Hungarian values

These days, states like to define their “values” — either, as in Europe or Australia, to limit immigration, or, as in Asia, to evade criticism of human rights violations. The “values” expressed in European or Australian citizenship tests are largely very similar: freedom of expression, respect for democratic institutions, equality of the sexes and of sexual minorities, non-coercive childrearing, reasoning instead of violence, and so on. Not bad, though who would have thought that the Christian Democratic Party in the conservative German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg would initiate citizenship tests that include questions like “In this country, it is accepted that people who are openly homosexual hold public office. Do you agree with this?”  The correct answer is “yes.” Considering Baden-Wuerttemberg’s sociodemographics, it is likely that a large proportion of current citizens would, however, answer “no,” and the question is simply an imagined way of ferreting out supposedly homophobic Muslims. That is perhaps part of the reason why conservative parties embraced these values, rather than, say, faith in God or the importance of family — an alternative set of “European values” espoused by the Vatican and its Eastern European allies, who are not worried about deeply religious immigrants. (Not just because there are few of those, but also because Eastern European politicians are less concerned about the niceties of keeping them out.)

In our recent book Maxikulti, Joana Breidenbach and talk about two Brussels politicians adamant about defending European values. Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister and author of a number of liberal “citizens’ manifestos” that defend openness, tolerance and individualism in the face of the xenophobic moral panic that has followed the rise of home-grown Islamist terrorism. For Maciej Giertych, a member of the European Parliament representing the League of Polish Families (whose presidential candidate he also was), European values are morality, faith in God and respect for parental authority.

Another Eastern European politician who publicly shares these values is Zoltan Balog, chairman of the Human Rights Committee (!) of the Hungarian Parliament and “spiritual adviser” to the opposition leader, Viktor Orban, who is expected to win the 2010 election. In a recent interview, he explained that “it is not right to accept uncritically everything that people want to sell us under the pretext of human rights.” For example, it is not right that “the mayor of Berlin can only win with a large majority by getting out in front of people and declaring that he is homosexual,” or that soccer players are not allowed to pray on the field because that is an imposition of their religion on others. Balog went on to explain that although the state must be distinguished from religion, it “cannot be separated… from it” because “although they are not the same, they belong together.”

It is obvious that Giertych’s or Balog’s “European values” are close to the “American values” of the U.S. religious right or to the “Asian values” of Mahathir Mohamad, Lee Kuan Yew or the Chinese Communist Party than to the “European values” of the citizenship tests.  I wonder why this does not receive more public scrutiny — especially considering that Balog’s job is supposedly to ensure that those consensual European values of tolerance and respect for individual rights prevail in Hungary. In this capacity, he is presumably in constant touch with his Brussels counterparts. Yet these fundamental disagreements on the nature and limits of rights and tolerance within the EU’s mainstream institutions remain quite hidden.

Most Muslims want Democracy

     The negative climate about Muslims and Islam has been changing. According to an article on BBC online titled ‘Most Muslims Desire Democracy’ , the Gallup Organisation conducted an opinion poll with more than 50,000 Muslims in 35 nations; the survey started following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. With the  largest survey to date of Muslims worldwide, Gallup found out that the vast majority of Muslims ‘want Western democracy and freedoms, but do not want them to be imposed’. The survey also suggests that most Muslims want ‘ the West to instead focus on changing its negative view of Muslims and Islam’. The majority of Muslims in the survey condemns the 11 September attacks. Although the US President George W Bush asked in a speech in 2001 after the 11 September attacks ‘Why do they [Muslims] hate us?’, the survey results show that most Muslims ‘in fact admire the West for its democracy and freedoms. However, they do not want such things imposed on them.’                  

     The poll claims to represent the views of 90% the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims and next month it will be published as part of a book titled Who Speaks For Islam? What A Billion Muslims Really Think. John Esposito, the professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington and also one of the authors of the book, says ‘Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and defined democracy. They don’t want secularism or theocracy,’ and ‘What the majority wants is democracy with religious values.’ He points out that the radicals, who are ‘better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims’, believes in democracy more than many moderate Muslims. And also majority of Muslims questioned in the survey want to have freedom of speech, and do not want ‘religious leaders to have a role in drafting constitutions’.

