Sample Chapter/ introduction to my edited book, 'Revisiting Iris Marion Young on Normalisation,...

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137440976.0001 v Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix Notes on Contributors xi Introduction: Keeping Young’s Legacy Alive: Why Does Understanding Normalisation Matter to Difference, Democracy and Inclusion? 1 Ulrike M. Vieten Contextualising Iris Marion Young’s legacy 2 inking about the matter of societal crisis: de-normalising normative structures and habits 5 Sketch of the following five chapters 10 1 Why Should We ink of Structural Injustice when Speaking about Culture? 17 Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán 2 Communicative Democracy and Solidarity Across Racial and Sexual Differences 33 José Medina 3 Routed Connections in Late Modern Times 49 Halleh Ghorashi 4 Just Causes, Unruly Social Relations. Universalist-Inclusive Ideals and Dutch Political Realities 67 Guno Jones Copyrighted material – 9781137440969 Copyrighted material – 9781137440969

Transcript of Sample Chapter/ introduction to my edited book, 'Revisiting Iris Marion Young on Normalisation,...

DOI: 10.1057/9781137440976.0001 v

Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgements ix

Notes on Contributors xi

Introduction: Keeping Young’s Legacy Alive: Why Does Understanding Normalisation Matter to Difference, Democracy and Inclusion? 1Ulrike M. VietenContextualising Iris Marion Young’s legacy 2Thinking about the matter of societal crisis:

de-normalising normative structures and habits 5

Sketch of the following five chapters 10

1 Why Should We Think of Structural Injustice when Speaking about Culture? 17Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán

2 Communicative Democracy and Solidarity Across Racial and Sexual Differences 33José Medina

3 Routed Connections in Late Modern Times 49Halleh Ghorashi

4 Just Causes, Unruly Social Relations. Universalist-Inclusive Ideals and Dutch Political Realities 67Guno Jones

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vi Contents

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5 Diversity Politics and the Politics of Difference 87Sara de Jong

Index 106

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Introduction: Keeping Young’s Legacy Alive: Why Does Understanding Normalisation Matter to Difference, Democracy and Inclusion?Ulrike M. Vieten

Abstract: The introduction points out the ways Iris Marion Young’s thoughts, mainly provided in her book, Inclusion and Democracy, matter to us in the 21st century. Particularly, her concept of a ‘politics of positional difference’ as read in the context of structural injustice (Young, 2007) is of importance as it captures the troubling deficits of social inclusion in democratic societies. A critical discussion of normalisation is needed, unwrapping how majority normativity or hegemonic values keep social injustice and structural disadvantage in place. Further it is argued that Young’s differentiation of a ‘politics of cultural differences’ and a ‘politics of positional differences’ (2007) has to be read in combination with her critique of processes of normalisation. With this focus in mind the introduction ends while briefly sketching the main line of arguments of the different chapters.

Keywords: neo-essentialism; normalisation; ‘politics of positional difference’; urban riots

Vieten, Ulrike M. Revisiting Iris Marion Young on Normalisation, Inclusion and Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137440976.0005

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Contextualising Iris Marion Young’s legacy

Christina M. Bellon (2008: viii) describes Iris Marion Young in a special Hypatia issue:

Iris Young was perhaps one of the most influential political philosophers of our time. Her work demonstrated the practicality of, and theoretical flexibil-ity for, bridging jealously guarded divisions in philosophical methodology, borrowing from phenomenology, postmodernism, and various streams of analytic philosophy, as necessary. She resisted overly abstract ideal theory at a time when it was de rigueur, choosing instead to critique those who held the view that political life is best understood through the formulation of universal ideals, divorced from lived realities and practical differences.

I never met Iris Marion Young in person, but I have known her work for quite a while. First, I came across Young’s writing in the mid-1990s. Back then I was living in Bremen, in Northwest Germany, studying law, working part-time and struggling with my own reading of institutional injustice as generated particularly by ethnic, classed, gendered and sexual discriminations on the one hand, and my persisting political and feminist interest in understanding the trajectory of democratic societies, equality and social inclusion, on the other.

Over the years, I remained attracted to what Young had to say on the matter of contemporary multi-cultural societies and her critical gender perspective. The latter should be regarded in my view as a place to start thinking critically, taking into account further intersecting social categories such as class, nationality, ethnicity/race, religion or body shape/capacities and sexual orientations. All these interlinked layers are a kind of ‘difference-awareness project in progress’, meaning they don’t represent a fully fleshed list of identities or structurally significant social divisions. They rather point at potential relevant social axes, some of which we have discovered while others might come into focus as a result of new political struggles (Vieten, 2009).

Young, who tragically died of cancer in 2006, left an inspiring oeuvre to those interested in political theory, equality and the ever ongoing struggle for global social justice in different local sites. Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990a), Throwing like a girl and other essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory (1990b), or Intersecting voices. Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy, and Policy (1997) have to be mentioned along-side her most influential book, Inclusion and Democracy (2000).

