Search

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2009.01877.x Byline: Nasar Meer (*), Claire Dwyer ([dagger]), Tariq Modood ([double dagger]) Abstract: Abstract This article reports on a study of mediatised public discourses on nationhood, citizenship, and gender in Britain, and analyses the ways in which these accounts may be utilised in the cultivation of particular kinds of social identities. We distinguish our approach at the outset from other lines of inquiry to report on a macro level exploration of an event in which these value discourses were operative, namely the national the press reaction to the former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw's 2006 comments on the Muslim face-veil or niqab. The article traces and analyses the interactions and intersections of completing but overlapping accounts of nationhood, citizenship, and characterisations of the role of Muslim women. It identifies interdependent clusters of responses that illustrate the ways in which the niqab is a 'contested signifier' in contemporary social and political life, and the ways in which nationhood, citizenship, and gender feature prominently in its signification. Author Affiliation: (*)University of Southampton ([dagger])University College London ([double dagger])University of Bristol Article History: Received 22 January 2009Finally accepted 27 October 2009

In November 2019, a conference was held at the University of Bristol to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship. This special issue of Ethnicities brings together a set of articles by a number of the keynote speakers at that conference. By doing so, it celebrates the Centre's achievements over these two decades, reveals how the field has changed over the last twenty years, gives a good indication of the range of the Centre's current activities and also hints at some of the directions which it may take in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between religion and the state, focusing on cases of establishment in which one religion is formally recognized. Arguing that religious establishment is wrong if it causes some citizens to feel alienated, we reject the criticism that feelings of alienation are too subjective a foundation for a robust normative case about establishment. We base our argument on an account of collective identities, which may have an 'inside' but are also subject to a process of othering in which a dominant group imposes an identity on a subordinate group. The establishment of a religion may contribute to othering, and the othered group may consequently be alienated from the state. However, since establishment does not always cause alienation, it is necessary to seek evidence and engage in a dialogue in order to understand a group's own account of its experience of its situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of multiculturalism as a public discourse has been caused by various socio-political factors – such as 9/11 and its aftermath and the growth in migration – and new pro- and anti-diversity isms have been offered instead. One such pro-diversity discourse is interculturalism. Whilst some of its advocates, especially in Quebec and Europe, have seen it as a replacement of multiculturalism, a closer examination shows a high degree of complementarity. We demonstrate this by a theoretical-normative unpacking of multiculturalism and of the claims of interculturalism, and by evidence that Australian publics see multiculturalism as supportive of interculturalism, perceived as a renewal of multiculturalism. We express the hope that the sometimes oppositional debate between these two isms may now move forward into a phase of complementarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a historically informed analysis of the contemporary incorporation of Islam and Muslims into an idea of common – national – membership in the United States and Britain. It shows that there is a current movement towards synthesis between religious and national identities by Muslims themselves, and explores the ways in which this synthesis is occurring within rich and dynamic public spheres in societies that have historically included and incorporated other religious groups. The authors argue that both countries are wrestling with the extent to which they accommodate Muslims in ways that allow them to reconcile their faith and citizenship commitments, and that the British ‘establishment’ is no less successful at achieving this than secular republicanism in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alleged death of British multiculturalism has been celebrated in some quarters and regretted in others. Invoking Ulrich Beck’s discussion of zombie categories, we argue that while the appeal of ‘multiculturalism’ asa termhas clearly declined, thecategoryin Britain that it refers to encompasses not a single charter, but a series of political settlements and public policies that remain in place even though they have been joined (and frequently challenged) by others. Distinguishing between thetermand thecategoryis a valuable means of assessing the persistence of multiculturalism as a mode of integration in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper critically examines some of the ways in which conceptions of interculturalism are being positively contrasted with multiculturalism, especially as political ideas. It argues that while some advocates of a political interculturalism wish to emphasise its positive qualities in terms of encouraging communication, recognising dynamic identities, promoting unity and critiquing illiberal cultural practices, each of these qualities too are important (on occasion foundational) features of multiculturalism. The paper begins with a broad introduction before exploring the provenance of multiculturalism as an intellectual tradition, with a view to assessing the extent to which its origins continue to shape its contemporary public ‘identity’. We adopt this line of enquiry to identify the extent to which some of the criticism of multiculturalism is rooted in an objection to earlier formulations that displayed precisely those elements deemed unsatisfactory when compared with