The link to the BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7267100.stm)

Sharia in Australia

The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that it was unavoidable for Muslims to adopt some aspects of Sharia law in the UK and he has caused an outrage in Europe (check Joana’s post, ‘The Bishop and the Sharia’, 13 February 2008). I came across a couple of articles written by some Australian Muslims in response to the Archbishop’s comments.

In the first article called ‘Grim Picture of Sharia Hides its Useful Aspects’, Ghena Krayem and Haisam Farache say that the term sharia brings to mind ‘the images of a brutal, harsh and inhumane legal system, characterised by amputations, beheadings, and stoning to death’ which has nothing to do with sharia . Because of this grim picture of sharia, it is no wonder that the Archbishop’s comments have not been well received. They say actually the sharia in terms of family law is already used by Muslim communities in Britain, in the US, Canada and Australia. In Australia people can agree to a legally binding contract using the laws of Christianity, Islam (sharia law) , Budhism, Juadism or any kind of ideology ‘as long as the contract does not abrogate the law or have an illegal purpose’. When sharia is used, it does not become a part of the Australian legal system, but it is recognised as an alternative dispute recognition process. There are similarities between the sharia law and Australian legal system. For example, sharia law has the same plaintiff and defendant system as the Australian courts; or in case of divorce ‘if a husband files for divorce he is obliged to pay his ex-wife’s rent and basic necessities and it is the husband who is forced to leave the matrimonial home’; and in terms of the custody of children, ‘the best interests of the child’ is considered and usually the mother gets the custody. Krayem and Farache says ‘while it needs to be acknowledged that atrocities have been committed against women overseas in the name of Islam, it also needs to be acknowledged that such practices have no basis in the religion itself’, and they underline the fact that recognition of alternative dispute resolution processes in other cultures show the strength of Australian democracy. The link to this article: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/02/17/1203190646668.html   

The other article is called ‘Law of Our Land Can Never Be Sharia’ written by Irfan Yusuf. He says ‘Many readers will wonder what 360,000-odd Australians who tick the “Muslim” box on their census forms think of sharia. Do we want to establish the Islamic Republic of Australia? Will men be forced to grow beards as majestic as that of Dr Williams? Will the Parliament be moved from Canberra to Lakemba [a suburb in Sydney where many Muslims live]?’. He points out that ‘Muslims are not the only religious group with an ancient sacred law which they occasionally would like secular law to take account of. On a number of occasions, joint submissions have been made by Jews and Muslims in areas such as ritual animal slaughter, burial and the treatment of bodies in autopsies.’ According to Yusuf, in 1989 the Australian Law Reform Commission started an inquiry in terms of multiculturalism and the law; and received many submissions from different ethnic and religious communities regarding their cultural demands. ‘The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, a peak Muslim body representing the congregations of about half of Australia’s mosques’ raised some issues in terms of family law. For example, under the Family Law Act 1975, in order to file a divorce Muslim women had to wait for at least twelve months from the date of separation; and in sharia the waiting period is much shorter. Yusuf asks ‘how many Australian Muslims follow sharia when family disputes arise?’ and says ‘my experience in legal practice has been that the parties will go for whichever system gives them the most favourable outcome’. Australian Muslims response to sharia vary according to the country they are from since in different Muslim societies different aspects of sharia is used in different ways. The link to this article: http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/law-of-our-land-can-never-be-sharia/2008/02/12/1202760299357.html  

 This is not mentioned in any of the articles, but I know that for example in Turkey, where the secular state and religion is ‘strictly’ separated and where the state is jealously& anxiously guarded against religion, many secular- Muslim-Turks freak out even when they hear the word ‘Sharia’. 