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So, why revisit her view on inclusion and democracy, and further, why do we add ‘normalisation’ here as a central category of how to under-stand difference, diversity and otherness in contemporary societies? I will underline in this introduction the ways in which Iris Marion Young’s thoughts provided in her book, Inclusion and Democracy, and particularly her concept of a ‘politics of positional difference’ as read in the context of global structural injustice (Young, 2004, 2007), capture some of the troubling contradictions with respect to inclusion in democratic socie-ties. The recognition of Young’s work and a timely interpretation of her arguments can help us to understand more in-depth critical processes of normalisation, and notions of group differences in Europe and beyond.

In the opening sentences of her introduction to Inclusion and Democracy, Young writes (2000: 1)

In January 1997 I stood on street corners in Pittsburgh soliciting signatures for a referendum petition. The temperature hovered around 15 Fahrenheit in the sun. I persisted in this self-punishment because I knew that scores of other people were spread over the city also collecting signatures. The petition called for a question to be put on the May ballot asking voters to approve the creation of a Police Review Board.

Apart from a sense of humour and self-irony conveyed in these words it also tells a story about her Menschsein and political identity combining intellectual trajectory with passionate civic engagement.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that bringing up the theme of ‘police’, or more precisely, the public demand of control and review of policing measures, here refers to the situation of African Americans (‘stop and search practices’). We might think that this is not that different to some British cases of the 1990s (e.g. Stephen Lawrence inquiry, murdered in 1993, Macpherson report). The more recent violent outrage linked to institutional racism and classism that inflicted youth riots in the begin-ning of August in 2011, first in London, and then also occurring in some of the Northern cities, led to various media and academic reflections. People were wondering to what degree, anger and resentment towards police measures, the urban poor and neo-liberal city management (Wallace, 2012)1 or ‘frustrated consumerism’ (Bauman, 2011)2 might be the cause(s) of the summer riots.

According to the British newspaper, The Guardian

[a]lthough mainly young and male, those involved in the riots came from a cross-section of local communities. Just under half of those interviewed in

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the study were students. Of those who were not in education and were of working age, 59% were unemployed. Although half of those interviewed were black, people who took part in the disorder did not consider these ‘race riots’. (Guardian, 5(12), 2011)3

The unrest had started in Tottenham, which is an inner city neigh-bourhood in the more impoverished east part of London (borough of Haringey4), and spreading subsequently to some cities in North England. In hindsight, it was not a so-called race riot; it turned out that in addi-tion to ‘race and gender’ further intersecting layers of a largely socially and symbolically de-classed section of society featured prominently here. Depending on the city scale the majority of rioting youth was white (e.g. in Manchester), or black (in London). However, these young men and few women still shared a situation of special vulnerability when (above average) being black and young meant being exposed to racial abuse, or undergoing experiences of peer criminal attacks in their local communities, or being faced with a substantial lack of career options and educational aspirations, while – in a circle with few chances to opt out – at the biographical end might then await the trap of being institution-alised (prison; ASBO orders). On another reading it looks like a circle of cliché-masculinity, poverty and pride, accompanied by boredom and frustration, and difficult to resolve.

Young (2007: 84) argues,

Structural inequalities do not determine that every member of a less privi-leged group suffers deprivation or domination. They do make most members of structurally disadvantaged groups more vulnerable5 to and harmed than others.

If members of a lower working class are structurally excluded from access to higher education, affordable housing, from actual representation in political parties or with respect to the articulation of their interests in media and culture, it means that social discrimination is becoming a (mass) phenomenon that marks the way in which a society defers the inclusion of individuals with less middle classed walks of life or values.

And here Young (2000: 5–6) pinpoints:

The normative legitimacy of a democratic decision depends on the degree to which those affected by it have been included in the decision-making processes and have had the opportunity to influence the outcomes. Calls for inclusion arise from experiences of exclusion – from basic political rights, from opportunities to participate, from the hegemonic terms of debate.

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From here we can follow up how, for example, the notion of citizenship is interwoven with matters of inclusion and democratic participation. Apparently, still something substantial is lacking in terms of social equal-ity, life chances and political participation in the contemporary project of ‘deliberate democracy’.

The shrinking of social welfare and an increase in neo-liberal commer-cialising of (public) common goods (housing, health and education) on the one hand, austerity and lack of job opportunities in some countries on the other, are adding up to social unrest and different political riots across Europe and beyond, also signifying a new phase of political transformation. Still, advocates of liberal democratic capitalism regard the individual as a stakeholder of society; taking for granted a largely de-gendered, de-classed, de-sexualised and de-disabled concept of autonomy. To put it in a nutshell, the ideal of the individual Leistungsträger (high achiever) is capturing a normalised perceptive of how to behave in a way that is ‘proper’, ‘healthy’ and ‘accepted’, mentally and physically, in society. Interestingly, Young regards ‘disability’ as ‘paradigmatic’ and not ‘exceptional’ (Young, 2007: 85) to ‘structural inequality, normalization and stigmatization’ (ibid.).

The democracy project, after all participation in democratic societies, is not self-evident and the inclusion of others (e.g. as citizens, denizens, aliens, nomads, differently visible or invisible minorities) cannot sustain without civic efforts in a continuing shared project of political de-liber-ation. Democratising society implies to engage on the local ground as well as in high-flying global spaces.

