Peter Hervik

The Danish cultural world of unbridgeable differences

This article looks at the contestation of foreign presence in Denmark from the perspective of popular consciousness. I infer the cultural world of Danish host and non-Danish guests from a pool of 55 in-depth interviews about multicultural issues. In this culturally figured world the guests are constructed as widely different cultural bearers who refuse to downplay their cultural markers, therefore upsetting the guests. According to this reasoning, the racial outburst of the hosts is caused solely by the unruly guests. Blaming the guests for creating racist responses, I contend, can best be understood as a naturalization of racism. This denial of racism in the popular sphere builds on the same culturalist construction of unbridgeable differences between a ‘we-group’ of ‘alike’ (or invisible) Danes and a visible ‘out group’ that dominates both popular and political understandings of immigrants and refugees in Denmark in the end of the 1990s.

Anthropological perspectives on the new racism in Europe

this volume, five European anthropologists engage themselves and their discipline in the issues of race, racialization, and racism. With few important exceptions, European social anthropologists have not shown much concern for the study of nationalism and racism. This is now changing, and we hope to further a development that sets up courses, research, conferences and publications in the anthropological institutions of Europe. There may be several reasons why European anthropologists have played second fiddle to American colleagues and other disciplines such as cultural studies and sociology. One important aspect is that the German-speaking countries and Scandinavia have morally and legally banned the term ‘racism’, which the memory of Holocaust had discredited and made it almost a taboo to use (see Gingrich this volume). The potency of being accused of racism has recently become the backbone of Unni Wikan’s diagnosis of the Scandinavian multiculturalism in its failure to adequately challenge certain aspects of immigrant cultural practices and beliefs (Wikan 2002; Gullestad this volume). One notably European exception, where racism has been under academic scrutiny, is the United Kingdom, perhaps due to the influence of John Rex, born in South Africa and the eminent black sociologists Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy. Another reason for anthropologists’ near absence in the study of racism could be that anthropology may have felt that the discipline always stood for the equality and relative value of all cultures ever since Franz Boas stressed cultural relativism. Therefore, anthropology had already done its internal cleanup and shown the way for other disciplines (Viswesvaran 1998). A third contributing factor may be an unfortunate reflection of the egalitarian ideology that saturates the Scandinavian, Dutch and Austrian national In

Ending tolerance as a solution to incompatibility: The Danish ‘crisis of multiculturalism’

Successful integration must include the long-term enactment of ‘the will to feel Danish’. As Jews in Denmark have done in the course of many generations, so immigrant Muslims must immerse themselves to the extent that feeling Danish is naturalized. Such is the perspective proposed in a recent focus group discussion in Denmark on the integration of Muslims into Danish society. This idea of incompatibility between native Danes and Muslim ‘newcomers’ has become a salient feature of what is termed ‘value-based journalism’ and ‘value-based politics’ in the last decade. This article traces the origin of the ‘end of tolerance’ strategy, which follows from this development and examines the emergence of neo-racism in Denmark with its ideas of xenophobia as a natural reaction to other ‘cultures’ which do not belong ’naturally’. It shows that migrants of non-European origin are talked about in an increasingly crass and uncompromising way as a consequence of the belief in incompatibility.

The predictable responses to the Danish cartoons

On 30 September 2005 the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten published the now famous 12 cartoons of the Holy ProphetMuhammed. For the Danish mass media such obvious provocation onthe part of Jyllands-Posten (JP ) was not really newsworthy . After all JP hadpublished confrontational anti-Islamic pieces many times before. Onlywhen Muslim communities began to react to the offending cartoons andnative Danish groups of authors, doctors, dentists, ministers, and othersreacted to the tone of the media debate on ethnic minorities, did themass media begin to cover the cartoon issue and reactions to it. Theco v erag e g rew m o re in ten se w h en P rim e M in ister A n d ers Fo g h R asm u ssencommitted a blunder by refusing to meet with 11 ambassadors repre-senting half a billion Muslim people. Unable to have a dialogue with theDanish government, the ambassadors turned to their governments in theMiddle East, while Islamic individuals and groups went to the samecountries to talk about the cartoons. One Danish imam phrased it thisway: Earlier when we went abroad to talk about anti-Islamic sentimentsin Denmark, few people really believed us. W ith Othe ticking bombOcartoon, ever yone knew exactly what we were talking about and wasoutraged (Alev , 2005). From here the stor y turned truly global andreleased what has been called the most serious crisis in Danish foreignpolicy since the Second W orld W ar.In the course of events experts of all kinds have joined in tocomment on and explain the unfolding global news stor y. Localreactions were predictable, some said, because the cartoons had simplytriggered local outrage and frustration, ignited by social and politicaltension. The cartoons were not really the problem. Others explained thatmass demonstrations and burning of flags were done without protestershaving even seen the cartoons. Many words and much ink were wastedon discussing whether the cartoons should have been published or not.

