Jupp, Victor. (2006). Reflexivity. In V. Jupp (Ed.), The Sage Dictionary of Social Research Methods (pp….). London: Sage.
Jupp defines as reflexivity the process of monitoring and accessing all aspects of a research project, and asserts that it requires that the researcher provide sufficient detail about the process to allow readers to validate by themselves the knowledge that the research would have produced. For Jupp, the aspect of validity is influenced by judgment of ethics (has anyone been harmed?) and politics (whose side am I on?) from the researcher’s standpoint. What is more, as Jupp notes, reflexivity reflects upon the validity of a form of research itself, asking what is truth, how it is produced and disseminated, what impact it brings in society, and so forth. This speculation leads us to think of research as a social activity concerning the social production of knowledge.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Doing Qualitative Research Differently
: Free Association, Narrative and the Interview Method. Hollway, Wendy, & Jefferson, Tony. (2000). London, Thousand Oak, and New Delhi: Sage.
Introduction: the Need to do Research Differently (pp.1-6)
The authors question the veracity of accounts that a research subject tell during interview. For them, one of the reasons for believing is democratic and related to power differentials between researcher and researched. Feminists, according to the author, have been conscious of this issue of power differentials and advocated the principles of giving voice to voiceless women. However, the authors claim that researchers cannot give voice to others, quoting a statement by Reissman (1993, Narrative Analysis, p. 3):
"we cannot give voice" since we "do not have direct access to another's experience. We deal with ambiguous representations of it--talk, text, interaction and interpretation"
[This argument is not logical. Giving voice does not mean directly accessing someone's experience.]
From the standpoint of critical realism (Bunge, 1993; Watkins, 1994-5), the authors argue that researchers interpret their subject's experience only through ambiguous representations of it, yet there is a relationship between people's representations and their experiences. Here the emphasis is given to that the relationship, tracked only by the researcher, depends on the researcher's particular view.
Producing Data with defended subjects (26-54)
From their pilot studies, the authors delineate four distinct approaches to interview: traditional, feminist, narrative, and clinical case-study. While traditional approaches focus on interview technique, feminists are conscious of power balance between interviewer and interviewee. In narrative approaches, an interviewee becomes a story-teller, thus the interview agenda is open to development, depending on the interviewee's experiences. Clinical case-study emphasizes a researcher's reflexivity on their own involvement in the interview process, such as anxiety, personal experience, etc.
The authors propose biographical-interpretative method. It emulates a biographer's role to listen to someone's story and make a coherent account out of the story-telling, Gestalt, explaining, "a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, an order or hidden agenda" (p. 34). The authors propose four principles of this method: (1) the more open the better, (2) elicit stories (i.e. Tell me about a time when you feel unsafe.), (3) avoid why questions to obtain concrete meanings from the interviewee. Why questions usually induce empty, cliché-ridden discussion, the authors assert. (4) Follow up using respondents' ordering and phrasing by taking a note.
The authors emphasize free association that comes unconsciously during interview.
Introduction: the Need to do Research Differently (pp.1-6)
The authors question the veracity of accounts that a research subject tell during interview. For them, one of the reasons for believing is democratic and related to power differentials between researcher and researched. Feminists, according to the author, have been conscious of this issue of power differentials and advocated the principles of giving voice to voiceless women. However, the authors claim that researchers cannot give voice to others, quoting a statement by Reissman (1993, Narrative Analysis, p. 3):
"we cannot give voice" since we "do not have direct access to another's experience. We deal with ambiguous representations of it--talk, text, interaction and interpretation"
[This argument is not logical. Giving voice does not mean directly accessing someone's experience.]
From the standpoint of critical realism (Bunge, 1993; Watkins, 1994-5), the authors argue that researchers interpret their subject's experience only through ambiguous representations of it, yet there is a relationship between people's representations and their experiences. Here the emphasis is given to that the relationship, tracked only by the researcher, depends on the researcher's particular view.
Producing Data with defended subjects (26-54)
From their pilot studies, the authors delineate four distinct approaches to interview: traditional, feminist, narrative, and clinical case-study. While traditional approaches focus on interview technique, feminists are conscious of power balance between interviewer and interviewee. In narrative approaches, an interviewee becomes a story-teller, thus the interview agenda is open to development, depending on the interviewee's experiences. Clinical case-study emphasizes a researcher's reflexivity on their own involvement in the interview process, such as anxiety, personal experience, etc.
The authors propose biographical-interpretative method. It emulates a biographer's role to listen to someone's story and make a coherent account out of the story-telling, Gestalt, explaining, "a whole which is more than the sum of its parts, an order or hidden agenda" (p. 34). The authors propose four principles of this method: (1) the more open the better, (2) elicit stories (i.e. Tell me about a time when you feel unsafe.), (3) avoid why questions to obtain concrete meanings from the interviewee. Why questions usually induce empty, cliché-ridden discussion, the authors assert. (4) Follow up using respondents' ordering and phrasing by taking a note.
The authors emphasize free association that comes unconsciously during interview.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Majority Norms, Multiculturalism, and Gender Equality
Song, Sarah. (2005).American Political Science Review, 99 (4), 473-489.
Attentive to debate on multiculturalism and gender inequality, emphasized by Okin in particular, Song agrees with a general assumption—either defenders or critiques of multiculturalism—that problems of gender inequality in minority groups originate partially from internal struggles within the groups, but contests that this internal view overlooks how intercultural interactions shape gender status. In this regard, she rightly points out that the debate over gender and culture within the practice and theory of multiculturalism focuses on ways in which minority norms and practices threaten gender equality within majority culture. Instead she calls attention to the reverse influence. She states:
Majority norms and practices also pose obstacles to the pursuit of gender equality within minority cultures. What is of particular concern for the debate on multiculturalism is that the mainstream legal and normative frameworks within which minority claims for accommodation are evaluated have themselves been informed by patriarchal norms, which in turn have offered support for gender hierarchies within minority cultures. (p. 474)
Thus she calls for a critical examination of both minority and majority norms and practices in claiming minority cultures.
