrimination against non-locals which contends that haoles and non-local people of colour are disrespected and treated unfairly in Hawai'i. As negative referents for each other, these discourses work to reinforce one another and are historically linked. I suggest that the question of racial politics be reframed towards consideration of the processes of racialization themselves – towards a new way of thinking about racial politics in Hawai'i that breaks free of the not racist/racist dyad.     

Muslim community organizations – sites of active citizenship or self-segregation?

Ethno-religious community organizations in Western countries have often been described as being disconnected from mainstream society, and Muslim community groups have been a special focus of such critique. This article offers a counter-narrative to these widespread allegations. It draws on a synthesis of emerging research on the citizenship-enhancing effects of mosque involvement and on an explorative study involving thirty in-depth interviews with civically active Muslims in Australia and Germany. The article examines the potential of Muslim community organizations to mobilize their member into performing their citizenship through civic and political participation. It offers empirical evidence that many Muslim community organizations, rather than promoting social segregation, act as accessible entry point for Muslims’ civic participation, facilitate cross-community engagement and provide gateways to political involvement. These civic potentials of Muslim community organization have remained underestimated in the public and political discourse on cohesive societies and healthy democracies.     

Maori “bird calls” or “whistles”

This article examines the discourse attendant upon ‘old’ places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's ‘vanishing’ tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertions about the typicality of ‘old’ places and their uniqueness. Finally, the article shows how alongside a debate about such communities as repositories of tradition, there is a discussion about their feudal legacy, social control and political conservatism.     

The politics of fear: what does it mean to those who are otherized and feared?

Islamophobia has, of late, created a tendency to conflate all Muslims as belonging to a single nation of Islam that does not recognize and respect boundaries imposed by western geopolitics. This has been done by some to create and by others to generate a sense of exclusive unity that would separate all Muslims and make them into ‘others’ within western societies. It is the contention of this paper that such calls both embody and ignore the diversities of Islam as understood and practised by its adherents. Furthermore by ‘otherizing’ the entire community of Muslims in the West, the singular label of ‘Islamism’ marginalizes and may even silence the vibrant contestations among Muslims about their faith and its teachings; these include questions posed by women who may be described as feminists. The attributes of Islamism, ascribed to the faith by public, the media and politicians in the West and adopted by some Muslims primarily as a politically unifying force, are very different from the fluidity and flexibility that has been a historic part of lived Islam. Many Muslims may well aspire to belong to the umma: people of Islam conceptualized as crossing ethnic, racial, geographical and political boundaries. But Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular do not wish to do so at the expense of being otherized and conforming to the negative stereotypes ascribed to them that mask their fluid identities and, in the case of ‘white’ women, their close ties with their kinship networks. The multiplicity of Muslim's identities sits more easily within the permeable unbounded umma applicable to the global as well as the local without necessarily always privileging one or other identity.     

Does French Islam Have Borders? Dilemmas of Domestication in a Global Religious Field

Although many accounts of transnational religious movements emphasize mobility and communication, equally important are efforts by both political actors and religious leaders to carve out distinctive national forms of religion. In this article I examine dilemmas faced by Muslims in France who seek both to remain part of the global Muslimcommunity and to satisfy French demands for conformity to political and cultural norms. I consider the history of immigration and the importance of French notions of laïcité but emphasize the structural problem of articulating a global religious field onto a self-consciously bounded French nation-state. I then draw on recent fieldwork in Paris to analyze two recent public events in which attempts by Muslim public intellectuals to develop an "Islam of France" are frustrated by internal, structural tensions concerning religious authority and political legitimacy, and not simply by a conflict between "Muslims" and "France."     

Being Muslim and being Irish after 9/11: self-conceptions of place in Irish society

There has been a significant, well-established if somewhat invisible Muslim population in Ireland since the 1950s. An increase in immigration during the Celtic tiger years along with the hysteria of 9/11 caused a rapid visibilization of this population. Muslims became synonymous with extremism and terrorism, but also fell victim to racist constructions emerging from the economic decline. The experience of Muslim youth since 9/11 has been well researched in the UK and Europe, however there has been little empirical work conducted with Ireland’s Muslim communities. In the literature, it is assumed that the British experience is replicated for Muslim youth in Ireland – this is not the case. This paper examines the lived experience of Irish Muslim youth given the visibilization of Islam after 9/11 and their ensuing experiences of Irishness. An analysis of ethnographic data reveals the idiosyncratic experiences of these youth growing up in the shadow of a discriminatory and Islamophobic narrative on extremism and terrorism and an evolving immigrant landscape.     