Thinking about the matter of societal crisis: de-normalising6 normative structures and habits

I have argued elsewhere (2012) that feminist concepts as proposed by theorists Iris Marion Young and Nancy Fraser are helpful in analysing a new stage of spatial transitions and transformations across different soci-eties, also keeping an eye on how shifting symbolic and material bounda-ries are restructuring power and individual chances to participate.

According to Young (2000: 82)

Political claims asserted from the specificity of social group position and which argue that the polity should attend to these differences, often serve as a resource for rather than an obstruction of democratic communications

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that aims at justice. Critics of such claims wrongly reduce this politics of difference to ‘identity politics’... While this label is appropriate to describe certain aspects of social movements, or certain issues important to them, on the whole the label ‘identity politics’ is misleading. Political theory would do well to disengage social group difference from a logic of identity, in two ways. First, we should conceptualize social groups according to a relational rather than a substanstialist (sic!) logic. Secondly, we should affirm that groups do not have identities as such, but rather individuals construct their own identi-ties on the basis of social group positioning.

Following up Young’s statement, I argue here that we witness backlash neo-essentialism with respect to ‘cultural’ identities, national group belonging, citizen identity and (extreme) right wing articulation of ‘democratic’ entitlements. Neo-essentialising public and political discourses are revived, and significant populist minorities claim territo-rial notions of community bonds and cultural cohesion while migrant/foreigner xenophobia is escalating.

There are numerous stories to be told or narratives of marginalised minorities to be heard for that matter. What about groups or individuals who are exposed to right wing shift normativity in various countries? And often it is not by chance that it is gendered as female: the penalising of, or ‘private market’ barriers to, young women wearing a headscarf or a hijab prevents highly motivated and qualified females from entering the labour market. It means their individual choices and chances of an economically more independent life are undermined (Vieten, 2012). It means that gendered religious statements get demonised, also leading to populist public exclusion. It is here where gender/sex discrimination and a culturalising of minority religion overlap and express concrete disadvantage for individuals identifying with visibly distinctive social groupings.

However, as the ‘normative’ is central to Young’s thinking of inclusion, what might her proposal concerning a more positive acting on inclusion look like; how then, do processes of normalisation come in?

Mica Nava (2007) claims a ‘normalisation of difference’ as far as ‘visceral cosmopolitanism’ in London is concerned. This reflects to a certain degree the visual presence of different communities and lifestyles across the metropolitan city London in south England, which was coined as epitomising ‘super-diversity’ by Vertovec (2007a; 2007b), or capturing the social and multi-cultural fabric of contemporary society in Europe with the term ‘complex diversity’ (Kraus, 2012).

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As argued elsewhere (Vieten, 2007; 2011; 2012), I am more sceptical of this rather phenomenological record of differences jumping too easily on the visible performances of distinctive ethno-national-religious minorities in cosmopolitan London or other global cities. It masks the need for a more radical engagement with the structural condition of the perception of difference as embedded in situated and historical contexts, which are still being encapsulated in classed social structures though interwoven with culturalised trajectories of hegemonic interests.

Hegemonic discourses of normality and normative values subscribe to an ongoing colonialising habit towards the Other. Hence, Young’s critique of processes of normalisation, which shape her reading of ‘inclusive democracy’, can help to clarify the meaning of inclusion with respect to more utopian projects of democracy. Young holds a profoundly critical view on what ‘normalisation’ presupposes when considering the notion of difference with respect to diversity, equality and inclusion.

Young (2006: 96) defines her understanding of normalisation as follows: ‘I refer to processes that construct experiences and capacities of some social segments into standards against which all are measured and some found wanting or deviant’. And further, she asks for a notion of difference that goes beyond ‘a politics of difference in national culture or religion, on the one hand, and difference that arises primarily from structural relations in sexuality, divisions of labour, or the deviance of kinds of bodies, on the other’.

Her differentiation of a ‘politics of cultural difference’, and a ‘politics of positional difference’ (2007) has to be read in combination with this critique of normalisation. Young regards the latter as decisive to any change for the better when reaching out politically to a fairer and more just democratic society. As Young explicitly argues (2007: 95), ‘Politics of positional difference’ tackles ‘problems of injustice that arise from structural segregation and lack of fit between hegemonic norms and interpreted bodies’ (ibid.).

Having said that, Young also stresses that both concepts are not mutually exclusive. But she wants her priority for the structural model understood through her interest in breaking out ‘different aspects of the production of structural inequality such as normalization and the divi-sion of labor, each of which has material effects on access to resources as well as the social meaning underlying status hierarchy’ (2007: 102).

Here, I think it is important to look more closely at her substantial arguments against the priority of a ‘politics of cultural difference’. Young’s

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critique addresses three main concerns. First, when it comes to the ‘status of women within cultural difference minorities ... particular group based standards’ (2007: 83) are regarded as ‘normative for a whole polity without specifically noticing this normalizing move’ (ibid.). Second, she claims that the politics of cultural difference ‘does not have a conceptual place for racial difference’ (Young, 2007: 103). And third, and this is of most interest to current discussions on shifting borders and boundaries affecting the construction of civil society, the private realm, the state (governance) and the public sphere, Young argues (2007: 107) that the ‘politics of cultural difference’ largely addresses the state, and ‘ignores the civil society as an arena both of institutional decision making and political struggle, on the one hand, and processes of structural differen-tiation, on the other’ (ibid.).