Song insinuates that the current debate is grounded in the view that culture is well-bounded and self-integrated, as Kymlicka suggests. She argues,
Cultures and cultural identities emerge, change, and are maintained through social interactions and political struggle…To get at cultural differences, we need to examine the processes by which cultural identities get constructed. This requires attention to historical context and to collective discussions and struggles within a community, as well as to interactions between members and outsiders—–in particular, to the role of states in shaping cultural identities. (p. 474)
In responding to Kymlicka’s influential view of multiculturalism and preservation of minority cultures, Song continues to stress looking at cultural interchange between majority and minority groups and how minority cultures are shaped and continuously developed through the interchange. In this way, she calls attention to the politics of cultural construction, conflicts and identities. (She notes that cultural interactions are further fueled by global economy, transnational communication network and migrations of people across borders.) She states:
“Cultures vary in the degree of fluidity, contestation, and permeability, but even in relatively closed groups the content of cultures is not determined purely “from the inside.” Rather, cultures have developed through interactions and struggles with other cultures. This suggests the need to examine more closely the role of interactive dynamics in shaping the identities and practices of majority and minority cultural communities.” (p. 476)
Song categorizes the interconnections between majority and minority cultures: congruence effect, boomerang effect and diversionary effect.
1) Congruence effect refers to the reinforcement of (gender) inequality in minority cultures through majority norms. In reviewing the case of Santa Clara Pueblo in 1975, Song argues that gender inequality inscribed in the case—a refusal to matrilineal heritage in the Indian community—reflected the norms of gender inequality of the majority culture: the State endorsed the Pueblo’s amendment of their membership in 1939 that restricts to a patrilineal kinship system and this endorsement, in fact, reflected the current mainstream gender bias. It is only in the 1930s that women attained a right to citizenship independent to her husband. Song writes:
“[T]he gender-biased membership rule of the Santa Clara Pueblo was not “frowned upon by federal policy” in part because the Pueblo rule was congruent with the dominant culture’s own gendered understandings of membership.” (p. 479)
Song examines the congruence effect in the cases of ‘cultural defense’, where cultural evidence is taken into consideration in court decisions in the expense of equal protection to all. After examining cases of rape and wife-murder by immigrants in the 1980s in comparison with the provocation defense in the majority culture—where emotionally provoked criminal charge in intimate relationships is reduced—Song stresses:
“[T]he problem raised by the “cultural defense” cases above has not only to do with minority practices but also with mainstream norms that offer support for those practices…So long as gender-biased norms pervade legal doctrine and practice, minority defendants can continue to find support for patriarchal practices within mainstream law.” (p. 482)
2) Song defines boomerang effect as a reverse influence from minority to majority culture to reinforce patriarchal orders within the wider/mainstream society. Song calls attention to wider practices of patriarchal behaviors among immigrants and mainstream defendants influenced by a growing number of cultural defense cases. She writes:
“In some locales, juries have allowed such defenses to serve as partial excuses for patriarchal behavior among immigrants, and mainstream defendants can and may well point to these “cultural” cases in raising their own criminal defense claims. Given the increasingly diverse immigrant presence in the United States and the increasing use of cultural defenses, it is important to be attentive to boomerang effects.” (p. 483)
3) Song refers to diversionary effect as deflecting attention from unequal gender practices in the mainstream culture by emphasizing special cases of gender inequality in minority cultures. She states:
“[C]ondemnation of various practices among immigrants may help divert attention from majority practices. Focusing on cases of domestic violence or rape in immigrant communities can serve to reinforce the false dichotomy of oppressive minority cultures and egalitarian majority cultures, deflecting attention from the reality of domestic violence and other patriarchal practices within majority cultures” (p. 485)
Thus Song insist on analyzing majority norms and practices alongside those of minority because overlooking the diversionary effect can reinforce gender hierarchies across cultures and fuel the maintenance of the superiority of the mainstream culture.
In conclusion, Song contests that an internal view that regards gender inequality as an intrinsic quality of a culture as a whole fails to capture a range of interactive dynamics that shape cultural conflicts with the sustenance of the state’s role in endorsing the accommodation of minority practices that are congruent with the dominant culture’s own norms and practices. In this way, she disrupts the dilemma of multiculturalism and gender inequality, writing:
If we take a social constructivist view of cultures as not only internally contested but also interactive and mutually constitutive, then the problem for feminists is not so much “multiculturalism versus gender equality” as “patriarchy versus gender equality.” (p. 486)
In so doing, Song insinuates the necessity of looking into non-cultural factors, such as race and class, which impede struggles toward gender equality.
Attentive to debate on multiculturalism and gender inequality, emphasized by Okin in particular, Song agrees with a general assumption—either defenders or critiques of multiculturalism—that problems of gender inequality in minority groups originate partially from internal struggles within the groups, but contests that this internal view overlooks how intercultural interactions shape gender status. In this regard, she rightly points out that the debate over gender and culture within the practice and theory of multiculturalism focuses on ways in which minority norms and practices threaten gender equality within majority culture. Instead she calls attention to the reverse influence. She states:
Majority norms and practices also pose obstacles to the pursuit of gender equality within minority cultures. What is of particular concern for the debate on multiculturalism is that the mainstream legal and normative frameworks within which minority claims for accommodation are evaluated have themselves been informed by patriarchal norms, which in turn have offered support for gender hierarchies within minority cultures. (p. 474)
Thus she calls for a critical examination of both minority and majority norms and practices in claiming minority cultures.
