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Book ReviewsJoyce Marie Mushabena; Laura Alicia Valdiviezob; Julie Nack Nguec; Eliz Sanasariand; Melissa Gregge;Catherine Frostf; Ulrike M. Vieteng; Nora Hui-Jung Kimh; Ann Chinneryi; Roni Bergerj
a University of Missouri-St Louis, St Louis, MO, USA b University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst,MA, USA c University of Southern California & UCLA Center for the Study of Women, Los Angeles,CA, USA d Department of Political Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA e
University of Sydney, Australia f McMaster University, Ontario, Canada g Vrije UniversiteitAmsterdam, The Netherlands h University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA, USA i SimonFraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada j School of Social Work, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY,USA
Online publication date: 14 July 2010
To cite this Article Mushaben, Joyce Marie , Valdiviezo, Laura Alicia , Ngue, Julie Nack , Sanasarian, Eliz , Gregg, Melissa ,Frost, Catherine , Vieten, Ulrike M. , Kim, Nora Hui-Jung , Chinnery, Ann and Berger, Roni(2010) 'Book Reviews',Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31: 4, 425 — 447To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2010.481807URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2010.481807
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Book Reviews
Conceptualising ‘Home’: The Question of Belonging among Turkish Families in
Germany
ESIN BOZKURT
Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2009
245 pages ISBN 9783593387918
This study derives from a dissertation based on fieldwork conducted in Bremen and
Hamburg between 2004 and 2005. The work consists of a brief introduction, seven
substantive chapters, a brief conclusion and methodological appendix. Its aim is to
understand home � ‘‘inscribed within power relations’’ � in the context of self-
placement, competing national environments (sending/receiving countries) and
selectively reconstructed ‘imaginary’ memories. The seven chapters, respectively,
focus on ‘‘Migration and Belonging’’; ‘‘Contextualising ‘Home’: Turkish Immigration
in Germany’’; ‘‘Gender, Migration and Belonging’’; ‘‘Empirical Research’’; ‘‘The
Question of Belonging across Three Generations’’; ‘‘Gendered (Re)constructions of
‘Home’ among Turkish Men and Women in Germany’’; and finally, ‘‘Belonging at the
Crossroads of Gender and Generations’’.
The book’s main strength rests with its competent Big-Picture assessment of
immigration experiences and persistent problems resulting from a lack of proactive
integration policies over a span of nearly 40 years. Bozkurt emphasises crucial
distinctions pertaining to generational factors, changing socio-economic contexts,
added to differences in male/female experiences and identity reconstructions. The
‘emotional warmth’ associated with the Turkish ‘Motherland’ encounters the cold,
authoritarian Vaterland. The author treats naturalisation as a ‘rational’ (I would
prefer ‘instrumental’) decision or strategy allowing younger cohorts, especially, to
take advantage of rights and benefits, if not absolute security, warranted by formal
citizenship.
The book’s main weakness lies with its very unrepresentative sample, although this
reader (a political scientist) recognises that selective ‘discourse analyses’ comprise a
common genre among ethnologists. Bozkurt investigates the homeland recollections
and identity dilemmas found among six families across three generations, selected by
way of referrals in and around Bremen. The Hansa cities are not known to house
heavy concentrations of Turkish migrants, compared to more industrial regions like
Cologne, North-Rhine Westphalia and Baden-Wurttemburg, or areas with extensive
ISSN 0725-6868 print/ISSN 1469-9540 online/10/040425-23
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2010.481807
Journal of Intercultural Studies
Vol. 31, No. 4, August 2010, pp. 425�447
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service sectors, for example, Berlin and Frankfurt. A ‘small’ minority (12 per cent) is
naturally more likely to feel isolated from majoritarian society than Turkish-German
residents in Frankfurt (30 per cent) or Berlin (14 per cent, albeit 25�30 per cent in
some districts). The author could have compensated for this in a book publication by
including results of representative surveys, most of which suggest a more ‘integrated’
picture of the third generation, despite their persistent lack of educational/
occupational opportunities.
A second weakness rests with the author’s tendency to spend too much time
legitimising the methodology used, (re)defining core concepts or reminding the
reader what will be considered next � things that clearly belong in a dissertation but
not in a text appealing to experts. Generally well written, the text evinces quirky
vocabulary and literally translated Germanisms in some parts, ‘‘individuals [sic]
experience in finding feet’’ (Fuß fassen means to get one’s bearings) (48); refers to
parental efforts to ‘‘ensure a solid basement for their children’’ (147) (rather than a
solid foundation); indicates that a group’s efforts to find identity substitutes ‘‘does
not exterminate the homeland’’ (159) (as opposed to eradicating the memory of the
homeland). European publishing houses should really be encouraged to hire more
native speakers as copy editors.