Books received 1 May to 31 July 1990

Abstract

Rather than discourse this article argues that the challenge facing anti-racist scholars is to grasp the visceral, atavistic nature of the differential social imaginaries and deep-seated psychological fears of difference and sameness that constitute contemporary racisms and their historical mutations. Is it the case, as Said argued, that essentialized, contrastive racist constructions of Islam and Judaism persist over many centuries or is it possible that current affairs – globally transmitted violent encounters such as 9/11 or the Gaza Cast Lead operation – can transform racist imaginaries about the essential and unchanging nature of protagonists, Jewish and Muslims, and in doing so, unconsciously reverse earlier stereotypes? Depicting three paradigmatic racist folk devils, the paper examines the particular conundrums associated with anti-Zionism and its equation with the ‘new’ anti-Semitism. It concludes by exploring the implications of self-critique in seeking peace between Muslims and Jews.     

The value of work and ‘common discourse’ in the joint management of Kakadu National Park

Joint management at Kakadu National Park has been marked by conflict and discontent among the major actors, its Traditional Aboriginal Owners and the White rangers (and other staff) of the state. Despite such conflict, and structured differences between these groups of actors, the park continues to function. In this article I argue that the structures and actions perpetuating difference and conflict are usually more or less balanced by opposing structures and actions that draw the two groups of actors together. I further argue that the most important of such cohering structures and actions, what I call ‘common discourse’, derives from the work that both Aboriginal and White rangers perform in the field. This form of under‐recognised discourse acts against the corrosive discourses of the separate groups that tend to perpetuate separateness.     

Other Dark Sides of Resilience: Politics and Power in Community-Based Efforts to Strengthen Resilience

ABSTRACT

Oceanic people and places are increasingly labelled as either ‘resilient’ or ‘vulnerable’ to disasters and climate change. Resilience is often described in disaster discourse as a strategy designed to overcome vulnerability by helping communities to ‘bounce back’ in the wake of ‘natural’ disasters. Using ethnographic research conducted with Community Disaster and Climate Change Committees (CDCs) in Vanuatu in the wake of Tropical Cyclone Pam, this paper seeks to problematise disaster responses that see the ‘community’ as a space to be acted upon by outsiders, or where people will respond in a unified way to the challenges of rebuilding after disaster. Using political ecology framings this paper critiques the ideas of resilience that appear entrenched in community-based disaster and climate change adaptation discourse and practice in Oceania. Rather than presupposing resilience or vulnerability, this paper details the dispersal and distribution power and agency amongst individual actors and groups that either supported or manipulated, the distribution of goods by Community Disaster Committees. In this way, it moves beyond the limitations of conceptual framings of resilience in disaster management and climate change into a more considered appraisal of power, by exploring what James Ferguson has termed ‘the politics of distribution’ in the context of disaster.     

Defensive or offensive dining? Halal dining practices among Malay Muslim Singaporeans and their effects on integration

Anthropologists and sociologists have, in recent years, paid attention to different aspects of halal food production and consumption. However, very few studies have focussed on the impact that halal food, its certification and halal dining practice have on socialisation, particularly for Muslims living in multicultural societies in Southeast Asia. Nasir and Pereira’s study (2008) is one of these exceptions. They studied the attitudes of Singaporean Malay Muslims towards halal food as well as the strategies they adopt when forced to share nonhalal dining environments. These authors have described such strategies as ‘defensive dining’ and have argued that, through them, Muslims in Singapore are able to fully partake in the multicultural life of the city state as well as integrate within the mainstream, mainly Chinese, society. This article discusses how my observations and fieldwork raise some questions about such overtly positive conclusions. Indeed, I suggest that to understand the impact that such ‘dining strategies’ may have on the integration of Singaporean Malay Muslims, we should not only observe the Malay Muslims’ viewpoint but also consider the impact such practices have on non‐Muslims, in particular the Chinese majority, as well as the role that stereotypes have in Singapore.     