Song insinuates that the current debate is grounded in the view that culture is well-bounded and self-integrated, as Kymlicka suggests. She argues,
Cultures and cultural identities emerge, change, and are maintained through social interactions and political struggle…To get at cultural differences, we need to examine the processes by which cultural identities get constructed. This requires attention to historical context and to collective discussions and struggles within a community, as well as to interactions between members and outsiders—–in particular, to the role of states in shaping cultural identities. (p. 474)
In responding to Kymlicka’s influential view of multiculturalism and preservation of minority cultures, Song continues to stress looking at cultural interchange between majority and minority groups and how minority cultures are shaped and continuously developed through the interchange. In this way, she calls attention to the politics of cultural construction, conflicts and identities. (She notes that cultural interactions are further fueled by global economy, transnational communication network and migrations of people across borders.) She states:
“Cultures vary in the degree of fluidity, contestation, and permeability, but even in relatively closed groups the content of cultures is not determined purely “from the inside.” Rather, cultures have developed through interactions and struggles with other cultures. This suggests the need to examine more closely the role of interactive dynamics in shaping the identities and practices of majority and minority cultural communities.” (p. 476)
Song categorizes the interconnections between majority and minority cultures: congruence effect, boomerang effect and diversionary effect.
1) Congruence effect refers to the reinforcement of (gender) inequality in minority cultures through majority norms. In reviewing the case of Santa Clara Pueblo in 1975, Song argues that gender inequality inscribed in the case—a refusal to matrilineal heritage in the Indian community—reflected the norms of gender inequality of the majority culture: the State endorsed the Pueblo’s amendment of their membership in 1939 that restricts to a patrilineal kinship system and this endorsement, in fact, reflected the current mainstream gender bias. It is only in the 1930s that women attained a right to citizenship independent to her husband. Song writes:
“[T]he gender-biased membership rule of the Santa Clara Pueblo was not “frowned upon by federal policy” in part because the Pueblo rule was congruent with the dominant culture’s own gendered understandings of membership.” (p. 479)
Song examines the congruence effect in the cases of ‘cultural defense’, where cultural evidence is taken into consideration in court decisions in the expense of equal protection to all. After examining cases of rape and wife-murder by immigrants in the 1980s in comparison with the provocation defense in the majority culture—where emotionally provoked criminal charge in intimate relationships is reduced—Song stresses:
“[T]he problem raised by the “cultural defense” cases above has not only to do with minority practices but also with mainstream norms that offer support for those practices…So long as gender-biased norms pervade legal doctrine and practice, minority defendants can continue to find support for patriarchal practices within mainstream law.” (p. 482)
2) Song defines boomerang effect as a reverse influence from minority to majority culture to reinforce patriarchal orders within the wider/mainstream society. Song calls attention to wider practices of patriarchal behaviors among immigrants and mainstream defendants influenced by a growing number of cultural defense cases. She writes:
“In some locales, juries have allowed such defenses to serve as partial excuses for patriarchal behavior among immigrants, and mainstream defendants can and may well point to these “cultural” cases in raising their own criminal defense claims. Given the increasingly diverse immigrant presence in the United States and the increasing use of cultural defenses, it is important to be attentive to boomerang effects.” (p. 483)
3) Song refers to diversionary effect as deflecting attention from unequal gender practices in the mainstream culture by emphasizing special cases of gender inequality in minority cultures. She states:
“[C]ondemnation of various practices among immigrants may help divert attention from majority practices. Focusing on cases of domestic violence or rape in immigrant communities can serve to reinforce the false dichotomy of oppressive minority cultures and egalitarian majority cultures, deflecting attention from the reality of domestic violence and other patriarchal practices within majority cultures” (p. 485)
Thus Song insist on analyzing majority norms and practices alongside those of minority because overlooking the diversionary effect can reinforce gender hierarchies across cultures and fuel the maintenance of the superiority of the mainstream culture.
In conclusion, Song contests that an internal view that regards gender inequality as an intrinsic quality of a culture as a whole fails to capture a range of interactive dynamics that shape cultural conflicts with the sustenance of the state’s role in endorsing the accommodation of minority practices that are congruent with the dominant culture’s own norms and practices. In this way, she disrupts the dilemma of multiculturalism and gender inequality, writing:
If we take a social constructivist view of cultures as not only internally contested but also interactive and mutually constitutive, then the problem for feminists is not so much “multiculturalism versus gender equality” as “patriarchy versus gender equality.” (p. 486)
In so doing, Song insinuates the necessity of looking into non-cultural factors, such as race and class, which impede struggles toward gender equality.
Monday, February 8, 2010
The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britian
Kundnani, Arun. (2007). London & Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.
Kundnani's case study of multiculturalism in Britain provides keen insight into evaluating multiculturalism policies within the North American context. Kundnani argues that the discourses of globalization and the war on terror have brought British multiculturalism under attack as fostering separatism. Central to this attack, however, is not multiculturalism itself, but integration policies inscribed in it. Kundnani notes that this attach singled out young Muslims after 9/11 and demanded them to subsume their cultural differences within Britishness in the process of their integration. According to Kundnani, this demand for 'integration' is in fact 'assimilation' because it is grounded in the idea that Muslims are inherently at odd with modern values and thus needed to be forcibly integrated.
Kundnani contests that this 'bogus integrationism' along with the state's drive for 'community cohesion' signaled the death of multiculturalism and the rise of managed migration as immigration policy: regulating the supply of disposable migrant workers into the country while recruiting skilled workers abroad to supplement national shortage.
Through managed migration together with community cohesion, Kundnani maintains, a state is emerging that "fuses absolute powers and absolute fear, in order to create absolute conformity" (p. 8). Arguing that universal human rights are undermined as a consequence of this conformity, Kundnani calls for fresh debate on multiculturalism.
