Blind slaves of our prejudices: Debating ‘culture’ and ‘race’ in Norway

Abstract

Despite an upsurge in the number of panels on ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural studies’ at annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline has not been in the vanguard when it comes to debates on race, racism and multiculturalism, or revising the canon. Yet the failure of the discipline to be at the vanguard of such debate stems in part from a belief that it has, all along, been at the vanguard. Indeed, has not anthropology stood precisely for the equality and relative value of all cultures. The very issues the ‘culture wars’ seem to raise?

visweswaran 1998:70

This article discusses the works of two anthropologists who have applied the notion of racism to contemporary Norwegian society. Inger-Lise Lien defines racialization as a natural process, and racism as acts with hostile intentions, while Unni Wikan defines racism broadly in terms of the concept of culture: ‘Culture’ has become a new concept of race in that it functions in a reductionist manner to make ‘them’ lesser human beings than ‘us’. While Lien defines racism in such a way that very few practices can be discussed as possible examples of racism, Wikan’s definition makes almost everybody a racist, at the same time as she only applies her definition to a limited set of acts. In spite of their differences, the two authors seem to share a widespread but unacknowledged majority perspective which includes blindness to the effects of racialization and racism on the people affected when these effects do not confirm hegemonic majority ideas. The article discusses the reasons for the general majority blindness and the challenges it poses for anthropology.

Keywords:

• Culture
• racialization
• racism
• nationalism
• ‘anthropology at home’

Acknowledgment

This article is a part of a larger project on the debates about immigration in Norway (Gullestad 1997, 2002a, b, c, 2003, in press). My interpretation of the material presented in this article draws on almost thirty years of research in Norway, including two longterm fieldwork experiences in the city of Bergen (Gullestad 1979, 1984/2002, 1992), as well as ethnographic work on a collection of autobiographies written by ‘ordinary people’ (Gullestad 1996a, b). The research work was funded by the IMER program of the Research Council of Norway. I thank Nina Dessau, Peter Hervik, Michael Seltzer and Don Kulick, the editor of Ethnos,for valuable comments. One of the revisions of the paper was done during mystay as ‘the guest of the rector’ at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studyin the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NIAS) in the Spring of 2003. I thank Angela Jansen and Petronella KievitTyson at the NIAS for editorial help.

Notes

See Balibar 1991, Barker 1981, Goldberg 1993, Rex 1986, Stolcke 1995, Taguieff 1987, and Wieviorka 1995. Some of these researchers still use the concept of‘racism’ (Rex 1986; Frankenberg 1993; Goldberg 1993; Miles 1993; Van Dijk 1993; Wieviorka 1995; Winant 2000). Verena Stolcke (1995) uses the concept of‘cultural fundamentalism,’ Martin Barker (1981), Etienne Balibar (1991) and Peter Hervik (1999) use ‘new racism’ or ‘neoracism’, while André Taguieff (1987)uses ‘cultural differentialism’ and Goldberg (1993) ‘racist expressions’. For Stolcke(1995) ‘xenophobia’ is also a central notion.

Other anthropologists in Norway, and in particular Thomas Hylland Eriksen, have followed the more common anthropological track by focusing critically on interethnic relations rather than on racism. Eriksen also publishes both for the research community and for the general audience (see for example Eriksen 1993).

Translated from the Norwegian by the author of this article, italics in the original. I thank Peter Trudgill for valuable help with the translation of the poem.

Norway became an independent nation state only in 1905, after having been thejunior partner in a union with Sweden for almost one hundred years, and beforethat it was under the Danish crown for four hundred years. It is common to conceive of the relationship to Denmark as similar to a colonial relationship, but not the union with Sweden. During the union with Sweden Norway had its own constitution and its own parliament. The new independence from 1905 was broken by the Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1945 during World War II.

Jenssen 1994; Brottveit 1996; and Pihl 2000 are three exceptions.

Pointed out by Næss 1992a, 1992b, 1993, 1999; Loona 1985, 1987, 1988, Qureshi 1988, 1996, 1997.

Examples are Brox 1991, 1997; T.B. Eriksen 1986; Hagtvedt 1993; Long 1992;Skirbekk 1993, 1998.

Pointed out by Loona 1988; Qureshi 1996.

One important exception is Høgmo 1998.

Lien calls them ‘Pakistanis’ (pakistanere). This term is popularly used neutrally(and sometimes pejoratively). There is also a Norwegian equivalent of ‘Paki’(Pakkis). Even if there is a considerable number of immigrants from Sri Lankaand Vietnam, the Norwegian terms equivalent to ‘of the Indian subcontinent’ or‘Asian’ are seldom used. In contrast, the terms equivalent to ‘African’ and ‘LatinAmerican’ are common.

All the quotes in this article are translated from the Norwegian by me.

For example, in 1914 one could see an entire ‘Congo village’ at the Constitution Centennial exhibition in Oslo (Christensen & Eriksen 1992).

Women usually complain if men stare at them. Some feminists even wear T-shirts saying that ‘my breasts do not speak’.

This is in my view also a misunderstanding of Miles, but that is not the main point here.

Recently (2002) Wikan has adapted and further developed her Norwegian book into a book in English.

Wikan is not consistent in her discussion of the concept of culture. She both wants to get rid of it, and implicitly she builds on notion of ‘culture’ as a bounded entity when she refers to ‘basic Norwegian values.’

In the article in English Wikan makes explicit her own political influence in Norway: ‘Over the past three years I have gone public with just such a critique, voiced it through the media (newspapers, television, radio), public talks and lectures, and through my book Mot en ny norsk underklasse (Towards a new Norwegian underclass, 1995a). I believe I have played some part in making the government change its course’ (Wikan 1999:59).

Wikan's work has also been used by the ultra nationalists in Denmark (Hervik 2002b).

See also Wikan 2002:81 where a similar definition is presented.

See also Melhuus 1999:76: ‘I believe that the way the concept of culture is usedto designate otherness springs out of a rooted understanding of culture that applies to us; moreover, such a concept of culture (the implicit in the “we”) is a prerequisite for any notion of them’. I agree with Melhuus, but want to put the problem the other way around: the discourse about ‘them’ is a prerequisite for the construction of ‘us’. Over time the others ‘our culture’ is being defined in relation to have changed.