Unsettling Power: Domestic Violence,Gender Politics,and Struggles over Sovereignty in Ghana

This article provides a new lens for analyzing power formations in human rights practices by examining Ghanaian struggles over a Domestic Violence Bill. While the hegemonic character of human rights advocacy is well-established, we know less about exercises of power in discourses and practices that oppose rights. I analyze how the Ghanaian government constructed the discourse of cultural sovereignty and deployed it against women's rights. The government legitimated this discourse by appropriating the voice of ‘the people’ and superimposing notions of ‘foreignness’ onto both the Bill and Ghanaian women's rights activists. Drawing on the historiography of colonialism and ethnography of political performance, I argue that this case illustrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty is mobilized in a struggle over shifting configurations of gender, political activism, and state sovereignty.     

Virdee's challenges

Satnam Virdee’s Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider is a book of great merit. But it contains a remarkable paradox: it argues strongly against racism and nationalism, but it does so in an insular way. Now and then there is mention of other parts of the world, but the book does not as such look beyond England’s boundaries. This implies at least two important challenges for further work. First, it appears that Virdee still remains imprisoned in methodological nationalism (not to be confused with political nationalism). Second, Virdee does not yet offer a structural analysis of working-class racism. An additional point is that Virdee’s analysis lacks an explicit gender perspective. The connection between fragile masculinities and (anti-)racist attitudes is not explored. These marginalia are not intended as objections to Virdee’s work. He has accomplished quite a lot and we can build on his work.     

Institutional Governance and Refugee Resistance: Displaced Karen in the Thai–Burma Borderlands

Displaced Karen constitute a complex array of actors in the Thai–Burma borderlands. Forms of governance meant to contain and control these actors are framed by practices of territorial sovereignty and bureaucratic processes of identification and resource allocation. This article examines forms of institutional governance through two broad authorities, the state (predominantly the Thai government) and the humanitarian aid apparatus. It argues that the operations of these two authorities establish a series of control over space and movement and a system of administrative categorisation that works to identify and regulate displaced populations. Based on an ethnographic study of displaced Karen residing in the Thai–Burma borderlands, I go on to argue that the Karen challenge these institutional forms of governance because they do not adequately capture their claims for political autonomy. Key features of this political autonomy include Karen understandings of being a refugee and their experience of the refugee apparatus, their advocacy around human rights abuses, and their agitation for political and social change. I argue that these challenges represent a reframing of the discourse around refugeedom, where displaced Karen bring the experience of displacement back into the ‘humanitarian case’ and pursue a desire to be actively engaged in a political resolution to their displacement.     

Understanding Power in Indigenous Protected Areas: the Case of the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks

This article draws on concepts of power from political ecology and political sociology to describe the ways that the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation (a Canadian indigenous people) have attempted to realize their goals under the broad rubric of their Tribal Parks initiative. Like some other Indigenous peoples’ and Community Conserved territories and Areas (ICCAs), the Tribal Parks example features de facto legal pluralism, lack of clear tenure and/or legal recognition, oppositional and/or cooperative relationships with other actors, and situations where local actors are influenced by intersecting global discourses on conservation and indigenous rights and culture. Globally, ICCAs are a form of protected area and are potentially critical in terms of meeting ambitious global protected area targets as well in addressing issues related to the rights and well-being of indigenous peoples. As such, understanding the ‘customary law or other effective means’, or the dynamics of power through which indigenous groups are able (or not) to realize their protected area goals is of global significance. This article illuminates the contours of power through two specific Tribal Parks case studies: the first involves contestations over industrial logging, while the second focuses on the establishment and implementation of what came to be called an ‘ecosystem services fee’ paid by ecotourism outfitters operating within a Tribal Park. Results highlight that the Tla-o-qui-aht have drawn power from different sources and exercised it by different means including turning to the Courts in a context of legal uncertainty, protest and direct action coupled with appeals to public opinion, developing and drawing on relationships with both local and non-local interests, and by strategically ‘tapping into’ prominent discourses.     

Policy actors' narrative constructions of migrants' integration in Malmö and Bologna

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people.