Kundnani's case study of multiculturalism in Britain provides keen insight into evaluating multiculturalism policies within the North American context. Kundnani argues that the discourses of globalization and the war on terror have brought British multiculturalism under attack as fostering separatism. Central to this attack, however, is not multiculturalism itself, but integration policies inscribed in it. Kundnani notes that this attach singled out young Muslims after 9/11 and demanded them to subsume their cultural differences within Britishness in the process of their integration. According to Kundnani, this demand for 'integration' is in fact 'assimilation' because it is grounded in the idea that Muslims are inherently at odd with modern values and thus needed to be forcibly integrated.
Kundnani contests that this 'bogus integrationism' along with the state's drive for 'community cohesion' signaled the death of multiculturalism and the rise of managed migration as immigration policy: regulating the supply of disposable migrant workers into the country while recruiting skilled workers abroad to supplement national shortage.
Through managed migration together with community cohesion, Kundnani maintains, a state is emerging that "fuses absolute powers and absolute fear, in order to create absolute conformity" (p. 8). Arguing that universal human rights are undermined as a consequence of this conformity, Kundnani calls for fresh debate on multiculturalism.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Multicultural Citizenship
: A liberal Theory of Minority Rights. Kymlicka, Will. (1995). New York: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 1. Introduction (1-9)
In his view, cultural diversity world-wide gives significant rise to clashes between majorities and minorities over languages, regional autonomy, political representation, curriculum, etc. and imposes the greatest challenge to democracies today. Taking a liberal stance of minority rights, he distances himself from the post-war liberals. He criticizes that post-war liberals framed minority rights within an extension of universal human rights as demonstrated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and at the same time defined the rights only in private spheres; post-war liberals thus neglected public recognition of minority groups and some of them focused on anti-discriminatory action as a temporary remedy.
Refuting this traditional liberal approach, Kymlicka states that minority rights are required to obtain basic human rights because minorities are more vulnerable to social injustice. He argues in addition that traditional human rights, such as freedom of speech and the right to vote, do not solve problems such as language policies, power distribution among governments, etc. which arise in diverse societies. Thus for Kymlicka, critical is to supplement traditional human rights with minority rights by giving minority groups a permanent political identity and group specific rights or 'special status' to ensure culture difference. Minority rights, however, are not unlimited to Kymlicka. He argues that minority rights are limited by principles of individual liberty, democracy and social justice. (Thereby he proposes two concepts, internal restriction and external protection.)
Chapter 2. The politics of multiculturalism (10-33)
For Kymlicka, it is important to distinguish two patterns of cultural diversity: multinational and polyethnic. By nation he means "a historical community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and culture" (p. 11) closely related to a people or a culture. In this view, a country that consists of more than one nation is not a nation-state but a multination state. Polyethnicity, on the other hand, is an outcome of immigration. According to Kymlicka, immigrant groups neither occupy homelands nor ask to set up a parallel society; instead, they usually integrate into the dominant culture(s) and increasingly assert the rights to preserve their ethnicity. Thus he defines Canada and the United State as both multinational and polyethnic.
Kymlicka asserts that multiculturalism arise from national and ethnic differences. According to him, the confusion between the two concepts led to criticism of the Canadian government's multiculturalism policy; while French Canadians think that the policy reduces the status of Quebecers to the level of immigrants, other people fear that the policy treats immigrant groups as nations. According to Kymlicka, neither is justifiable because the multiculturalism policy supports polyethnicity within the English and French cultures. [The criticism is not all, there is an inherent problem in the official policy of multiculturalism. So isn't there any mentioning of Aboriginal rights in multicultural policy?] In this category, African-Americans, who neither form a nation nor are fully integrated into the society as immigrants, and refugees, who disassociate themselves from their own homeland and culture, are exceptional.
Kymlicka proposes three fundamental forms of group-specific rights: self-government rights, polyethnic rights and special representation rights. In the case of Quebec, Kymlicka states:
One difficulty in a federal system is maintaining the balance between centralization and decentralization. While most Quebecers want an even more decentralized division of powers, most English Canadians favour a stronger central government. One of the challenges facing Canada, therefore, is finding an acceptable form of 'asymmetrical federalism' which grants Quebec powers not given to other provinces. Other federal states face a similar problem. (p. 28)
Chapter 3. Individual Rights and Collective Rights. (34-48)
Kymlicka forcefully argues that group-differentiated rights are consistent with liberal principles of individual freedom and equality.
Kymlicka distinguishes two forms of claims that an ethnic or national group make to protect the stability of their own communities. They are internal restriction and external protection. According to Kymlicka, while minority groups tend to suppress internal dissent ('internal restriction'), they also demand protection from external forces. For Kymlicka, not all the claims are acceptable. Within a group, individual rights take a precedence to group rights. He states:
[L]iberals can and should endorse certain external protections, where they promote fairness between groups, but should reject internal restrictions which limit the right of group members to question and revise traditional authorities and practices. (p. 37)
Kymlicka casts a new perspective on the debate on the primacy of individual or collective rights by proposing the concept of group-differentiated rights/citizenship. According to him, group-differentiated rights can be accorded to members of a group, to the group as a whole, or even to a province/state where the group forms the majority. For instance, the rights of French Canadians to use French in federal courts is a right accorded to individuals because language rights are one component of the national rights, which immigrant groups are not granted. The Indian rights to hunt and fish are accorded to the group, not individuals. The rights of Quebecers to promote their culture is accorded to the province of Quebec, whose citizens are predominantly Quebecers.
According to Kymlicka, the conflation of group-differentiated rights with collective rights has brought a fatal impact on the current debate over individual and group rights. In this regard, he contests that the members of different groups are to be accorded different rights which depend on their group-differentiated citizenship. For Kymlicka, justice between the members of different groups is relative to the groups to which the individuals belong.