The latter is most relevant as civil actors (individual and collective) are taken as responsible agency prone to deliver change: ‘the politics of positional difference thus recommends that churches, universities, production and marketing enterprise, clubs and associations all examine their policies, practices and priorities’ (2007: 108).

It is here where Young’s argument comes close to a more realist posi-tion of critical feminist legal scholars (see, e.g. Schiek, 2000), demanding anti-discrimination legislation binding private market actors and their contracts as well as public service providers.

In Young’s posthumously published work (2009), the two alternative frameworks of politics, as discussed above, are modified and developed further to the ‘structural inequality model’ versus a ‘societal cultural model’. Two of the authors in this collection (Martínez-Bascuñán and de Jong) will elaborate on these concepts later, in more detail.

With the current political, economic and socio-cultural crisis in mind, it is here where the contemporary world of global speed and transformed societies in and beyond Europe needs a refinement of what we under-stand ‘normalisation’ and ‘difference’ to be, and in what ways Young’s structural inequality model can be employed to understand current social and political developments.

The following questions are thrown into the debate interrogating some of the social and symbolic contradictions encompassing difference and diversity arising in 21st-century societies across the globe, and more particularly in Europe.

What does the disciplining of orthodox Muslim women who wear a hijab or the burqa in some (continental7) EU Member States tell us

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about the notion of normalisation, difference and inclusion? Legislative motions to ban the facial veil in Belgium, France and initiatives taken in the Netherlands followed previous governmental regulations regarding the headscarf in other EU Member States. All these legislative initiatives have been established subsequent to a rise in political mandates for far right wing parties and coalitions appearing to be the tip of a populist iceberg. This was true in 2012;8 and it is even more troubling when looking at the outcome of the 2014 EU Parliament election: the recent shock wave results of populist parties, particularly xenophobic, extreme right wing and racist/anti-Semitic, are one but not the only reminder of the damage a detached demos in different national states can do to the concept and ideals of an open society, for example a multi-cultural and cosmopolitan ideal of Europe. Vox populi is a contested stronghold for sections of national societies that might be perceived, or regard themselves as the losers of late modernity and its globalised speed of individual ‘cosmopolitan’ striving and capital growth.

Several questions refer to these emanations of ‘democracy and inclu-sion’ in crisis: is it by chance that republican France voted significantly for Marie Le Pen’s Front National recently, and how does this relate to the penalising of female orthodox Muslim clothes in the public sphere, previously? In what ways is gendered modernity and normality encap-sulating contemporary citizenship and democracy in Europe? And further, how can we challenge a transformed contemporary ideological project of an ‘imagined’ European belonging that still is dominated by whiteness, ignoring or neglecting post-colonial subjectivity inside the national narratives of the same Europe? How to nurture and develop new transnational frames of multi-dimensional and subaltern identities in different local spaces? Finally, why should we be troubled that gay as well as women’s rights are thrown into the debate on ‘equality and differ-ence’ and used as a token of an ‘Enlightened’ West and the ‘universal’ agenda of human rights liberation?

Speaking from Europe, and alongside this sceptical and critical fram-ing, we also could argue more optimistically that the trend to ‘include’ lesbian and gay minorities might be a symptom of more open-minded and relaxed 21st-century European democracies. Further, we might contend that the public recognition of homosexual intimate relation-ships, for example, legalising the private access to marriage or registered civil partnerships as well as multi-dimensional EU anti-discrimination law, might underscore broader processes of gradual normalisation in

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different European Union Member States. As it is, the state of societies is not linear and simple, but contradictory, and therefore challenging any easy and comforting answers. We do need a more in-depth conversation about the roots of social detachment as well as thinking on alternative routes for a nuanced ethical pattern of responsible connection with each other.

Young commented in Inclusion and Democracy,

I think of these chapters as contributing to a set of overlapping conversations with people of diverse interests and backgrounds whose writing has stimu-lated me to think or with whom I have spoken over time. In these discussions I aim to advance both my own thinking, and the thinking of those with whom I have engaged. In some places my intention is to bring certain interlocutors into conversation with one another. In others I wish to turn the attention of interlocutors and listeners toward some issues I think they have not attended to sufficiently. (2000: 14)

This captures exactly what committed critical thinking aims at: a matter of a flow(ing) exchange, dialogic or conversational, depending on the number of people involved, or the problems we pay attention to. Sometimes rest(ing) before we engage in further exchange, and opening up towards new possibilities of thriving and exploration. These avenues are as exciting as drawn-out compartments of thinking are boring. I am confident the papers presented in this collection contribute to this intel-lectual exchange and will stimulate further international debate.

Sketch of the following five chapters

The five chapters presented in this edited collection engage with Young’s conceptual framework from different disciplinary angles and aim to deepen an international and interdisciplinary conversation about social inequality structures, political identity and individual agency. The shared concern touches on the question of how solidarity might evolve in a contemporary world of transformation, fragmentation and de-bordering, and how to connect to each other while taking political responsibility for structural disadvantage and sustained privilege across differences.