A bit more troubling is the contradiction this reader noted between the author’s
sincere attempt to do justice to very personal emotions and reminiscences, on the one
hand, while ‘scientifically’ objectifying these persons, on the other, by referring to
them as numbers. The labelling system is supposed to provide us with ‘‘the
opportunity to learn more about the individual who comes to word [sic], so that we
can compare her/his previous statements, follow up with arguments of family
members, and look at similarities/differences between families more easily’’ (90). The
reader would find it easier to grasp the importance of ‘putting a human face’ on
migration if we could follow the reflections of Asye K., Ali K. and Gulten K. rather
than by trying to switch back and forth between F1 A1, F2 B1 and F3 C2.
The author extensively defines and contrasts abstract, collective national identities �German and Turkish � even when the aim is to illustrate meaningful religious and
ethnic differences found within both groups. Alevis are more likely to include Kurds
and Zazas than ‘Turks’, Berliners will have very different attitudes towards ethnic ‘co-
citizens’ than the residents of Idaroberstein. Representative surveys attest to the fact
that younger individuals identify more with local spaces, for example, neighbour-
hood districts which provide a more concrete sense of attachment, but this is also
true of the natives. Empirical studies demonstrate just as clearly that Germans
themselves are not very ‘proud’ to be German.
Occasionally the author’s questions seem to force interviewees into frames that they
would not have wanted to apply for themselves (as indicated in her pre-discussions).
Relying on so few families, the interpretations reinforce the ‘essentialising’ for which
Bozkurt correctly criticises the Germans. A book should move the initial analysis
beyond the case study, to seek out broader points of comparison and contextualisation.
German politicians clearly had economic motives (onset of recession, potential costs to
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the welfare state) as well as electoral interests in keeping alive the ‘myth of return’, long
after guestworkers and their descendants had opted for settlement. But that still leaves
the question: What, if anything is so unique about Turkish ‘love for the homeland?’ Is it
really more special than Italian, Greek, Polish or Russian Heimweh and identity loss?
The selective memories and reconstructions portrayed here are actually quite typical of
all migrants who fell for the myth of return (e.g. Mexicans) even in the USA, which
accords citizenship under fairly easy terms.
Perhaps what is really ‘unique’ about this case is the fact that homeland loving
peoples find themselves in a country that still does not love itself, with the results that
too many citizens view all emotional attachments to the nation as suspect. Prior to
the 2006 Soccer World Cup, they even refused to wave flags or sing the national
anthem at major public events. Perhaps positive emotional attachments found among
millions of migrant descendants can be used to teach Germany that it is OK to have
feelings for a country that has brought them so much peace and prosperity.
JOYCE MARIE MUSHABEN
University of Missouri�St Louis
St Louis, MO, USA
# 2010 Joyce Marie Mushaben
Teaching Cultural Skills: Adding Culture in Higher Education
MARIBEL BLASCO & METTE ZØLNER (Eds)
Frederiksberg: Nyt fra Samfundsvidenskaberne, 2009
262 pages ISBN 9788776830182
My interest in reviewing this book edited by Maribel Blasco and Mette Zølner came
from its title, Teaching Cultural Skills and its intended audience, instructors of culture �as a ‘‘secondary skill’’ (249) � in higher education. As a multicultural teacher educator
and ethnographer, I deal with discussions about whether the teaching and learning of
culturally responsive aptitudes is possible within the confines of a classroom. I was
intrigued by similar discussions offered in Teaching Cultural Skills and became
engaged in learning how instructors faced such questions in the context of Danish
universities.
In the introduction, Blasco describes the book’s attempt to examine ‘‘the broader
implications of teaching culture in a new and challenging context’’ of increasing
interrogation of culture as a concept and an explanatory tool (11). The book
illuminates how instructors teach culture in contexts where cultural approaches
contrast the core epistemologies of their unrelated disciplines. Diverse chapters
illustrate how instructors conceive teaching culture based on their own theoretical
and practical deliberations about culture in Danish university settings and how these
deliberations intersect with issues of teacher identity, disciplines and curricula, power
and ideology. I appreciated the instructors’ reflective stance to the complexities of
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their endeavours; however, I hoped to read more nuanced accounts of the impact of
their teaching on their students.
Lauritsen’s engaging chapter on ‘‘Classroom Reflexivity’’ presents a refreshingly
candid narrative of her experience as an anthropologist teaching in the Copenhagen
Business Schools. Lauritsen proposes that instructors should strive to teach culture as
a lens to look through instead of something to look at. This chapter stresses the
importance of fieldwork experiences for business students to develop cultural
reflexivity and uncover their own cultural spectacles.