Chapter 6. Justice and Minority Rights (107-130)
Kymlicka contests that the ideal of 'benign neglect' that states should not interfere with maintenance of of particular cultures is a myth because majority cultures and minority cultures do not have a level playing field in cultural market-place: states support the majority culture inevitably and systematically through languages, public holidays, state symbols, etc. whereas minority groups face disadvantages that the majorities do not. Thus, he calls for a political recognition of these minority groups and a provision of differential treatment to differential needs in order to sustain fairness among members of minority groups.
Kymlicka differentiates minority national rights from polyethnic rights. For Kymlicka, minority national rights are primarily to eliminate inequalities inherited to members of the minority groups and to maintain the particularities of their cultures under the theme of 'external protection', whereas polyethnic rights are rather limited to promoting equal access to the mainstream culture(s), thus enforcing common rights of citizenship among immigrants, by providing language training, for instance. [For Kymlicka, immigrants rights are very limited, just comprising a cultural mosaic and conformity to mainstream. HERE COMES THE CRITICISM.]
Kymlicka, however, does not reject entirely the idea of cultural market-place. He argues that, once national minority cultures are externally protected through language rights and territory autonomy, members of the groups should determine internally the character of the culture based on the rule of cultural market-place. [CRITICISM: what about in case there exists inherent patriarchal orders and internal unjust social issues? Are these seen problems they have internally within their own culture? Culturalization...]
With respect to minority national rights, in particular, Kymlicka stresses that the view on justice, that is, achieving fairness through differential external protections, is in fact attuned to a liberal egalitarian theory that emphasizes the importance of rectifying unchosen inequalities as Rawls argued. [TALK ABOUT RAWLS]
As to current argument over cultural diversity and its diffuse benefit to all, Kymlicka states that the argument itself is not sufficient to justify minority rights, arguing, "the diversity argument supplements, but cannot replace, justice arguments based on equality or historical agreement" (p. 123). The reasons include that diffuse benefit is rather by-product of national rights and promoting bilingual education for diversity does not explain special language training offered to immigrants.
Chapter 9. The Ties that Bind. (p. 173-192)
Kymlicka argues that citizenship is important to a liberal democracy because it provides a level of civic virtue and public-spiritedness to create a sense of solidarity across cultures and nations. He questions whether citizenship can be still achieved in the situation where rights are distributed on the basis of group membership.
Kymlicka argues that the common rights of citizenship, originally defined by the majority, can be extended to culturally excluded minority groups such as immigrants, black, women, religious minorities, gay and lesbian, only if group-differentiated rights are granted so that they can feel accepted to the community.
Kymlick contests that polyethnic rights do not tribalize society, but instead integrate members of ethnic groups into a political community as a citizen. He explains the reasons for the public backlash against multiculturalism: first, it is because a racist fear of non-White immigrant groups. Secondly, it is because entrenched conflicts between national or racial groups are displaced onto relatively modest demands of ethnic groups.
Kymlicka notes that self-government rights among nations challenge the integrative function of citizenship more seriously than polyethnic rights. In this regard, he suggests that it is necessary to take national identities as givens to some extent. In particular observing ethnonationalist conflict around the world, he argues that imposing common citizenship on national minorities is likely to promote alienation and increase conflict in a multination state like Canada.
Kymlicka asks about the basis of social unity in a multination state. He argues that sharing principles of justice is not enough and there should be the idea of a shared identity; however, shared identity comes mostly from commonality of history, language and perhaps religion, which are not shared in a multination state. The only viable solution for him is to accommodate and nurture national identities within the larger polity.
Book Reviews: Multicultural Citizenship. By Charles Taylor. (The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), p. 408)
Taylor values highly some philosophical and political distinctions made by Kymlicka. First, the demarcation of multinational from polyethnic situations.
According to Kymlicka, a multinational state is the home of multiple nations, which claim self-determination and the ownership of a defined territory and share a distinct language or culture. A polyethnic state is, on the other hand, characterized with various immigrants who entered a society with their own distinct language and culture but without the intention of forming nations; however, they usually integrate into the dominant society while simultaneously demanding protection for their cultural preservation. (Chapter 2)
For Taylor, this distinction is important in Canada, where Quebec and aboriginal nations as national groups and voluntary immigrants as ethnic groups coexist. Taylor notes that the confusion between the two contexts has led fatal discussions by "attempting to treat Quebecois as immigrants or fearing that immigrants might demand the same things as Quebecois" (p. 408).
Taylor also points out that Kymlicka, taking a liberal stance, emphasizes that liberals neither are blind to group rights--in fact, he writes that group rights are important to supplement individual rights (chapter 1. politics of vernacular)--nor deny justice. Responding to Kymlicka concerning justice from a liberal perspective--in which the autonomy of all individuals is central, Taylor states that autonomy can be achieved in a condition where we are able to conceive what the good life is for us and this thinking can only be possible when we have a 'home' culture. Thus, he stresses that liberalism should protect and promote minority cultures that are under great pressure in the larger society if it attempts to ensure equality in autonomy.
Taylor points out internal restriction and external protection as the third crucial distinction that Kymlicka made. By internal restriction, Kymlicka means that group rights can be protected as long as they do not enforce conformity among their group members; by external protection, he means that minority culture should be protected against majority pressure.
Chapter 1. Introduction (1-9)
In his view, cultural diversity world-wide gives significant rise to clashes between majorities and minorities over languages, regional autonomy, political representation, curriculum, etc. and imposes the greatest challenge to democracies today. Taking a liberal stance of minority rights, he distances himself from the post-war liberals. He criticizes that post-war liberals framed minority rights within an extension of universal human rights as demonstrated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and at the same time defined the rights only in private spheres; post-war liberals thus neglected public recognition of minority groups and some of them focused on anti-discriminatory action as a temporary remedy.
