‘Diversity is good; difference is bad’

“ ‘Diversity is good; difference is bad.’ This is the common view in European minority debates. As a result, the class component disappears, and an unacceptably vague catch-all concept of culture is allowed to predominate, even in much of the research literature”  Thomas Hylland Eriksen

The Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen (the writer of ‘Engaging Anthropology: The Case for a Public Presence’, a book every anthropologist and anthropology student must read; see my post on this book) has an interesting essay called Diversity versus Difference: Neo-liberalism in the Minority Debate on his personal website http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/. In the essay he argues that in Europe people do not take ‘class’ factor into consideration in intellectual and political debates about cultural diversity although class is an important factor in explaining cultural complexities. Eriksen also argues that the blanket term ‘cultural difference’ has many aesthetic, social and moral connotations.   

        He summarises the public view on ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘cultural difference’ as ‘diversity is good; difference is bad’. He says, on the one hand ‘cultural diversity’ refers to the aesthetic aspects of culture with no moral or political connotations like food, arts crafts etc.; and it is encouraged to be celebrated in the public sphere. On the other hand, ‘cultural difference’ involves some values and practices within various minority groups, which might be morally objectionable by the wider society; and in public view such cultural differences might:

i) create conflicts through direct contact with majorities who hold other notions, (ii) weaken social solidarity in the country and thereby the legitimacy of the political and welfare systems (Goodhart 2004), and (iii) lead to unacceptable violations of human rights within the minority groups          

 For example, politicians and public figures may generally praise migrants for enriching the national culture (I suppose generally in terms of food, cuisine; they might like kebabs) but at the same time they may worry about some Muslim values. The acceptance and rejection of different cultural aspects may actually disguise some political and class conflicts. He analyses some examples from Norway. One of his example is the racial motivated murder of a 15 year old Norwegian boy of African origin, Benjamin Hermansen-who had a white Norwegian mother-   in Oslo in 2001. Media and public in general denounced the murder, and many white Norwegians attended demonstrations, and many public figures spoke to condemn the racial violence. Eriksen says:

The virtually unanimous expression of disgust and outrage in the aftermath of Benjamin’s death may suggest that blackness is not, in contemporary Norway, a marker of undesirable difference. In a strict sense, it may not even be a marker of diversity, since many black Norwegians are culturally one hundred per cent Norwegian, meaning that they do not deviate from mainstream culture concerning language, religion, food habits and other everyday practices.

But he adds that if the dark skin colour has some cultural and religious connotations like in the case of migrants from Southeast Asia and the Middle East, it might become undesirable. For example the police might stop and question a Pakistani migrant with a flashy car whether he is completely integrated into Norwegian culture or not; whether he is a Muslim believer or not; ‘to use Gellner’s (1983) term, like black Americans under Jefferson’. He says:

The question is: Which kinds of difference, that go beyond mere diversity, are subconsciously drawn on by the police in treating non-whites differently? In all likelihood, class is the main strand of association here. Since non-white immigrants largely belong to the working class, the policemen may reason, if one of them has a flashy car it cannot have been acquired by honest means. In other words, although the police’s behaviour cannot be put down to ‘old racism’, it has an inescapable racial dimension in that it results in a systematic discrimination of non-white citizens with nice cars.

There is a website devoted to the memory of young Benjamin. Viewers are invited to post their messages, and nearly five years after his death, people (judging from the style, most are teenagers) still send their condolences and expressions of concern to the site. His death has come to signify the evil of racist violence. At the same time, it has been well documented that non-white residents in Norway with exotic names have difficulties in getting high-level jobs. Documented examples include a man with a higher degree in engineering, who had not been shortlisted for a job once in several years – he had applied for around two hundred – and who eventually changed his name to a Norwegian-sounding one. He was immediately hired by a large company.In other words, racist violence is generally frowned upon. Skin colour as such, with no further cultural or religious connotations, does not seem to function as an important marker of difference, in spite of the fact that the term neger, negro, is still in common usage in the country (Gullestad 2002 dissects the debate over the term). Yet at the same time, having the wrong skin colour, or a kind of name which suggests the wrong skin colour, does mean that one must be prepared for systematic discrimination. Although it is not related to skin colour as such, this does little to help those who become victims of a cultural semantics which connects colour to other traits deemed undesirable, that is to say difference as opposed to diversity.

He analyses other examples like hijabs, female circumcision and arranged marriages. His essay is very rich and very engaging. In conclusion; he says, after Sept 11 there has been a shift  from the sociological focus on racism and discrimination to repression and human rights violations within migrant minorities. And in public debates the emphasis on cultural rights is replaced with individual rights and choice.

The Norwegian public sphere thus tends to see only shortcomings and evil intentions when confronted with cultural differences. Diversity is fine; it is morally harmless and potentially economically profitable, but ‘the others’, bearers of difference, have again become inferior, as they were in the past. This time, however, they are not inferior as a race or a cultural group, but exclusively as individuals, who oppress each other, who tacitly allow themselves to be oppressed, and who cannot blame majority society if they are insufficiently integrated.

The new way of talking about minorities and rights in Norway is not, in other words, a result of nationalism. The latter was a kind of collectivism which could occasionally propose compromise and peaceful co-existence with other groups. It nevertheless had its obvious weaknesses, which could only be addressed properly via a strong antidote of no-nonsense individualism. However, the pendulum has now swung so far in the opposite direction that concepts such as ‘ethnic group’ or ‘cultural minority’ are immediately associated with enforced marriages and authoritarian religion. In this kind of situation, entire life-worlds are opened to general suspicion and censored.

In sum, diversity is economically profitable and morally harmless (see Hutnyk 1997 on the WOMAD festival), while difference threatens the individualism underpinning and justifying neo-liberalism. In this perspective, it is no wonder that immigrants were praised in the 1970s, when the collectivist ideology of social democracy still held sway in Scandinavia, for their strong family solidarity; while in the new century, they are criticised for it since it impedes personal freedom. Finally, through a narrow focus on moral issues, the hierarchical and structural dimensions of minority/majority relations is made invisible.

You can read the article on http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Diversity.html