The relevance of the social connection model, for example, or the ways we argue towards a stronger relevance of a structural inequality model depends as much on the individual author’s biographies as well as on

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situated epistemic contexts (Yuval-Davis et al., 2006; Vieten, 2007, 2012).

The first chapter, written by Máriam Martínez-Bascuñán (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain), assesses Young’s two models of the ‘poli-tics of difference’, the one on ‘positional difference’ and the other on ‘cultural difference’. Martínez-Bascuñán utilises these concepts, and Young’s account on normalisation, inclusion and democracy as a critical theory lens to understand domestic politics and policy tackling visible group differences and immigration in European cities, such as Paris or Amsterdam. Here, she focuses on structural dynamics of discrimina-tion and racism as in her view ‘current liberal strategies for dealing with immigration tend to obscure issues of structural injustice’. In line with this, she sides with Young, prioritising the structural inequality model. In particular, Martínez-Bascuñán highlights that culturally distinctive groups and their members first of all are positioned socially, and that from this social-political and economic positioning follow concerns of how to participate, to be included and to fulfil self-development. Finally, she pays attention to charged processes of normalisation as normalisa-tion keeps established privilege and hierarchy in place, and limits the chances for counter-development.

With the second chapter, the intellectual focus shifts from Young’s analytical ‘politics of difference’ to her ideas on how to further (global) social justice, notions of solidarity and how to break down an opaque and often overwhelming container of responsibility. Following Young’s considerations, José Medina (Vanderbilt University, US) proposes a social connection model of democratic responsibility that accepts the ‘interconnectedness of diverse and heterogeneous publics and uses the connections among them as the basis of solidarity across their differ-ences’. Key to an alternative understanding of ‘responsibility’ here is a conscious sharing of responsibility; this is different to ‘shared identities’ as the latter rests on homogenous ideas of community or group belonging. Further, Medina introduces us to the writings of Queer Latina feminists such as Maria Lugones and Edwina Barvosa, who have elaborated on pluralistic accounts of identity (mestizaje), which are more fractured, also embracing intra-group diversity and heterogeneity as constitutive of any identity. Striving towards ‘shared responsibility’ and alterna-tive ways for social connection, Medina proposes finally what he calls ‘chained action’ and ‘disidentification’: chained action is distinctive to collective action as it emphasises ‘that the actions through which shared

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responsibilities are discharged are always individual and collective at the same time’. Disidentification has a particular role to play in the project of de-normalisation and chained action when de-centring group belonging or ascribed fixed identities. According to Medina, the queer and feminist movement while challenging ascribed gender/sexuality rules pave(d) the way to develop new forms of ‘identification with’ instead of ‘identifying as’. The pluralisation, and before, contestation of contained identities, implies that transgressions are possible and solidarity, for example with Queer Muslims, epitomises the ‘border crossing’ towards new forms of chained action.

Moving further from the matter of (global) social connection, plural-ised queer identities and shared responsibility, in the third chapter, Halleh Ghorashi (VU Amsterdam University, the Netherlands) concentrates on the problem of how to find new routes to inclusion and connection in times of ‘liquid modernity’ (Bauman, 2000). In her critique of nation-alistic claims of ‘roots’, which are constructed as culturalist boundaries against migrants, and here particularly keeping an eye on the Dutch society and its current public discourses, she proposes what she calls an ‘unsettling politics of connection’. This alternative non-rooted model of social connection advances Young’s idea of an individual right to self-development and self-determination and links it to the space of the city. The latter is meant as a polis connoted political realm – a notion that is closer to Hannah Arendt’s perception of the political – which is not the ‘privatisation of the political’, as Ghorashi argues. Similar to Martínez-Bascuñán, Ghorashi’s approach is also informed by critical theory challenging a liberal and ‘difference-blind’ approach to citizen-ship and the polis. Her feminist approach, too, shares the conviction that the boundaries of the private and the public realm are blurred, and that it needs ‘the triangle of individuals, civil society, and the state to resist the kind of democratic space which is reduced to selfish private needs of fearful individuals who colonize public space and strip it of public issues’. Further, Ghorashi expands in greater deal the possibilities how individual subjects might be equipped to develop spaces for encounter with the Other, and how to create ‘new’ spaces of belonging and connec-tion. Having said that, she introduces the concept of epochè, following Dutch philosopher Theo de Boer, which is ‘a temporary suspension of the truth of one’s own judgment’. This delay in response, and a more self-reflective approach to power and place could provide safer spaces to communicate difference, for example, alterity. As she concludes, this

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alternative model of social connection does need ‘a process of negotia-tion through a variety of routes that are inclusive of difference’ which is the opposite to an a priori container of rooted collective identities.