Refuting this traditional liberal approach, Kymlicka states that minority rights are required to obtain basic human rights because minorities are more vulnerable to social injustice. He argues in addition that traditional human rights, such as freedom of speech and the right to vote, do not solve problems such as language policies, power distribution among governments, etc. which arise in diverse societies. Thus for Kymlicka, critical is to supplement traditional human rights with minority rights by giving minority groups a permanent political identity and group specific rights or 'special status' to ensure culture difference. Minority rights, however, are not unlimited to Kymlicka. He argues that minority rights are limited by principles of individual liberty, democracy and social justice. (Thereby he proposes two concepts, internal restriction and external protection.)
Chapter 2. The politics of multiculturalism (10-33)
For Kymlicka, it is important to distinguish two patterns of cultural diversity: multinational and polyethnic. By nation he means "a historical community, more or less institutionally complete, occupying a given territory or homeland, sharing a distinct language and culture" (p. 11) closely related to a people or a culture. In this view, a country that consists of more than one nation is not a nation-state but a multination state. Polyethnicity, on the other hand, is an outcome of immigration. According to Kymlicka, immigrant groups neither occupy homelands nor ask to set up a parallel society; instead, they usually integrate into the dominant culture(s) and increasingly assert the rights to preserve their ethnicity. Thus he defines Canada and the United State as both multinational and polyethnic.
Kymlicka asserts that multiculturalism arise from national and ethnic differences. According to him, the confusion between the two concepts led to criticism of the Canadian government's multiculturalism policy; while French Canadians think that the policy reduces the status of Quebecers to the level of immigrants, other people fear that the policy treats immigrant groups as nations. According to Kymlicka, neither is justifiable because the multiculturalism policy supports polyethnicity within the English and French cultures. [The criticism is not all, there is an inherent problem in the official policy of multiculturalism. So isn't there any mentioning of Aboriginal rights in multicultural policy?] In this category, African-Americans, who neither form a nation nor are fully integrated into the society as immigrants, and refugees, who disassociate themselves from their own homeland and culture, are exceptional.
Kymlicka proposes three fundamental forms of group-specific rights: self-government rights, polyethnic rights and special representation rights. In the case of Quebec, Kymlicka states:
One difficulty in a federal system is maintaining the balance between centralization and decentralization. While most Quebecers want an even more decentralized division of powers, most English Canadians favour a stronger central government. One of the challenges facing Canada, therefore, is finding an acceptable form of 'asymmetrical federalism' which grants Quebec powers not given to other provinces. Other federal states face a similar problem. (p. 28)
Chapter 3. Individual Rights and Collective Rights. (34-48)
Kymlicka forcefully argues that group-differentiated rights are consistent with liberal principles of individual freedom and equality.
Kymlicka distinguishes two forms of claims that an ethnic or national group make to protect the stability of their own communities. They are internal restriction and external protection. According to Kymlicka, while minority groups tend to suppress internal dissent ('internal restriction'), they also demand protection from external forces. For Kymlicka, not all the claims are acceptable. Within a group, individual rights take a precedence to group rights. He states:
[L]iberals can and should endorse certain external protections, where they promote fairness between groups, but should reject internal restrictions which limit the right of group members to question and revise traditional authorities and practices. (p. 37)
Kymlicka casts a new perspective on the debate on the primacy of individual or collective rights by proposing the concept of group-differentiated rights/citizenship. According to him, group-differentiated rights can be accorded to members of a group, to the group as a whole, or even to a province/state where the group forms the majority. For instance, the rights of French Canadians to use French in federal courts is a right accorded to individuals because language rights are one component of the national rights, which immigrant groups are not granted. The Indian rights to hunt and fish are accorded to the group, not individuals. The rights of Quebecers to promote their culture is accorded to the province of Quebec, whose citizens are predominantly Quebecers.
According to Kymlicka, the conflation of group-differentiated rights with collective rights has brought a fatal impact on the current debate over individual and group rights. In this regard, he contests that the members of different groups are to be accorded different rights which depend on their group-differentiated citizenship. For Kymlicka, justice between the members of different groups is relative to the groups to which the individuals belong.
Chapter 6. Justice and Minority Rights (107-130)
Kymlicka contests that the ideal of 'benign neglect' that states should not interfere with maintenance of of particular cultures is a myth because majority cultures and minority cultures do not have a level playing field in cultural market-place: states support the majority culture inevitably and systematically through languages, public holidays, state symbols, etc. whereas minority groups face disadvantages that the majorities do not. Thus, he calls for a political recognition of these minority groups and a provision of differential treatment to differential needs in order to sustain fairness among members of minority groups.
Kymlicka differentiates minority national rights from polyethnic rights. For Kymlicka, minority national rights are primarily to eliminate inequalities inherited to members of the minority groups and to maintain the particularities of their cultures under the theme of 'external protection', whereas polyethnic rights are rather limited to promoting equal access to the mainstream culture(s), thus enforcing common rights of citizenship among immigrants, by providing language training, for instance. [For Kymlicka, immigrants rights are very limited, just comprising a cultural mosaic and conformity to mainstream. HERE COMES THE CRITICISM.]
Kymlicka, however, does not reject entirely the idea of cultural market-place. He argues that, once national minority cultures are externally protected through language rights and territory autonomy, members of the groups should determine internally the character of the culture based on the rule of cultural market-place. [CRITICISM: what about in case there exists inherent patriarchal orders and internal unjust social issues? Are these seen problems they have internally within their own culture? Culturalization...]
With respect to minority national rights, in particular, Kymlicka stresses that the view on justice, that is, achieving fairness through differential external protections, is in fact attuned to a liberal egalitarian theory that emphasizes the importance of rectifying unchosen inequalities as Rawls argued. [TALK ABOUT RAWLS]
As to current argument over cultural diversity and its diffuse benefit to all, Kymlicka states that the argument itself is not sufficient to justify minority rights, arguing, "the diversity argument supplements, but cannot replace, justice arguments based on equality or historical agreement" (p. 123). The reasons include that diffuse benefit is rather by-product of national rights and promoting bilingual education for diversity does not explain special language training offered to immigrants.
