Christian Karner

Conviviality and Conflict: Pluralism, Resilience and Hope in Inner-City Birmingham

This paper examines the lived realities of ethnic pluralism, social marginalisation and activism in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham, UK, which external media representations have tended to depict as lacking ‘community cohesion’ and fostering ‘parallel lives’. Drawing on qualitative interviews with local residents and entrepreneurs conducted over a three-year period, we challenge such representations and a defining characteristic of currently dominant integration discourses: their tendency to ascribe ‘community cohesion’ or its absence as absolute properties to localities. Contrary to such reifying classifications, our interview data reveal considerably more complex social realities defined by a series of ambivalences. The first ambivalence is between undeniable local conflicts and, simultaneously, the everyday ‘conviviality’ of boundary-crossings and inter-ethnic solidarities. Second, the local economy is shown to enable both cohesion and ethnic exclusion. Finally, local politics and religious practice also display contradictory tendencies towards boundary maintenance on the one hand, and new inclusive alliances on the other. The emerging picture of Alum Rock not only challenges rigid taxonomies implied by ‘community cohesion’ discourses but also poses important questions about inter- and intra-ethnic networks, religiously underpinned social capital, the locally ‘embedded’ market, perceptions of social change, and an ideologically heterogeneous local civil society.

The ‘Habsburg Dilemma’ Today: Competing Discourses of National Identity in Contemporary Austria

This article analyses discourses of Austrian national identity. It discusses the reproduction (and contestation) of national identities on the levels of everyday language, political debate and policy. Three discursive formations of the nation—and their histories—are discussed: a nowadays marginal and de-legitimated discourse of pan-Germanic ethnicism; the hegemonic paradigm of ‘Austrian-ness’, which itself comprises a range of ideological positions and constitutes the over-arching framework to most (relevant) debates; and counter-hegemonic discourses including European- and ‘post-national’ identity formations. The article also discusses individuals’ ongoing negotiation of, and possible resistance to, discourses of national belonging, and concludes by relating its findings to the contemporary salience of national identities as a reaction to the (perceived) consequences of economic globalisation.

National DOXA, Crises and Ideological Contestation in Contemporary Austria

Based on a qualitative analysis of relevant news media, this article provides a historically contextualized account of the construction and contestation of Austrian national identities. It argues, in Bourdieu-ian fashion, that successive crises since the mid-1980s have transformed a previously non-reflexive habitus/doxa—the taken-for-granted (though not ideologically homogenous) “cultural universe of the undiscussed”—into a contested “universe of discourse.” Focusing on the realms of sport, language/national symbols, and the environment, the analysis reveals discursive struggles around previously “banal” and now consciously negotiated national identities.

Reputational geographies and urban social cohesion

Abstract This article adds to recent literature in migration studies on the importance of place and space by drawing on extended interviews with residents in the Alum Rock area of East Birmingham. Our central theme is the exploration of reputational geographies; the symbolic and material boundaries drawn around places as indicators of social status, sites of memories and repositories of affect that can have profound socio-economic as well as emotional consequences for city residents. We argue that research and policy addressing urban social diversity must display a greater sensitivity to the deeply felt affiliations to, and memories of, local settings expressed by our respondents. We conclude that contemporary debates about multiculturalism and urban social cohesion require greater attention to the particularities of place and local identity.

Austrian Counter-Hegemony Critiquing Ethnic Exclusion and Globalization

This article examines select discursive contributions to Austrian civil society as counter-hegemonic forms of engagement with (trans)national structures of power and exclusion. Their ideological opposition is shown to unfold around three thematic areas: (1) conceptualizations of (ethnic) identities that subvert discourses of ethnonationalism; (2) initiatives that challenge everyday racism and asylum seekers’ structural marginalization; (3) a recurring critique of neo-liberalism and economic globalization. The article also demonstrates that the political agency in question is informed by a narrative of interpretation, which partly converges with seminal contributions to the sociology of globalization and which differs radically from neo-nationalist responses to the dislocations and uncertainties of contemporary capitalism.

