Young people’s talk about religion and diversity: a qualitative study of Norwegian students aged 13–15

Abstract

This paper focuses on how young people talk about religion and diversity in a multicultural society. More specifically, it focuses on how students speak about Islam and Muslims. In analysing interviews with students, a main interest has been to examine the relationship between the students’ speech and dominant discourses in Norwegian society represented in the media and public debates. This paper has the following structure. First, the theoretical basis of the research is explained and how Gerd Baumann’s terms ‘dominant’ and ‘demotic’ discourse are understood and employed in this study. Then, the project is contextualised within the Norwegian debate about plurality. Further, methods and analysed data are presented. In the main analysis, there is a focus on some of the students’ statements and the discourses they seem to activate. In conclusion, the consequences that the analysis has for school and the subject of religion in general, and for religious education teachers in particular, are discussed briefly.

Keywords:

• religion
• diversity
• young people
• discourse
• religious education
• Islam
• Muslims
• REDCo project

Notes

1. Demotic: popular, ‘of the people’. The term refers to the ordinary, everyday, current form of a language, and pertaining to ordinary people.

2. Other terms for the same can be ‘the established discourse’ or ‘the hegemonic discourse’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2002). Gullestad (2002) uses the term ‘national order’ to describe a similar issue.

3. Norman Fairclough discusses this as a dialectical relationship and relates it to other social structures (Fairclough 2003), and also Teun A. van Dijk finds that discourses related to ethnic minority groups can be understood in this dual perspective between a micro and a macro level (van Dijk 1987).

4. The traditional concept of racism refers here to racism based on biology and former race theories.

5. Gullestad received strong reactions to her critique, especially from those who had been subject to her criticisms. One possible reason for these reactions may be that ‘the real discomfort occurs when the responsibility is placed in the broader segments of the population, or, even more so, when responsibility located in the linguistic practices and interpretation framework shared by the entire population’ (Hagelund 2004, 22, my translation).

6. Religion in Education: A Contribution to Dialogue or a factor of Conflict in transforming societies in European countries? (REDCo). The REDCo project was funded through the EC’s 6 Framework Programme for the period 2006–2009.

7. The results of the surveys are published in Encountering religious pluralism in school and society (Knauth et al. 2008), and in Teenagers’ perspectives on the role of religion in their lives, school and society (Valk et al. 2009). For more about the Norwegian results, see von der Lippe (2008) and Skeie and von der Lippe (2009).

8. In a reflective perspective, there is much to say about the interview situation, and the contents of the talks. To what extent can the students’ statements be related to the expectations of the interview, how much do they want to give the ‘right answers’, how politically correct are their responses, etc. The format of this paper does however not provide room to expand these questions more here.

9. The quotations are translated from Norwegian into English, and mildly edited for clarity and readability.

10. All names of interviewees are anonymised.

11. The Norwegian law on racism, §135, was introduced in 1970 to prohibit discriminatory and hateful remarks in the public related to skin colour, ethnicity, nationality, religion or sexual orientation, but has rarely been used in Norwegian criminal law.

12. The Norwegian social scientist, Ottar Brox (1991), published his study Jeg er ikke rasist, men … Hvordan får vi våre meninger om innvandrere og innvandring (I am not a racist, but … How do we get our opinions about immigrants and immigration). Brox used a traditional definition of racism and found that few Norwegians are racists despite their negative attitudes towards immigrants. Their negative attitude was, according to Brox, not based on race but referred to immigrants’ cultural and religious practices.

13. In a speech to the Norwegian Progress Party in 2009 at an executive committee meeting, the leader Siv Jensen warned against what she called ‘sneaking Islamization’ in the Norwegian society. This turned into an intense debate in the media where both politicians and academics attended the battle. See for example http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/02/21/nyheter/politikk/innenriks/frp/siv_jensen/4966977/

14. Another possible explanation is that my question, ‘what comes to your mind when you hear those things?’, is so imprecise formulated that Christian does not perceive that it is related to his perceptions of the media, but rather understands it as a question about what he thinks of suicide bombers.

15. Samuel Huntington’s much discussed book The clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order (1996) can be considered as a typical example of ‘the new racism’ where cultural differences between the Western and Islamic world are considered to be so different that they stand out as incompatible.

16. See more on this topic in von der Lippe (2009).