Chapter 9. The Ties that Bind. (p. 173-192)
Kymlicka argues that citizenship is important to a liberal democracy because it provides a level of civic virtue and public-spiritedness to create a sense of solidarity across cultures and nations. He questions whether citizenship can be still achieved in the situation where rights are distributed on the basis of group membership.
Kymlicka argues that the common rights of citizenship, originally defined by the majority, can be extended to culturally excluded minority groups such as immigrants, black, women, religious minorities, gay and lesbian, only if group-differentiated rights are granted so that they can feel accepted to the community.
Kymlick contests that polyethnic rights do not tribalize society, but instead integrate members of ethnic groups into a political community as a citizen. He explains the reasons for the public backlash against multiculturalism: first, it is because a racist fear of non-White immigrant groups. Secondly, it is because entrenched conflicts between national or racial groups are displaced onto relatively modest demands of ethnic groups.
Kymlicka notes that self-government rights among nations challenge the integrative function of citizenship more seriously than polyethnic rights. In this regard, he suggests that it is necessary to take national identities as givens to some extent. In particular observing ethnonationalist conflict around the world, he argues that imposing common citizenship on national minorities is likely to promote alienation and increase conflict in a multination state like Canada.
Kymlicka asks about the basis of social unity in a multination state. He argues that sharing principles of justice is not enough and there should be the idea of a shared identity; however, shared identity comes mostly from commonality of history, language and perhaps religion, which are not shared in a multination state. The only viable solution for him is to accommodate and nurture national identities within the larger polity.
Book Reviews: Multicultural Citizenship. By Charles Taylor. (The American Political Science Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), p. 408)
Taylor values highly some philosophical and political distinctions made by Kymlicka. First, the demarcation of multinational from polyethnic situations.
According to Kymlicka, a multinational state is the home of multiple nations, which claim self-determination and the ownership of a defined territory and share a distinct language or culture. A polyethnic state is, on the other hand, characterized with various immigrants who entered a society with their own distinct language and culture but without the intention of forming nations; however, they usually integrate into the dominant society while simultaneously demanding protection for their cultural preservation. (Chapter 2)
For Taylor, this distinction is important in Canada, where Quebec and aboriginal nations as national groups and voluntary immigrants as ethnic groups coexist. Taylor notes that the confusion between the two contexts has led fatal discussions by "attempting to treat Quebecois as immigrants or fearing that immigrants might demand the same things as Quebecois" (p. 408).
Taylor also points out that Kymlicka, taking a liberal stance, emphasizes that liberals neither are blind to group rights--in fact, he writes that group rights are important to supplement individual rights (chapter 1. politics of vernacular)--nor deny justice. Responding to Kymlicka concerning justice from a liberal perspective--in which the autonomy of all individuals is central, Taylor states that autonomy can be achieved in a condition where we are able to conceive what the good life is for us and this thinking can only be possible when we have a 'home' culture. Thus, he stresses that liberalism should protect and promote minority cultures that are under great pressure in the larger society if it attempts to ensure equality in autonomy.
Taylor points out internal restriction and external protection as the third crucial distinction that Kymlicka made. By internal restriction, Kymlicka means that group rights can be protected as long as they do not enforce conformity among their group members; by external protection, he means that minority culture should be protected against majority pressure.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Culture and Imperialism
Said, Edward W. (1993). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Introduction (xi-xxviii)
Said contests that culture and imperialism are interconnected by controlling power to either narrate or block other narratives from emerging. Said points out that culture is often associated with the nation or the state and becomes a source of identity, and a rather combative one within the context of religious and nationalist fundamentalism in the formerly colonized world. In this sense, "Western imperialism and Third World Nationalism feed off each other" (p. xxiv) writes Said. In particular observing an emergence of vigorous non-Western feminist scholarship, Said refutes the binary oppositions between imperialism and nationalism; instead, he focuses on new alignments across borders, nations, types and essences that challenge the static notions of identity and culture bounded by a supposedly unbroken tradition. He argues:
Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic. (p. xxv)
For Said, multiculturalism in the United State is a process of integration, not separation, of women, minorities and recent immigrants who had been excluded from the main group and now claim for a place in it, thus by no means to be feared.
Body
Said defines as 'imperialism' "the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory" whereas colonialism a consequence of imperialism that implant settlements on distant territory (p. 9). He argues that, while direct colonialism has largely ended, imperialism lingers in a general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic and social practices.
Said describes the paradox of culture in the late twentieth century: whereas all nationally defined cultures aspire after sovereignty and dominance, these cultures come across national boundaries and assume many foreign elements, alterities and differences within themselves. Thus, people's cultural experiences are oddly hybrid and even contradictory.
There was scholastic intervention in developing the concepts of nation and its culture. Said notes that the parallel alignment between the rise of nationalism between 1745 and 1945 and the emergence of the Eurocentric Enlightenment under the alleged universalism. He writes, "when most European thinkers celebrated humanity or culture they were principally celebrating ideas and values they ascribed to their own national culture, or to Europe as distinct from the Orient, Africa, and even the Americas," (p. 44)
Lyotard and other post-modernists, however, criticize the impact of the Enlightenment, arguing that the modernity that the Western Enlightenment had aimed to achieve in fact failed. Said defines as post-modernism "the loss of legitimizing power of the narratives of Western emancipation and the enlightenment" (p. 57). Said states that it is an irony that Western societies enter post-modernism whereas simultaneously modernism is rediscovered in the formerly colonized world. For Said, modernism and post-modernism coexist today. Within this context, Said stresses that cultural experience or every cultural form is essentially hybrid and culture and experience should not be separated. This theoretical framework is important to Said because cultural dimensions of an imperial ideology precede its actual territorial accumulation world-wide. Thus, his focus is on formulating the relationship between empire and culture.