In ‘‘History as an Intercultural Process’’, Bøndergaard Butters reflects upon
teaching the topic called ‘cultural encounters’ to address cultural reflexivity and
identity formation. In a well-structured chapter, the author examines teaching history
in a college of education as a process of meaning-making and a space where cultures
and identities are constructed and negotiated. Additionally, she warns about
‘disastrous consequences’ for being unaware of the impact of instruction on the
formation of cultures and identities. It is, however, left unclear what those
consequences are.
Janne Liburd and Carina Ren discuss the conceptualisation of culture in the
context of tourism education and management in ‘‘Selling Difference’’. The authors
analyse the limitations of common constructions of culture within the tourism
industry and appeal to proactively embracing cultural differences to sustain the
quality of life through tourism as opposed to disrupting local cultural practices to fit
it in a marketable mould.
Continuing the discussion over the conceptualisation and applications of culture
outside the field of anthropology, Jæger examines the challenges of teaching to
confront static views about culture in ‘‘Teaching Culture in and for Practice’’. The
chapter links theory to how teaching about culture concerns challenging assumptions
more than providing boxed solutions to deal with cultural differences.
In ‘‘Teaching Area Studies at Business Schools’’, Blasco and Zølner present a
comprehensive pedagogical proposal addressing the internationalisation of
business programmes and the demand for developing the skills for global business.
Stemming from the importance of fostering cultural awareness and reflexivity in
international business programmes, the authors suggest integrating the learning
of functional aspects of global business with an understanding of their cultural
localities (108).
Using a case study in the field of culture and communication, Flyverbom examines
the institutional and pedagogical challenges of teaching a global lens by questioning
national�cultural views in ‘‘Teaching Culture and Communication from a Global
Perspective’’. Through an analysis of media production examples, Flyverbom tackles
relevant concerns about the epistemology of global perspective and its implications
for teaching and for contemporary theories in the field.
‘‘Teaching Culture on Business School Programmes’’ by Askehave provides a
didactic and honest account of the task of addressing different approaches and
methodologies when teaching culture in business programmes. Readers will find
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Askehave’s teaching perspectives, which among other nuanced steps include the
construction of the self and the other, not only instructive but also theoretically
provocative.
Next, Werther highlights the importance of fostering students’ information
competency � conceived as the fundamental skill of our era � while posing central
questions of where and how to develop it. Like most chapters that focus on teaching
inquiry, ‘‘Learning Information Literacy � and Culture’’ examines students’ learning
in light of the literature on teaching and learning information technology; an
understudied area.
‘‘When Culture Becomes a Factor to be Considered’’ by Lynfort Jensen and
Abom is a reflection of cultural issues that arise when teaching Arabic language
proficiency, innovation and intercultural communication to ethnically diverse
students. The topic is intriguing but falls into a deficit portrayal of ethnically
diverse students.
In ‘‘Intercultural Competences and Project Based Learning in the Engineering
Curriculum’’, Hoffmann, Jørgensen and Bregnhøj present a thorough analysis of two
case studies of teaching and learning to discuss the challenges of intercultural
teaching and developing intercultural skills in engineering students. The authors
suggest that cultural aspects of technology and societal differences should be part of
the curriculum because they are necessary elements of an engineer’s professional
work.
Under a different light that parts from the student-centred perspectives in previous
chapters, Egholm Feldt and Egholm Feldt discuss ‘‘Culture and Cultural Analysis at
the University’’. By employing Charles Peirce’s perspective on educational philosophy,
the authors offer a critique of higher education and university politics in Denmark
while appealing for the preservation of university education as something other than
professional training. I hoped for the preclusion of a common deficit characterisation
of minority groups in this chapter.
Finally, Zølner comprehensively analyses all chapters and questions the feasibility
and desirability of a conciliation of teaching and learning cultural tools
within social�constructivist perspectives. It is a welcome reflection that clearly
encompasses an important theme across the volume. Teaching Cultural Skills is a
significant contribution to the instruction of culture in programmes outside the
social sciences disciplines, an area seldom studied in higher education instruction.
And while not intending to delimit a perspective concerning the epistemology
of teaching culture in higher education programmes, this book engages the
curious to learning how teaching of cultural issues is conceived within different
disciplines.
