Transcript G-Semi - University of Surrey

Cronem - Roehampton University, 12 November 2007
Everyday Multiculturalism:
Bringing the practice-turn into
multiculturalism studies
Giovanni Semi
Dept. of Social and Political Studies, University of Milan
www.sociol.unimi.it/docenti/semi
A first premise:
A second premise:
– Our work must be understood as being
influenced by three phenomena occurred
since the mid Nineties:
The public acceptance of Italy as becoming an
immigration country and a new multicultural site of
political and social conflict.
The making of the italian academic field of
“migration studies” and “multiculturalism”
The shared feeling of uneasyness within both the
discourse of media and politics and of academics
A matter of public discourse
Italy (and Western countries) depicted as:
– More heterogeneous
– More fragmented
– The idea of an “invasion” of aliens
– The idea of the existence of a taken-forgranted US (we, the Italians)
– The colonial ambiguity and the new racism of
cultural differences
A matter of intellectual perception
The growing distance between theory and
empirical accounts
– The grand theories of normative
multiculturalism
– The enormous amount of idiographic
accounts of communities (as islands)
We’re not alone
This feeling of uneasyness is shared
among many other scholars:
– The work of Gerd Baumann on
multiculturalism
– The work of Ulrick Beck on cosmopolitanism
– Recent conferences (2006) on “Everyday
Multiculturalism” at Macquarie University,
Sidney
Our agenda
The need for a double path of analysis
– Bringing normative theories on the “ground”
– Making ideographic accounts more theoretical
How?
Everyday Multiculturalism!
In spite of the philosophical and normative
conception of multiculturalism, the concept
of everyday multiculturalism highlights the
character of “social construction” of any
socially relevant difference. It puts under
scrutiny how the differences are effectively
used in specific situations of everyday
interaction
Two preliminary assumptions
a. Taking difference seriously: as a relevant aspect of
the necessary and ongoing activity of making sense of
the everyday reality. This means considering difference
as a political resource that actors can use to construct
an ordinate and shared meaning, to build a specific
definition of the situation in which they are committed, to
resist other definitions perceived as inadequate,
unequal, unfair.
b. Giving specific attention to everyday life, to the
routines of the situated recursive activity, the more
mundane interactions, all those daily occasions where
the ability in using (and facing) difference is a needed
and indispensable capacity
A specific way to look at
difference
 against an essentialist conception of difference
 against a radically processual conception of
difference
= difference as a political resource: a specific tool for building a public,
shared, meaningful reality. It is something that people use to create
boundaries, alliances and, of course, discriminations.
It is an ongoing construction, changing face and consistence in different
moments and in different contexts in order to better fit the specific
situation in which it is used (= it isn’t a natural, essential, object)
but
it needs to become real, consistent, stable, in order to be believed as a
meaningful part of the reality, to become a social fact with real effects
(= it isn’t an ephemeral, endless mixing process)
Our research proposal
Everyday multiculturalism is NOT a specific
dimension of our societies but a WAY of
looking at them
=a
category of analysis:
a specific sociological point of view oriented to
detect how difference is constructed and
contested
Our research proposal
=
a category of practices:
the daily, mundane, (apparently) unproblematic
relations in local urban contexts requires a
constant ability to recognise and use differences,
to construct and deconstruct boundaries, to
sustain and resist common representations of
otherness
Locations:
– Spatial practices
– Social relations
Keywords
The double competence of social actors
The spatially and socially situated
difference between tactics and strategies
The constant shift between micro (local)
contexts and macro discourses
Gentrified Neighbourhoods as
public spaces
From fordism to symbolic economy: Turin.
The two legitimate populations of the
neighborhood: old and young residents,
former traditional shops and activities vs
gentrified night-life
What about the ‘Others’?
The making of a public space: a
debate on “security” in the
neighbourhood
A space offered by the municipality.
Featuring: political representatives, old
residents, new residents....
– The topics: drug dealers and drug-addicts once
again in the neighbourhood shift towars other
“social problems”: the african bazaar
– The shift from urban insecurity (drug) to urban
everyday-life (cafés)
– The emergence of two-fronts
Insecurity
Insecurity!
Old residents front opposes:
No more cafés, we want fordist neighbourhood
Heroin back in the streets
Also bad shops: stinky, noisy, non esotic
Gentrifiers front appears:
In the past it was worst
Habermas or Kymlicka?
The was a preliminary “hidden” creation of
a deliberative arena, with a general
support for some rules: leaving outside
NOT some topics RATHER some actors
(african vendors neither old residents nor
new gentrifiers)
Once the arena is build, then politics
arises but without some relevant social
actors.
Conclusion
Urban space as sites for observation of
everyday multiculturalism
– Where linking theoretical perspectives and
situated accounts
– Where observing the making of cleavages
and the interplay of the socially relevant
dimension of urban-life, such as age, class,
gender, public and political entitlement,
ethnicity....