Scholarly Surrealism: The Persistence of Mayanness

We imagine Mayanness as an enduring ‘pure’ substrate below surfaces of diversity that is constructed and maintained through surrealistic scholarship. Equipped with community studies, theories and methods, scholars surrealistically construct ideas of Mayanness, as do the millions of self-identified Mayan individuals from Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and beyond. We use Salvador Dalís masterpiece, The Persistence of Memory, as a playful device for explaining how Mayanness is perpetuated in practice, within ethnographic contexts, and always in realms of power. Mayanist discourse is analogous to Surrealism in many, but not all, ways. Mayanist discourse is clearly surrealistic when we view it as emerging from discordance and paradox, but it differs from Surrealism when it masks and replaces the surreal with aesthetic, palatable and ‘pure’ images of coherence and rationality. By acknowledging our scholarly surrealism, we suggest that we may encounter a bit of academic iconoclasm and liberation. By embracing the inherent paradox, rather than concealing it, we contribute to polemical academic debates regarding constructed binary oppositions, geographic foundations of identity, alternative methodologies and means of representation, and issues of continuity and change in Mayan scholarship and lives.

Danish Media coverage of 22/7

Abstract When the two terrorist attacks in Norway took place and the identity of terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik (ABB) was revealed, attention turned to his network relations and shared ideas with Danish radical right wing communities, including the Danish People’s Party. In this article, we focus on ABB’s Danish connections through an analysis of the first 100 days of Danish media coverage. We scrutinised 188 articles in the largest daily newspapers to find out how Danish actors related to ABB’s ideas. The key argument is that the discourses and opinions reflect pre-existing opinions and entrenched positions that have little to do with the event 22/7. Instead, they have everything to do with an attempt to contain domestic adversaries, if not enemies, such as “multiculturalists” and feminists, who were fiercely attacked by rightwingers, while left-wingers saw the radical right wing as the real enemy. At the same time, animosity towards Islam was reproduced leaving the enemy as being a multi-headed monster of Islamists, multiculturalists and feminists

Mayan culture: Beyond boundaries

The social categories “Maya” and “mestizo” have been applied to denote the Yucatec Mayan people in Mexico. This article examines the cluster of perceived attributes (schemata) evoked by the terms and how they relate to each other. It shows that there is an incongruency between them along the lines of local and academic categorization, which is an implication of the different social spaces in which they arise. In spite of the incongruency and the cultural plurality evoked by their usage, the author argues that the people of Yucatan share a single culture.

Xenophobia and Nativism

In everyday terms, ‘xenophobia’ is now used to refer to dislike of foreigners, such as being anti-immigration, antiforeign, and/or anti-different groups, while ‘xenophobia’ in the social sciences has imported semantic changes that reflect mega-events such as 9/11, the Danish Muhammad cartoon crisis of 2005–06, and the bombing and killings on 22 July 2011 in Norway. In this new development, xenophobia (including Islamophobia) and nativism embrace the idea of cultural incompatibility and the naturalization of xenophobic attitudes following from it. Out of this understanding of xenophobia as a natural reaction, antimigration springs as a nativist necessity with a right to defend ‘ones culture’ while either legitimizing racism or denying that cultural and political self-defense can be racist.

Narrations of Shifting Maya Identities

Three anthropological ways of narrating the historical formation of Maya identity have recently been outlined in an article by Kay Warren on intergenerational struggles of Mayan families in Guatemala. According to the anti-racism scheme, Maya identity forms as a reaction to ethnic opposition. The cultural continuity approach treats identity formation as persistence that occurs in spite of ethnic oppression. The third, ‘mestizaje’ school of thought argues that assimilation has eroded indigenous identity to the extent that it only makes sense to speak of an intermediary ladino (or mestizo) category. Warren argues that the previous antagonism between ethnographic approaches has obscured the coexistence of these narrations in families, where discontinuity and rejection of traditional Maya identities interplay with continuity and revitalisation. In this paper, I compare the narrations of shifting identities in Guatemala to local representations of socio-cultural change in Yucutan. Based upon research in Oxkutzcab, I attempt to show how the interpretations of intergenerational changes in language, dress, and occupation relate to a set of local and regional events that evade the mutually exclusive meta-narratives of change.

The Vices of Debating Racial Epithets in Danish News Media Discourse

This chapter offers an analysis of the Danish news media debates surrounding the use of the racial epithets and slurs, such as the word “negro”. Based on the news media analysis, authors examine two prevalent arguments used to suport the claims that the word is usable in the Danish context: the argument that the word is semanticaly neutral and the argument of post racism and freedom of speech. Authors approach this particular racial epithet as situated in a historically laden construction of racial system built on the hierarchical ideas of inferiority and superiority. The debate that is centered around the morally laden question “may we say it or not?” reveals the clash between those who see the use of the word as a cultural right to the freedom of speech and those who see the historical circumstances of colonialism and slavery embedded in the word. Authors conclude that there is no such thing as a neutral identity category. The study of meaning cannot be reduced to semantics equivalent to the meanings of words as looked up in dictionaries but must include the pragmatics, that is, what goes on in social communication. Moreover, the authors argue that reducing the debate into an issue of “may or may not” is a missed opportunity to seriously examine, analyze, and debate the processes of racialization in Danish society.