In the fourth chapter, Guno Jones (VU Amsterdam University, the Netherlands) engages more directly with the societal situation in the Netherlands, turning to the history of Dutch colonialism, post-colonial citizenship and racism, and its contemporary repercussions in what he calls ‘Citizenship Alienism’. Departing from the most recent racist populism enacted by Gert Wilders, the leader of the PVV (Partij Voor de Vrijheid) against Moroccan-Dutch citizens, Jones analyses the colonial history of citizenship hierarchies, which are intertwined as a shadow with the proclamation of ‘equal citizenship’. He wonders to what degree, ‘Young’s ideas concerning the politics of positional difference and her social connection model [seem to] resuppose a willingness, at least in principle, among the political majority to take responsibility for inequalities and injustices both nationally and globally respectively’. His sceptical view challenges the premises of an idealised, but largely coloni-alised understanding of ‘colour-blind’ equality and rights (entitlements) to citizenship. Jones deconstructs the myth of a ‘liberal and tolerant’ Dutch society that only changed this habit in the recent decade. Quite on the contrary he argues, and details this by taking record of both the hierarchical order of colonial citizenship and the contemporary ‘autoch-toon-allochtoon’ dichotomy that discursively, academically and bureau-cratically divides the Dutch population on racialising terms. Jones refers, in particular, to the troubling observation that a populist majority does not subscribe to a consensus in non-hierarchical citizenship. Deriving from this, participation in democracy and social inclusion on equal terms for all is undermined, especially for non-white and post-colonial citizens, who are symbolically excluded from the nation. He concludes that alongside this alienation of citizens, legal measures are on the policy agenda again (e.g. the Bosman bill) threatening access to citizenship and favouring a politics of inequality.

Given that the rise of extreme right wing populism conveys disturbing messages to national citizens, as underscored in Jones’ chapter, the fifth and final chapter turns to the European, or more precisely, European Union agenda.

Sara de Jong (University of Vienna, Austria) examines closely the 2011 European Agenda for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals while returning to Young’s two systematic models of ‘politics of difference’,

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which were discussed by Martínez-Bascuñán in Chapter 1. However, de Jong applies the later refined concepts of ‘structural inequality’ and the ‘societal cultural’ model. She engages in detail with the concepts of diversity and difference confronting notions of utility and notions of justice that suggest an imbalance towards justice. De Jong detects in the document ‘the tendency to a static understanding of culture, with limited reference to the structural processes underlying the formation of social groups as well as little regard for conceptualising the cross-cutting with other categorisations such as gender. It also uncovered the way normalisation does work through a language of respect and tolerance’.

In accord with Young’s critique of normalisation, de Jong describes the underlying ideological content of the EU agenda as that of a ‘domestica-tion of difference’. In effect, individual ‘cultural brokers’ are appreciated as fitting in and sustaining certain orders of economic hierarchies, as de Jong resonates: ‘[H]istorical anthropology has traced the employment of so-called cultural brokers in colonial and settler societies’. She concludes that Young’s distinctive models help to unwrap the logics of difference and diversity, and to illustrate how structural inequalities are confined in culturalist terms of gendered difference and colonial perspectives of migration.

Notes

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/17/2/15.htm1 lhttp://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/interview-zygmunt-bauman-on-the-uk-2 riots/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/05/anger-police-fuelled-riots-stud3 y [26 June 2014].Mark Duggan was shot by police on 4 August 2011. Family and friends were 4 left for hours without any clarification and report in front of the police station. Allegedly, disturbances started from here after the crowd got angry.My italics.5 In the endnote (32) to her DuBois Lecture, Young writes, ‘Processes that now I 6 would call “denormalization”, must involve change of interactive habits as well as institutional rule reform’ (2007: 116); posthumously published manuscript.The murder of the Saudi PhD student Nahid Almanea in Essex on 17 June 2014 7 (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/nahid-almanea-murder-hundreds-attend-saudi-arabian-funeral-of-stabbed-student-9557234.html; [24 June 2014]); and the populist rise of UKIP to power in England,

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suggest that the distinction between an overall anti-orthodox Muslim agenda feeding institutional racism and individual hate crimes in Continental Europe does not hold any longer. The historical void between the UK and Continental Europe is diminishing in this regard, and populist anti-Muslim phobia and anti-foreigner discourse has taken over the public realm in all European countries.I stated this back in 2012 when inviting for the Iris Marion Young Memorial 8 Symposium.

References

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Social Europe Journal 15.08.2011 [Online]. Available: [23 June 2014].Bellon, C. M. (2008). ‘In Honor of Iris Marion Young; Theorist and

Practitioner of Justice’, Hypatia 23(3), pp. vii–xi.Kraus, P. A. (2012). ‘The Politics of Complex Diversity: A European

Perspective’, Ethnicities 12(1), pp. 3–25.Nava, M. (2007). Visceral Cosmopolitanism – Gender, Culture and the

Normalisation of Difference. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Schiek, D. (2000). Differenzierte Gerechtigkeit – Diskriminerungschutz und Vertragsrecht. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag (Habilitationsschrift).

Vertovec, S. (2007a). New Complexities of Cohesion in Britain – Super-Diversity, Transnationalism and Civil-Integration. Commission on Integration and Education, Wetherby: Communities and Local Government Publications.

Vertovec, S. (2007b). ‘Super-Diversity and Its Implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 30(6), pp. 1024–1054.

Vieten, U. M. (2007). Situated Cosmopolitanisms: The Notion of the Other in Discourses on Cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany. PhD Thesis, University of East London.