Also a small note on ‘cultural differences’: The other day I saw the movie ‘The Kite Runner’. The film is briefly about an Afghan boy who flees Afghanistan with his father when it is invaded by the communist Russia, and immigrates to the US. He grows up in the US and eventually becomes a writer. At some stage in the film, the father dies and he is ‘buried in a coffin’ in the US. But as far as I know, at Muslim funerals the dead is not buried in a coffin, but the body is wrapped with white clean cloth and laid in the grave like this. In the film the father is buried in a coffin either because this Muslim Practice is not allowed in the US, or as a result of lack of attention to cultural differences; or just because of practical reasons.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Here is  a press release regarding a new exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

An exhibition celebrating Australian Indigenous women

Discover Indigenous women’s contribution to the Australian community through a new exhibition - Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey - opening at the Powerhouse Museum on 21 March.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey will take visitors on a journey into the sometimes unknown and often unexplained world of Indigenous Australian women. A world of people, land, law and ritual, of ceremony and celebration, of social order, language, story, song and dance, art, lore, plants and animals.

Through objects, photographs and personal interviews, Yinalung Yenu reveals the many roles Indigenous women have played in Australian society from traditional times to the present.

The exhibition explores areas where a woman’s influence far outweighed those of Indigenous men, from their everyday activities as educators, child rearers, camp builders and food collectors, to their influential role as decision makers, artists, story tellers, peace keepers and healers.

This history is interpreted through a display of beautiful crafts from the Powerhouse Museum collection, including textiles, posters, ceramics and basketwork, each of which reveal the skill and artistry of Indigenous women.

The exhibition also features the stories of six prominent Indigenous Australian women: doctors and twin sisters Dr Marlene Kong and Dr Marilyn Clarke; artist, designer and businesswoman Bronwyn Bancroft; lawyer and university professor Larissa Behrendt; and respected elders Aunty Beryl Carmichael and Aunty Sue Blacklock.

Be inspired by the strength and expression of these Indigenous women who have become successful in contemporary Australian society and who have become role models for a new generation.

Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey reflects the ways in which Indigenous Australian women’s knowledge and perspectives of their world were often ignored until recent times. Today, they are carving their rightful place in Australia’s Indigenous history and endowing the next generation of women with the knowledge to speak to their future for succeeding generations of women to come.

On View:          Yinalung Yenu: women’s journey

Date:                From 21 March 2008

Address:           Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney

Telephone:       (02) 9217 0111 or infoline (02) 9217 0444

Website:           www.powerhousemuseum.com

Hours:              10.00am to 5.00pm (closed Christmas Day)

Admission:       $10 adult, $5 child, $6 concession and $25 family.  Powerhouse Museum members and children under four admitted free.

UnAustralian Vegetarian?

I have started going to Yoga classes at my local Yoga center. In a recent class I was standing in the tree pose and staring fixedly ahead for balance. It so happened that the object of my gaze was one word on a nutrition chart; “MEAT”. The word stood out because it had been written above (and almost on top) of the word “TOFU” in black permanent marker. The nutrition chart was entirely vegetarian but for the minor addition.

The nutrition chart was not large enough for anybody but the person standing in front of it to see, so people would have to actually walk up and read the chart with some purpose if they did not happen to be standing in front of it during the class due to the room being slightly over crowded.

Somebody clearly felt that this piece of information should be communicated, “MEAT” was needed. Was this person concerned that people attending this yoga center might be confused with a nutrition chart that did not position “MEAT” under the protein section? Or perhaps that the chart was UnAustralian? The Australia day advertisements tell us that if we don’t BBQ lamb chops on Australia day we are UnAustralian… maybe this is something that should be added to the citizenship test? Who was Don Bradman? Which country “discovered” Australia? Do you eat lamb chops on Australia day?

Temple of Dreams screening at Macquarie

With a proposed new Islamic school facing strong community opposition in the Sydney suburb of Camden, it is timely that the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie is screening a new documentary called Temple of dreams. The film portrays similar challenges faced by a group of young Australian Muslims attempting to set up a youth centre in Sydney. Details about the film and the screening are below:

*Free screening*

Introduced by the director, Tom Zubrycki

(Molly and Mobarak, The Diplomat, Billal),

and followed by a post-screening Q&A discussion.