Introduction (xi-xxviii)
Said contests that culture and imperialism are interconnected by controlling power to either narrate or block other narratives from emerging. Said points out that culture is often associated with the nation or the state and becomes a source of identity, and a rather combative one within the context of religious and nationalist fundamentalism in the formerly colonized world. In this sense, "Western imperialism and Third World Nationalism feed off each other" (p. xxiv) writes Said. In particular observing an emergence of vigorous non-Western feminist scholarship, Said refutes the binary oppositions between imperialism and nationalism; instead, he focuses on new alignments across borders, nations, types and essences that challenge the static notions of identity and culture bounded by a supposedly unbroken tradition. He argues:
Partly because of empire, all cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogenous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic. (p. xxv)
For Said, multiculturalism in the United State is a process of integration, not separation, of women, minorities and recent immigrants who had been excluded from the main group and now claim for a place in it, thus by no means to be feared.
Body
Said defines as 'imperialism' "the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory" whereas colonialism a consequence of imperialism that implant settlements on distant territory (p. 9). He argues that, while direct colonialism has largely ended, imperialism lingers in a general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic and social practices.
Said describes the paradox of culture in the late twentieth century: whereas all nationally defined cultures aspire after sovereignty and dominance, these cultures come across national boundaries and assume many foreign elements, alterities and differences within themselves. Thus, people's cultural experiences are oddly hybrid and even contradictory.
There was scholastic intervention in developing the concepts of nation and its culture. Said notes that the parallel alignment between the rise of nationalism between 1745 and 1945 and the emergence of the Eurocentric Enlightenment under the alleged universalism. He writes, "when most European thinkers celebrated humanity or culture they were principally celebrating ideas and values they ascribed to their own national culture, or to Europe as distinct from the Orient, Africa, and even the Americas," (p. 44)
Lyotard and other post-modernists, however, criticize the impact of the Enlightenment, arguing that the modernity that the Western Enlightenment had aimed to achieve in fact failed. Said defines as post-modernism "the loss of legitimizing power of the narratives of Western emancipation and the enlightenment" (p. 57). Said states that it is an irony that Western societies enter post-modernism whereas simultaneously modernism is rediscovered in the formerly colonized world. For Said, modernism and post-modernism coexist today. Within this context, Said stresses that cultural experience or every cultural form is essentially hybrid and culture and experience should not be separated. This theoretical framework is important to Said because cultural dimensions of an imperial ideology precede its actual territorial accumulation world-wide. Thus, his focus is on formulating the relationship between empire and culture.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Looking White People in the Eye
Razack, Shrene. (1998). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases
Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).
Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.
Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:
In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)
Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.
Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.
Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)
Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.
As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:
The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)
Razack criticizes that postcolonial discourse of cultural difference makes power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms, white supremacy, in place by culturalizing social domination, in other words, replacing the domination of race, gender, and class with the language of culture. Thus, in the case of sexual violence involving Aboriginal women and immigrant women, both victims and attackers are often “culturalized, that is, understood as cultural and frozen in time, rather than as dynamic, historical, and social” (p. 19). Looking at sexual violence and the process of refugee determination, Razack asserts that women’s realities should be understood within the structures of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.
Chapter 3. What is to Be Gained by Looking White People in the Eye? Race in Sexual Violence Cases
Razack states that culture talk is a double-edged sword, as “it packages difference as inferiority and obscures both gender-based and racial domination, yet cultural considerations are important for contexualizing oppressed groups’ claims for justice, for improving their access to services, and for requiring dominant groups to examine the invisible cultural advantages they enjoy” (p. 58).
Problems, however, arise from the fact is culture is often uttered as an unchangeable set of values and customs autonomous from historical and social contexts. Razack writes, “culture is taken to mean values, beliefs, knowledge, and customs that exist in a timeless and unchangeable vacuum outside of patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and colonialism” (p. 58). Thus she calls attention to sexism interlocked with racism.
Razack contests that white society preempts racism and sexism by replacing the discoursesof racism and sexism with culture. Calling this process culturalization, Razack states:
In its modern form, overt racism, which rests on the notion of biologically based inferiority, coexists with a more covert practice of domination encoded in the assumption of cultural or acquired inferiority. This ‘culturalization of racism,’ whereby Black inferiority is attributed to ‘cultural deficiency, social inadequacy, and technological underdevelopment,’ thrives in a social climate that is officially pluralist. (p. 60)
Razack also points out the culturalization of sexism, writing that cultural consideration are used to defend male sexual violence offenders while also being used to intensify prejudices against minority, in particular Aboriginal, women. In this regard, Razack pays attention to the tendency that women of color distance themselves from the culturalization of violence, as seen in the statement, ‘No culture condones violence’ included in the report of the Coalition of Immigrant and Visible Minority Women of British Colombia.
Observing cross-cultural sensitivity training, Razack contests that such training is of little use unless it is pursued in the context of the greater empowerment of the subordinate group.
Chapter 4. Policing the Borders of Nation: The Imperial Gaze in Gender Persecution Cases (88-129)
Razack states that the guideline released by the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board in 1993 that recognized domestic violence as a form of persecution and legalized petitions of asylum based on gender-related persecution is one of the most remarkable achievement in Canadian legal history and the first guideline in the world to address gender-related persecution.
As Razack argues, a problem with this asylum structure, , is sexism interlocked with colonialsim, that is, the West "knows what is best for the Other" (p. 92). Thus Razack argues that refugees are viewed to the West as a mess that the Third World created and that the West must clean up. Women seeking asylum are seen also within this context. Razack states:
The successful asylum seeker must cast herself as c cultural Other, that is, as someone fleeing from a more primitive culture. That is to say, it is through various orientalist and imperialist lenses that women's gender-based persecution becomes visible in the West. Without the imperial or colonial component, claims of gender persecution are less likely to succeed and asylum is denied. (pp. 92-93)
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