Vieten, U. M. (2009). ‘Intersectionality Scope and Multidimensional Equality Within the European Union: Traversing National Boundaries of Inequality?’, in Schiek, D. and Chege, V. (eds) European Union Non-Discrimination Law – Comparative Perspectives on Multidimensional Equality Law. Abingdon-Oxon: Routledge–Cavendish.

Vieten, U. M. (2011). ‘Situating Contemporary Discourses on Cosmopolitanism in Britain and Germany: Who Is the Other,

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Anyway?’, in O’Donovan, P. and Rascaroli. L. (eds) The Cause of Cosmopolitanism – Dispositions, Models, Transformation. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien: Peter Lang Publishers.

Vieten, U. M. (2012). Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: A Feminist Perspective. Farnham: Ashgate.

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Young, I. M. (1990b). Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays in Feminist Philosophy and Social Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Young, I. M. (2006). ‘Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model’, Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation. University of Chicago, pp. 102–130.

Young, I. M. (2007). ‘Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference’, in Appiah, K. A. et al. (eds) Justice, Governance, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Difference. Reconfigurations in a Transnational World. Distinguished W.E.B. Du Bois lectures 2004/2005. Berlin: Humboldt Universität, pp. 79–116.

Young, I. M. (2009). ‘Structural Injustice and the Politics of Difference’, in Christiano, T. and Christman, J. (eds) Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Yuval-Davis, N., Kannabiran, K., and Vieten, U. M. (2006). Situated Politics of Belonging. London: Sage.

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Index

ActionChained 11, 33, 41, 46

ActivismQueer 35, 42

AgencyIndividual 10Transformative critical 43

Agonism 29Antagonistic forms 29–30

Ahmed, Sara 92, 97Alterity 12, 49, 57–58Alienism

Citizenship 13, 67, 70, 74, 79, 81–82

Legal citizenship 80Assimilation 18, 22

Assimilationist discourses 100

Assimilationist policies 29Autochtoon – allochtoon 13, 67,

70, 74–76, 80Allochtoon form 76Dichotomy 74Non-Western allochtoon 74, 77Western allochtoon 74, 77

AutonomyRelational 55

Bauman, Zygmunt 3, 12, 50, 52

Belonging 95Citizen’s 49Dutch politics of 74

Politics of ascribed 76

Group 12National group 6Spaces of belonging 57

BoundariesCulturalist 12Nationalist 35

Citizens 26, 98, 128, 133, 149Alienated 69 –70, 83

Alienage of 74, 79Dutch 79

Caribbean 81Eurasian 73Indische 79Surinamse 79

Reflexive 56Virtuous 38

Stigmatized as non-virtuous 38

Citizenship 5, 9, 55Colonial 13, 67–68

Post-colonial 13Democratic 36Dutch 68

Dutch colonial 72Equal 69, 73, 81

Equal citizenship for all 69

EU 63, 125, 138Group differentiated 34(of) naturalised persons 81Regimes 82Status 73Unequal 68

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City 56–57Civil Society 8Class

Working 4Classism 37Comfort zones 57Common Good(s) 61

Public 5Commercialising

Neo-liberal 5Communities

Diaspora 102Hispanic 38Immigrant 45Secured 50

Complexity 56, 58Conflict(s) 19Connection

Unsettling politics of 12, 50–51, 56Social connection model 10, 33, 35,

41–42, 67, 69, 80, 82Of democratic responsibility 10, 39Of shared responsibility 35, 39

ColonialismDutch 13, 71

Colonial aphasia 71Colonial hierarchies 69Colonial histories 71Colonial nationality law 73

Postcolonial(ism)Postcolonial critiques 71Post-colonial continuities 102

Cosmopolitanism 101Visceral 6

Critical Theory 18Culture 89

Societal cultural model 8, 89–90, 99Cultural Brokers 14, 101–102Culturalising of

Minority religion 6Culturalist discourse 50Masculinist 90Rooted notion of 50

Democracy 28Communicative 33, 35

Deep 54, 56Deliberate 29European 9Pluralistic 33

Pluralistic model of communicative democracy 36

Dialogue 29, 41, 54, 61Difference(s) 3, 8, 14, 18, 39

Blind 89Boundaries of 53Cultural 22Domestication of 14, 100, 103Dichotomies 53, 62Gender 23, 89Ethnicity 36, 89Group (social) 29Politics of 13, 92

Cultural difference 7–8, 88–89Social cultural model 91

Positional difference 3, 24, 57, 67, 69, 76, 79, 82, 88

Recognition 28Perception of 7Racial 23, 89Sexual 23

Disability 5Disadvantage 19, 101Discrimination 2, 11, 79, 95

Anti-discrimination law 9Ethnic 2, 81, 90Classed 2Gendered 2Multiple 96Racial 35Sexual 2, 35Structural 90

Disidentification 11–12, 42 43Diversity 3, 8, 14, 39

Complex 6Deficit 98–100Diversification of 51Ethnic 90Inner 35–36Internal 37Management 91, 98, 100

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Diversity – continuedPolitics 87, 90–92, 97Religious 90Super 6, 51