Temple of Dreams follows a group of Lebanese Australians who set up an Islamic youth centre in Western Sydney. The documentary - by one of Australia’s leading documentary film makers - follows the group’s battle against the local council to keep the centre open, and their struggle to fit into the wider community.

When: Wednesday 14 November

Time: 4-6pm

Place: Building C5C Room 498 (Enter via Research Hub EAST), Macquarie University

RSVP: By 12 November 2007 to crsi@scmp.mq.edu.au or on 02 9850 9171

**FREE**

Please spread the word to your colleagues and friends - download event flyer here.

For more information about the film, click here, or visit

http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/temple-dreams

The Second Life of Sacred Sites

Ute Eickelkamp put me onto a really fascinating article that appeared recently about legal and cultural issues arising due to real world locations being recreated in the online world Second Life.  The question of how to apply copyright is raised, but more interesting from my point of view is the controversy surrounding Teltra’s reproduction of a virtual Uluru without the permission of the traditional owners of the original, the Anangu people. The article reports that:

Designers of the BigPond site included a scaled down Uluru, with a barrier to stop people walking or flying over the sacred site. However, representatives of the traditional owners, the Anangu people, warned that even with the restrictions it may be possible to view sacred sites around Uluru, although they were continuing to investigate the issue.

Concerns have also been raised that Uluru and the opera house could be exposed to digital vandalism, following an attack on the ABC’s Second Life island earlier this week.

[...]

A spokesman for Telstra confirmed the company had not sought the permission of Uluru’s landowners.

Legislation has been in place to limit photography, filming and commercial painting at Uluru for 20 years, with tight restrictions on what is and is not allowed.

Capturing images of parts of the northeast face of Uluru is banned and all pictures taken of that part of Uluru must be submitted to the landowners for approval.

While visitors in the game cannot touch Uluru or fly over it, they can virtually fly in the no-fly zone to the northeast and take snapshots.

However, while the rules governing photography, filming and paintings have been in place since 1987, a spokesperson from National Parks said the issue of digital images online had never been raised before.

National Parks, which administers the area on behalf of the traditional landowners, now has lawyers looking at Uluru in Second Life and is considering sending a delegation to meet landowners to discuss the situation.

This article raises a lot of really interesting questions about the relationship between the digital technology, the sacred and cultural rights.  It’s worth noting that the Anangu people’s reaction is not to the unauthorised reproduction of Uluru but also because of unauthorised visiting and viewing of secret/sacred parts virtual rock itself. But given that this is just a digital model, in what sense are these virtual visitors seeing secret/sacred objects or sites? Unlike a photograph, a digital copy has no indexical relationship to the original — no physical connection between sign and referent. But nevertheless the Anangu are expressing a real concern about unauthorised people seeing what they’re not supposed to and going where they’re not supposed to.  The magical umbilicus between the two remains, it seems, and actions in a virtual world appear to be capable of damaging the sacred qualities of the original.

I don’t know a great deal about phenomenology of ritual and production of sacred sites in Aboriginal socieites, but it seems like an interesting case to explore how these are being rearticulated in response to the challenges presented by new technologies.

On Monday Ute will be hosting a round-table discussion about this article in her Art and Culture course here at Macquarie.  I might go along and see if I can learn some more about this.