interculturalism. Following this discussion, the paper moves on to four specific areas of comparison between multiculturalism and interculturalism. It concludes that until interculturalism as a political discourse is able to offer a distinct perspective, one that can speak to a variety of concerns emanating from complex identities and matters of equality and diversity in a more persuasive manner than at present, interculturalism cannot, intellectually at least, eclipse multiculturalism, and so should be considered as complementary to multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we discuss the significance of how a variety of self-consciously Muslim actors have become increasingly discernable in public and media discourses in Britain. We show how within news reporting itself there is an observable variety of Muslim perspectives and that this marks a positive contrast with the more limited range of argumentation (publicly reported at least) at an earlier period in the emergence of British Muslim identities in the late 1980s at the time of the Rushdie affair. We maintain that a discussion of these developments would benefit from a vocabulary that can analytically describe the boundaries between, and content within, a variety of Muslim voices, as well as evaluate what their inclusion in mainstream public discourses implies for an understanding of more macro concerns around citizenship and nationhood. This article makes a tentative contribution to this goal by critically evaluating the inclusion and representation in the national press of British Muslim voices. We wish to draw attention to the ways in which the British case illustrates how relational notions of Muslim 'fundamentalism' and 'moderation' are present within the inclusion and representation of Muslim voices within news reporting. This can be illustrated by how Muslim actors are characterized as angry, ambiguous, and approving. What is crucial to note is that this amounts to more than simply including Muslim voices of fundamentalist anger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer a rebuttal of the view, now common among the political classes in Western Europe, that Muslim assertiveness is incompatible with the universalism of liberal democratic citizenship. I do so by sketching a view of multicultural citizenship in which respect for difference is grounded in universalist values. My conception of political multiculturalism is based on the ideas of 'difference', 'multi' and a double conception of equality. Multiculturalism seeks the goal of positive difference and the means to achieve it, which crucially involve the appreciation of the fact of multiplicity and groupness, the building of group pride among those marked by negative difference, and political engagement with the sources of negatitivity and racism. While the focus is not on anything so narrow as normally understood by 'culture', and multicultural equality cannot be achieved without other forms of equality, such as those relating to socioeconomic opportunities, its distinctive feature is about the inclusion into and the making of a shared public space in terms of equality of respect as well as equal dignity. I marry this conception of multiculturalism to a vision of citizenship that is not confined to the state but dispersed across society, compatible with the multiple forms of contemporary groupness and sustained through dialogue, plural forms of representation that do not take one group as the model to whom all others have to conform and new, reformed national identities. Citizenship consists of a framework of rights and practices of participation, but also discourses and symbols of belonging, ways of imagining and remaking ourselves as a country and expressing our sense of commonalities, as well as differences in ways in which these identities qualify each other and create inclusive public spaces. I show in some detail that some British Muslims' identity debates have precisely this character. Ideological and violent extremism is indeed undermining the conditions and hopes for multiculturalism, but this extremism has nothing to do with multiculturalism and is coming into the domestic arena from the international. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers explanation from Tariq Modood regarding his book "Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea" in Great Britain. He states that the word multiculturalism refers to multicultural citizenship. Accordingly, the core ideas of citizenship are membership and equality. He added that seeing citizenship as a work in progress and as partly constituted and certainly extended by contestatory dialogues and novels demands for identity recognition and that it can be understood as conversations and re-negotiations about the terms of citizenship itself.

The article presents a response to the article "Sexual, politics, torture, and secular time," by Judith Butler presented in this issue. The author sketches what he sees as a basis for a multicultural coalition that would transcend some of the differences and difficulties Butler articulates in her article. The author bases his observations on sociologist Charles Taylor's "politics of recognition," that involves acknowledging both and equality of dignity and respect. The author also discusses citizenship and secularism.

The central question of the symposium has been whether interculturalism provides a new paradigm that transcends multiculturalism? I note that, consistent with my own position, none of the commentaries answers this question in the affirmative. I concur with the view that interculturalist approaches suffer from an indeterminacy in the use of concepts such as local, place and proximity. When such concepts are given specification, they can have two different meanings: a) face to face encounters, b) urban life and/or governance. Whilst (a) and (b) can be connected together, a dichotimising logic is employed by interculturalists relation to the micro-macro and the city-national. I conclude by specifying, by reference to my work, the key features of multiculturalism that a replacement paradigm has to engage with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]