Under the skin''

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Under the skin..

• of multiculturalism

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Critical Debates in the film

• Problems of definition
• Promise and reality
• Colonial legacy
• Post war migrants
• Integration Assimilation
• Fear of Multiculturalism?
• Identity Politics
• Media Representations
• The City
• Limits to Diversity?

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Objectives

• 1. To review the findings from our research
• 2. To suggest ways of opening up the debate to
  students through visual means
• 3. To obtain some feedback on these ideas and
  develop more interactive teaching materials

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Definitions

• Problematic many conflate the fact of diversity
  (ie over 8 in UK) with diverse and conflicting
  values
• David Dabydeen - city is constituted rather like
  the separated cells in a beehive each one with
  its unique sensations, codes and values,
• yet how often do many of us venture into the
  other cells and really get to know, to absorb,
  these?

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• a set of principles, policies, and practices
  for accommodating diversity as a legitimate and
  integral component of society.
• (Fleras in Charlton and Baker, 1994, p. 26)

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Discourses of Multiculturalism

• Recipe for segregation (Trevor Philips)
• Tokenistic at best (Chas Critcher)
• Means of containing black communities through
  separate ethnic fiefdoms (Arun Kundnani)
• a critical dialogue with other cultures. (Bhiku
  Parekh)
• Non-existent (Malcolm Cumberbatch)

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Sleepwalking?

• "I think we are we are sleepwalking our way
  to segregation. We are becoming strangers to each
  other, and we are leaving communities to be
  marooned outside the mainstream."
• Trevor Phillips today at the  Manchester Council
  for Community Relations.
• 22 September 2005

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Tokenism?
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• Diluting or disregarding good old British
  values
• - whatever they are...
• Shakespeare and soccer, the 'Dunkirk spirit'?

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• A panacea? - opens the way to combat insularity
  and ethnocentrism

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Ethnic Absolutism?
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The end of multiculturalism?

• Reasons for this backlash against the informal
  'drift' of multiculturalism
• motivated by a western fear of Islam
• and a sudden concern that boundaries have not
  been properly drawn.
• The superficial cool of multicultural,
  (chicken tikka masala) Britannia was expedient
  now seen as mistaken
• As assertion of political and economic rights
  for minority groups become louder
• Sense of identities becoming submerged and
  blurred global processes

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• Rhetoric of diversity which sustained the CRE has
  withered away as the state requires consensus
  against threat to elite nations dominance
• Demonstrated through mass resistance to US UK
  invasion of Iraq
• Doubts about the war on terror
• Loss of hegemony containment of expedient
  multiculturalism not working
• Need to re-assert British values

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Shifting Media Representations
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Shifting Media Representations
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Identity Politics?

• 5. The notion of 'identity politics' stemming
  from a postmodern shift in society is often sited
  as the cause of this focus on difference do you
  accept that some sort of postmodern phase took
  place and that this created a different
  fragmented view of identity?

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• Calls for community cohesion and the
  integration agenda (CRE)
• Assimilation and integration are not far removed
• Focus on local level is important but withers
  away at point of delivery
• Difficulty of policy which always seems to be
  looking from the outside in
• Andharder to admit - academics have also
  preserved this insulation from reality

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Fear of multiculturalism?

• We must end the ruinous doctrine of
  multiculturalism and reassert British identity
  and British values and insist that although
  Muslims are a valued minority, they must abide by
  majority rules.
• Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail, November 7, 2005)
  following the demonstrations in France

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• The real failure of multiculturalism is its
  failure to understand what is valuable
  about cultural diversity.

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• There is nothing good in itself about
  diversity. It is important because it allows us
  to compare and contrast different values, beliefs
  and lifestyles, make judgements upon them, and
  decide which are better and which worse.
• Kenan malik.com
• Essays the real value of diversity
• This essay first appeared in Connections (winter
  2002). A shorter version appeared on
  spiked-online.

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• Cultural diversity only makes sense within a
  framework of common values and beliefs that
  enable us to treat all people equally.

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• and to create such a framework requires us to
  be a bit more intolerant and to show a bit less
  respect.
• (Kenan Malik)

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Limits to Diversity?

• 'lifestyle diversity and high immigration can
  erode feelings of mutual obligation, reducing
  willingness to pay tax and contribute to welfare
  provisions'.
• Goodhart, David Too diverse Prospect, February
  2004

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Limits?

• the real problem is not a surfeit of strangers
  in our midst but the abandonment over the past
  two decades of ideologically based politics for a
  politics of identity.

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Limits?

• ...The result has been the fragmentation of
  society as different groups assert their
  particular identities - and the creation of a
  well of resentment within white working class
  communities who feel left out.
• Malik, K (2004) Too Diverse A Response to
• David Goodhart

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Charting shifts in idea of Multiculturalism
visually
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Using other visual codes
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Models
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• Multiculturalism basically means that no
  culture is perfect or represents the best life
  and that it can therefore benefit from a critical
  dialogue with other cultures.
• (Parekh, B, in BBC News Monday, 5 April, 2004)

42
Bibliography

• CRE, Speech transcript CRE Chair Trevor Phillips
  today at the Manchester Council for Community
  Relations.
• Critcher, Chas Interview from film Under the Skin
• Dabydeen, D 104 in McLeod 2000, 228
• Fleras in Charlton and Baker, 1994, p. 26)
• Furedi, F (2005) Culture of Fear , Continuum
• Goodhart, David Too diverse Prospect, February
  2004
• Hall, S (2000) The Multicultural Question,
  Political Economy Research Centre, Lecture,
  transcript available on - http//www.shef.ac.uk/un
  i/academic/N-Q/perc/lectures/Hall.html)
• Kundnani, A (2002) The Death of Multiculturalism,
  1 April 2002 online
• http//www.irr.org.uk/2002/april/ak000001.html
• Kundnani, A
• Kenan malik.com
• Essays the real value of diversity
• This essay first appeared in Connections (winter
  2002). A shorter version appeared on
  spiked-online.
• Malik, K (2004) Too Diverse A Response to
• David Goodhart
• Parekh, B, in BBC News Monday, 5 April, 2004)
• Spencer, S (2006) Race and Ethnicity Culture,
  Identity and Representation, Routledge
• Spencer, S Todd, M (2006) Reflecting on
  Practice teaching race and ethnicity in Further
  and Higher Education , C-SAP Monograph,
  University of Birmingham