Jovan Maud

“Forbidden Lies”: An Eye-Opener Documentary Especially For the Western Men and Women Obsessed with the Horror Stories From the Middle East

       Forbidden Lies, a documentary by the Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski, is now at the movies (www.palacecinemas.com.au). The documentary is about Norma Khouri, who published a memoir Forbidden Love in 2003 about her life story in Jordan and the honour killing of her best friend Dalia; her young Muslim friend was killed by her father and brothers who found out that she was secretly dating a man. Norma Khouri (born in 1970) published the book as ‘a true story’; and said she had fled Jordan out of fear of persecution and had written the book at internet cafes in Greece. The book became a best-seller; only in Australia it sold more than 200,000 copies; and Norma became a human-rights celebrity overnight touring the world to talk about honour killings in Jordan and in the Middle East. She introduced herself as ‘a virgin-refugee’, and got so much support from her readers, high-profile politicians and intellectuals all around the world. She got probably a refugee visa to settle in Australia. Australians-a society which doesn’t respect its indigenous people much and which keeps some poor refugees including children in detention centres- welcomed her almost with a red carpet and embraced her. An Australian singer composed a special song for Norma and all the honour-killing victims; some people helped her start a campaign against honour killings.

In 2004 , the Australian journalist Malcolm Knox found out that Norma’s story was fake. Norma was actually a US citizen; she was born in Jordan, and migrated to the US with her family when she was three years old (she has a strong American accent but she made people believe that she developed her accent when she studied in the US for a couple of years). And she was no virgin, but married with two children. Also she was sought after by the FBI because of defrauding people of money in the US.

The filmmaker Anna Broinowski interviews many people including Norma herself, her husband, some people in Australia who supported her including an Australian writer, her publishers, genuine human rights activists in Jordan ( a lawyer and journalist who generally work quietly and diligently to bring a stop to honour killings), someone from the FBI and the Australian journalist Malcolm Knox who revealed Norma was fake etc. And Anna Broinowski asks her audience to decide whether Norma is a con-artist or not? (Norma still insists her story was geniune, and doesn’t want to reclassify it as fiction).

Isn’t Norma’s success actually a matter of supply and demand? We all know that the books and films about the ‘battered-raped’ Muslim women by ‘fierce and cruel’ Muslim Middle Eastern men’ sell a lot in Western countries; these stories almost sell as much as ‘sex’! Norma was probably smart enough to take notice of this demand and swiftly exploited it. And actually isn’t she only a small entrepreneur who wanted to make a couple of million dollars compared to George W.Bush, John Howard etc. and the big entrepreneurs who have made billions of dollars out of the war in the Middle East based on bigger lies about the Weapons of Mass Destruction which have never been discovered?

What interests me most actually isn’t Norma the con-artist and her fake story; there has always been con-artists and there’ll be more; but ‘the sick minds’ and ‘the sick imagination’ of the Western men and women who are obsessed with and thrilled by these stories. I wonder what Freud would have said about ‘this sick obsession’ if he had been alive and had psychoanalysed the Western mind?

No sensible person from Muslim background can deny the honour killings which happen generally in poor-feudal-patriarchal parts of some Muslim countries; it doesn’t happen to all Muslim women, but to the ones with no social and economic power who have to live at the mercy of men. I wonder if Norma’s story has in any way helped improve the situation of these women; though the genuine female human rights activists are quietly and diligently doing the hard work and trying to make a difference in these countries.

I wonder if the same Western men and women are paying the same attention to the maybe millions of young African women who have died due to AIDS and left their infants and young children behind! Or has Norma drawn so much attention because she was bringing some bad news about the West’s ideological enemy (Islam) and making the Christian liberal Western consumers feel smug and superior about their values and lifestyles?

Don’t miss this film, it’s a very good documentary! And by the way, according to the film Norma Khouri is planning to become a human rights lawyer; watch out!

How do citationary practices in anthropology define our Others?

I just read Fenella Cannell’s “The Christianity of Anthropology” (2005, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11[2]:335-356). It was the 2004 Malinowski Lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science and in it, Cannell uses examples from the beliefs of practitioners of what are usually considered marginal Christianities — mostly Latter-Day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons) but also Catholics in the Philippines — to argue for anthropology’s own unacknowledged Christian lineage and biases. She uses Mormonism’s unusual theology of the body, for example, to reveal the implicit assumption within anthropological theory that Christianity is a religion of asceticism: of denial of the body and of kinship. Cannell argues that these assumptions — and indeed the intellectual genealogy that anthropology-related social sciences share with Christianity more generally — have shaped anthropological theories about the gift, kinship, and religious modernities. She suggests that anthropologists have generally been reluctant to grant the status of “real” Christianity to sects like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as well as to Christianities in far-away places (where “deviations” from the orthodox norm are often explained as syncretism with local religious beliefs in a way that implicitly denies them authenticity as “really Christian”), in part because of their own prejudices which locate Christian groups in terms of their distance from orthodoxy.

