Multicultural Dialogue

Multicultural Dialogue
Author: Randi Gressgård
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2012-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0857456482

As cross-cultural migration increases democratic states face a particular challenge: how to grant equal rights and dignity to individuals while recognizing cultural distinctiveness. In response to the greater number of ethnic and religious minority groups, state policies seem to focus on managing cultural differences through planned pluralism. This book explores the dilemmas, paradoxes, and conflicts that emerge when differences are managed within this conceptual framework. After a critical investigation of the perceived logic of identity, indicative of Western nation-states and at the root of their pluralistic intentions, the author takes issue with both universalist notions of equality and cultural relativist notions of distinctiveness. However, without identity is it possible to participate in dialogue and form communities? Is there a way out of this impasse? The book argues in favor of communities based on nonidentitarian difference, developed and maintained through open and critical dialogue. Randi Gressgård is Associate Professor at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen. She is also affiliated with the research unit IMER (International Migration and Ethnic Relations).

Racisms in a Multicultural Canada

Racisms in a Multicultural Canada
Author: Augie Fleras
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
Total Pages: 575
Release: 2014-04-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 155458955X

In acknowledging the possibility that as the world changes so too does racism, this book argues that racism is not disappearing, despite claims of living in a post-racial and multicultural world. To the contrary, racisms persist by transforming into different forms whose intent or effects remain the same: to deny and disallow as well as to exclude and exploit. Racisms in a Multicultural Canada is organized around the assumption that race is not simply a set of categories and that racism is not just a collection of individuals with bad attitudes. Rather, racism is as much a matter of interests as of attitudes, of property as of prejudice, of structural advantage as of personal failing, of whiteness as of the “other,” of discourse as of discrimination, and of unequal power relations as of bigotry. This multi-dimensionality of racism complicates the challenge of formulating anti-racism and anti-colonialist strategies capable of addressing it. Employing a critical framework that puts politics and power at the centre of analysis, this book focuses on why racisms proliferate, how they work in contemporary societies, and how the way we think and talk about racism changes over time. Specifically, it examines the working of contemporary racisms in a multicultural Canada that claims to abide by principles of multiculturalism and a commitment to a post-racial society.

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition
Author: Sharam Alghasi
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2012-12-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1409491633

Explicitly comparative in its approach, Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition discusses central issues regarding multiculturalism in today's Europe, based on studies of Norway and the Netherlands. Distinguishing clearly the four social fields of the media, education, the labour market and issues relating to gender, it presents empirical case studies, which offer valuable insights into the nature of majority/minority relationships, whilst raising theoretical questions relevant for further comparisons. With clear comparisons of integration and immigration policies in Europe and engagement with the questions surrounding the need for more culturally sensitive policies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers alike.

Culture's Vanities

Culture's Vanities
Author: David Steigerwald
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780742511972

Americans want it both ways. They are committed to cultural diversity, yet demand an endless variety of cheap consumer goods from a global system that destroys distinct ways of life. In this groundbreaking work, David Steigerwald argues that Americans have papered over this paradox by embracing the rhetoric of diversity and multiculturalism, which hides the extent to which they have accepted homogenized ways of working and living.

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition

Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition
Author: Sharam Alghasi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317084195

Explicitly comparative in its approach, Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition discusses central issues regarding multiculturalism in today's Europe, based on studies of Norway and the Netherlands. Distinguishing clearly the four social fields of the media, education, the labour market and issues relating to gender, it presents empirical case studies, which offer valuable insights into the nature of majority/minority relationships, whilst raising theoretical questions relevant for further comparisons. With clear comparisons of integration and immigration policies in Europe and engagement with the questions surrounding the need for more culturally sensitive policies, this volume will be of interest to scholars and policy-makers alike.

The Paradoxes of Integration

The Paradoxes of Integration
Author: J. Eric Oliver
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-05-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780226626628

The United States is rapidly changing from a country monochromatically divided between black and white into a multiethnic society. The Paradoxes of Integration helps us to understand America’s racial future by revealing the complex relationships among integration, racial attitudes, and neighborhood life. J. Eric Oliver demonstrates that the effects of integration differ tremendously, depending on which geographical level one is examining. Living among people of other races in a larger metropolitan area corresponds with greater racial intolerance, particularly for America’s white majority. But when whites, blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans actually live in integrated neighborhoods, they feel less racial resentment. Paradoxically, this racial tolerance is usually also accompanied by feeling less connected to their community; it is no longer "theirs." Basing its findings on our most advanced means of gauging the impact of social environments on racial attitudes, The Paradoxes of Integration sensitively explores the benefits and at times, heavily borne, costs of integration.