Theorising Power and Resistance among “Travellers”

This paper (re-)examines the literature on Traveller communities in the United Kingdom by combining parts of Michel Foucaults and Michel de Certeaus theoretical legacies. Following an ethnographic summary, I demonstrate the relevance of Foucault and Certeau for a critical understanding of the Travellers’ structural predicaments and ideological resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I argue that Foucaults outline of modern power, surveillance and classification sheds new light on the impact of social control agencies and the implementation of legislative changes, such as the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, on (semi-)nomadic and/or self-employed groups. The implications of more recent legal developments are discussed as symptoms of postmodernity and the further ideological marginalisation of “non-consuming nomads”. I then argue that some of Certeaus key concepts, including the “strategies/tactics” distinction, illuminate the Travellers’ modalities of resistance and symbolisms of difference. Completing a two-way dynamic between theory and data, the article also shows that existing empirical material on Travellers highlights some of the weaknesses in Foucaults and Certeaus respective thought. Finally, I turn to Foucaults “analytics” to account for intra-group power and resistance, and hence to challenge the common portrayal of Foucault as a “theorist of domination” in juxtaposition to Certeau as a “theorist of subversion”.

The Uses of the Past and European Integration: Austria between Lisbon, Ireland, and EURO 08

This article examines Austrian national identity negotiations through a qualitative analysis of the countrys ideologically heterogeneous media, with a focus on Austrias most widely read paper (and its popular readers’ letters pages) between April and August 2008. This turbulent period coincided with widening opposition to the EUs Lisbon reform treaty, Austrias co-hosting of the European football championship, and the collapse of the countrys coalition government. This analysis of media coverage and readers’ letters focuses on the rhetorical strategies underpinning various discursive constructions of Austrias place within the EU. The following key findings are discussed: projections of perceived social ills and resulting anxieties onto the EU; the interpretative uses of the past—historical episodes selected from Austrian and other national contexts—to make sense of and politicize the present; constructions of ‘European ideals’ in juxtaposition to perceived ‘European realities’; and competing models of national identity in relation to the European ‘network state.’

The market and the nation: Austrian (dis)agreements

This article relates contemporary Austrias much-discussed and internally contested identity politics to transnational socio-economic transformations and their far-reaching local/national effects. A qualitative analysis of (wide-ranging contributions to) current debates on the environment, food production, climate change, social inequality and welfare, higher education, art, migration, and unemployment reveals a recurring pre-occupation with expanding/encroaching markets, their advocated limits, assumed costs or promises. The negotiation of national identities is shown to unfold in relation to three inter-related phenomena: first, widening commodification; second, what Karl Polanyi termed the ‘double-movement’ between ‘dis-embedded’ economics and political counter-assertions; third, competing ideological visions of the relationship between economic activity/market forces and social order, group boundaries, solidarities and hence exclusions/inclusions.

'Austro-Pop' Since the 1980s: Two Case Studies of Cultural Critique and Counter- Hegemonic Resistance

Recent political and social developments in Austria have been widely portrayed in simplistically metonymic terms, with controversial figures such as Waldheim and Haider being perceived to epitomise Austrian society as a whole. In this paper, I analyse the discursive/lyrical content of some of the songs by STS and Austria 3, two of the most successful bands within the genre of Austrian popular music. Approaching these two case studies from the theoretical perspectives of discourse analysis and cognitive anthropology, I will show that ‘Austro- Pop’ has - at important junctures in recent Austrian history - served as a tool of ideological resistance and created sites of social critique and cultural introspection. This paper thus illustrates that popular music analysed as discourse can draw attention to social heterogeneity and competing ideologies. The resulting sociological account challenges widespread portrayals - both journalistic and academic - of Austrian society as ideologically monolithic. Popular music will therefore be shown to offer valuable empirical data concerning some important sociological and social psychological issues such as the spread and contestation of ideas, the ‘nature’ of public opinion and the individuals agency in relation to it.

National stereotypes in the context of the European crisis

ABSTRACT In this article we position the contributions to our special issue in relation to existing scholarship on racism and stereotypes. We pay close attention to conceptual strands in the literature that emphasize two cognitive-discursive characteristics of stereotypes: their essentialist reductions and projections and their metonymical qualities. We then extend our conceptual and thematic map further to include recent discussions of the relationships between national and European identifications, particularly in crisis contexts, and the role of memory politics in them. We conclude with a brief mention of the scope and potential dangers of historical analogies in moments of crisis and fragmentation.