It is a provocative argument and a persuasive one. Her explication of Mormon cosmology, too, is generally sound as she links esoteric scripture (particularly the Pearl of Great Price) with beliefs, mundane practices, and the imaginations of every day Mormons (for example, as her informants speculated about sex and chocolate in the afterlife).

But Cannell’s way of writing — and, to be more specific, her way of citing — started me thinking about the anthropology of scriptural religions. In her thoughtful explanations of Mormon beliefs about heaven and bodies, she rarely cites Mormon scripture, either narrowly or broadly defined, even when she paraphrases it. She sometimes mentions a general source — the Book of Mormon, or the statement by a General Authority — without providing a specific citation, and other times makes broader statements along the lines of “Church authorities explain this by suggesting that…” (p.345) or “the Mormon Church does not make a radical distinction between matter and spirit” (p.344), but without pointing to any published reference.

Perhaps this gave me pause because I myself was raised Mormon and so many of her descriptions of our peculiar beliefs about spirit and body made me think of specific scriptures that many Mormons know and can cite from memory in support of such belief. (For example, Doctrine and Covenants 88:15-16: “And the spirit and the body are the soul of man. And the resurrection from the dead is the redemption of the soul.”) So why, I wondered, didn’t she cite them?

At other times, she occasionally made a claim about Mormon theology that I thought dubious, and I wondered what her source was, but it wasn’t there, so I couldn’t know whether she was citing something from scripture, or something that people told her they believed, or something in-between.

Now, it is not at all unusual in anthropology to make sweeping statements about our primary subject matter without providing citations to written, primary sources, even when they exist. Our authority as anthropologists seems to not only permit this, but sometimes to even demand it. We anthropologists (and our fieldnotes) become the primary sources, the authorities for defining cultural and religious beliefs and practices.

It is also in keeping with some academic citationary traditions, where primary sources are sometimes relegated to a separate bibliographical category (as when bibliographies contain a separate section for magazine and newspaper articles, for archival sources, a list of interviews with public figures and key informants, etc.), if they are even listed in the bibliography at all. Indeed, in some sciences, this is encoded in the rules of scholarly writing. For example, many medical journals do not permit certain categories of sources to be included in the references of journal articles. Obstetrics & Gynecology, the journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, specifies in their author guidelines that

References cited should be published in peer-review publications that are generally accessible. Unpublished data, personal communications, statistical programs, papers presented at meetings and symposia, abstracts, letters, and manuscripts “submitted for publication” cannot be listed in the references.

(What is anthropology, of course, if not “personal communications”? Ah, but one could say the same about obstetrics and gynecology! Not to mention all kinds of other non-oral human interactions — between doctors and patients and between anthropologists and informants — which are often described but rarely cited.) Obstetrics and Gynecology does not just distinguish between the oral and the written; it makes critical distinctions between kinds of written texts, too. Some count as references to be placed at the ends of scholarly publications, and others do not.

This puts us on notice that such citationary practices are about setting disciplinary boundaries. Including a text in a list of references in an academic paper (and this is much more true in medicine than in anthropology) sacralizes it, elevates it to the status as academic interlocutor, rather than object of analysis, or some other sort of marginalia. Is this why Cannell includes so few references to published Latter-Day Saint sources, I wondered?

This made me wonder about citationary practices in the anthropology of another scriptural religion: science. Do anthropologists (and sociologists, etc.) of science cite the writings of the scientists that they study in the same way that they cite other anthropologists of science? Or does taking some group as your subject of study automatically turn it into something to be described but not referenced?

‘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