Education 5Higher 4

Epochè 12, 49, 57–58Entitlements 6

Racism 68Essed, Philomena 68, 70, 77European

2011 European Agenda for the Integration of Third Country Nationals 13, 91–103

European UnionMembers States 9

Equality 2, 54Formal 68Gender 96Neo-essentialism 6

Exclusion 29, 76Language of 19Processes of 44–45Social 33, 45

FeministCritical 8Movement(s) 12, 89

Fragmentation 37–38Fraser, Nancy 5, 20, 27

Heterosexism 37, 44Homogeneity 18Housing 5

Affordable 4

Identity/ Identities‘Cultural’ 6Citizen 6(Ethno) national 18Heterogeneous 37Imagined 49Political 10Multiple 37Narratives 60

IdentificationMoments of 60

IdeologiesEntrepreneurial 91

Imagination 18Social 44

Inclusion 11, 22, 27As participation 25As transformation 25Immigrant 24NationalSocial 2, 96SymbolicThe Other, of

IndividualismAtomistic individual 52, 62Liberal 18

Inequality 5, 54, 89, 95Social inequality structures 10Status 27Structural 28, 78

Structural inequality model 8, 10, 20, 87, 89, 91, 94, 99, 102

Injustice 40, 94Structural 19, 41, 79

Global structural 3Insecurity 51–52, 55Integration of 19, 22

CulturalDiscourse 78, 94Migrants 19Policies 98Social

InterestsSpecial interest model 34, 38–39

Pluralistic model 34Interspaces

Delayed 59Islamophobia 70, 79

Justice 24Gender 45GlobalSexual 45Social 28Structural 97

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Laicitè 20Lesbians 36, 43Liability 39, 41Lugones, Maria 11, 37

Memory 71Mestizaje 11, 38Migration 73, 91Migrant(s) 12, 92–93

Muslim 51Non-European 18Women 95–96, 98

MinorityEthnic 21

ModernityGendered 9Late 50Liquid 12, 63

Monolithic Model 34, 38Movement

Queer 12, 43Civil rights 76Women’s 36, 43, 76

Bisexual 36–37Third world women 36–37, 43Transgender 36–37Women of colour 36, 43

Working class 36, 43, 43, 76Multiculturalism 20, 24, 88Muslims

Gay 45Lesbian 45Queer 12

NationsEuropean 51

NationalismEthnic 20, 89European history of 53

Nationality 36Second 80Dual 80

Dual Dutch and Iranian 80Netherlands 51–53, 62, 68–70, 81Networks 40

Social 34

NormalityNormalised perspective 5Normalized practices 58Normalised structures 50, 61

Normalized structures of dominance 57

Normalized ways of thinking and speaking 80

Normalising logic 27Normalisation (of) 3, 11, 62, 97, 100

‘autochthony -allochthony’ binary 78

Critique of 7Difference 6Processes of 6, 24, 28, 90, 94

Norms 99Hegemonic 58

Hegemonic order 100Nijab 8, 27, 41

Otherness 3, 53, 102Deviant 24Migrant Other 52Within themselves/ within

ourselves 37

ParadigmAssimilationist 101Liberal 23, 90Multicultural 91

Participation 24, 29Partnership

Civil 9Performance

Visible 7Pluralisation of

A group 36A public 43

Populism 13, 69Dutch 70European far right 68Populist iceberg 9Populist parties 70Populist political choices 62

PositioningRooted 49–50

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Positioning – continuedRouted 49–50Social group 6Social positionality 40

Power 41, 88Asymmetric 29

PrivatisationOf the political 12

Privilege(s) 41, 44Privileged perspectives 44

Gender privileged 44Public (sphere) 24, 71

Colonized by the private 52Heterogeneous 28, 33–34, 45, 46

Communicative model of the heterogeneous public 36

Homogenous 34

Racism 11, 37, 71, 90, 96Racialised colonial Dutch

discourses 82Racialisation 29

Recognition 90Relationship

Homosexual intimate 9Religion

Minority 6Resistance 43Representation 4

Political 73Responsibility 11, 39, 41

Democratic 35Political 40Sharing of 11, 35, 46Social connection view of 40Social connection model of 46

ResponsivityEpistemic 63

Roots 12Imagined 52

Routes 12Right wing 6, 20

Parties 9Right(s) of

Self-Determination 27, 49, 54Self-Development 25, 49, 54

RiotsPolitical 5Youth 3Race 4

SecurityRegimes 20Securitisation of society 79Spaces of 57

September 2001 51, 79Slavery 71

Dutch East Indies 73Transatlantic 73

SocietiesDemocratic 2European 62Fragmentation of 38Multi-cultural 2Pluralistic 62Situatedness of late

modern 55Solidarity 11, 34, 42, 45Stigmatization 94, 101

Stigma of fear 25Subjectivity

Feminist 37Mainstream subjects 44Post-colonial 9

Tolerance 97Of cultural difference 24Logic of 27–28Toleration of 90, 93

Transsexual 44

Veil 18, 20, 28–29Vieten, Ulrike M. 6, 82, 101Vulnerability 4, 45, 80

Wilders, Geert 68, 70, 72, 80Ethno-nationalism 68

Xenophobia 70

Yuval-Davis, Nira 59–61Rooting and shifting 61

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