LAURA ALICIA VALDIVIEZO
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, USA
# 2010 Laura Alicia Valdiviezo
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Postcolonial Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in Francophone African Literature
AEDIN NI LOINGSIGH
Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009
224 pages ISBN 9781846310492
Aedın Nı Loingsigh’s Postcolonial Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in Francophone
African Literature represents a strong critical presence against a long tradition of
westward-leaning studies of travel literature. Drawing on diverse theories of travel
and tourism, Loingsigh’s goal is not to establish a core theory of ‘Francophone
African travel literature’, but to outline the various ways in which this literature
recasts standard notions of travel and writing travel from a distinctly African
perspective. Significantly, Loingsigh moves beyond those portraits of educationally
motivated travel to the Hexagon to include tales of tourism, non-Francophone
destinations and highly critical observations of ‘other’ lands.
Loingsigh begins in Chapter 1 with Ousmane Soce Diop’s Mirages de Paris (1937),
focusing her analysis on the protagonist Fara’s travel to the 1931 Exposition Coloniale
in Paris. Employing the Exposition as a backdrop, Loingsigh argues that Fara’s travels
‘stage’, or one might argue, re-stage the exotic encounter between coloniser and
colonised, this time shifting the gaze back to the colonial centre. Although Loingsigh
does an apt job of demonstrating Fara’s illness as the conjunction of Fanonion
complexes and maladies associated with travel, she does not connect it to her ultimate
‘stage’, the exhibition. After all, the colonial exhibition, concerned as it was with
taxonomical ordering aligned racialised, colonial subjects with physical pathologies of
all sorts. As Loingsigh herself argues, Fara is eventually unable to see Africa and
Africans outside of their framed, exhibitionary status.
In Chapter 2, Loingsigh turns to Ake Loba’s Kocoumbo, l’etudiant noir (1960) to
explore the connection between travel, travel technologies and education. Loingsigh
begins with an engaging analysis of the inner dynamics of ship and car travel for diverse
African voyagers. Juxtaposing formal education, the problematic French school system,
with ‘real learning’ which occurs primarily through travel, Loingsigh ultimately reads
Kocoumbo as a student of travel. Interestingly, Loingsigh looks to the Saidian notion of
travelling theories to argue for the un-travelability not only of French theories of
education but of credentials as well; ultimately, she suggests that this un-travelability
‘‘also fails French students’’ in its disregard for non-canonical learning (66).
Chapter 3 considers Bernard Dadie’s Un Negre a Paris (1959) to explore how it de-
centres African intercontinental travel not only by introducing a true ‘tourist’ into the
metropole but by interrogating the city’s very place as centre. Ultimately, Loingsigh
contends that Dadie’s observations force a reassessment of ‘‘how Africans and their
former colonizers relate to each other in the post-independence world’’ (98).
Loingsigh’s most compelling argument, however, is that Dadie strategically counters
Western anthropological conceptions of time and evolution by privileging those
which are instead recursive and non-teleological. As she adeptly argues, Dadie’s
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characteristic humour and irony nevertheless reveal how travel and travel writing are
critical practices not to be undertaken lightly.
In Chapter 4, Loingsigh explores the geography of African travel beyond European
destinations to American ones, specifically New York and Harlem. As Loingsigh aptly
demonstrates, Lamine Diakhate’s Chalys d’Harlem (1978) and Bernard Dadie’s Patron
de New York (1994) provide complex and often contradictory perspectives of African
encounters with the American ‘promised land’. Against standard readings of
migration in postcolonial contexts, in Chalys, Loingsigh sees mobility as triumph:
the protagonist exploits various ‘mobile’ commodities and services to assure
economic success. More compellingly, Loingsigh links Chalys’ trajectory as a savvy,
politically aware entrepreneur with that of Senegal, a new actor on the global stage.
Although the section on Dadie’s text represents a fairly linear, and less stimulating,
analysis of the narrator’s discussion of plane travel to criticise the American ‘‘new
world order’’ and its imperial desires, it nevertheless reveals how African travel
writing can engage in potent cultural and political critique beyond France.
In Chapter 5, Loingsigh analyses another text that ‘travels’ outside of French and
African topographies, Tete-Michel Kpomassie’s L’Africain du Grœnland (1981). As
Loingsigh argues, this text is the closest to a traditional Western travelogue in form
and objective: to locate an ‘authentic’ Inuit culture. Despite its explicit ethnographic
tone, Loingsigh convincingly demonstrates how L’Africain, in the end, contradicts
various structures of colonial authority such as its educational system. One of
Loingsigh’s most interesting observations is that travel itself stands in counterpoint to
static, oppressive views of tradition in ‘‘its refusal to become rooted to one place, to
adhere to one view of how life should be lived’’ (139). In the end, Loingsigh contends
that Kpomassie’s ‘imperalist nostalgia’ is destabilised by his encounter with an Inuit
whose comfortable adoption of old and new, local and Western, represents a possible
future for African colonial subjects as well.
Chapter 6 is the only chapter to focus on African women’s writing, specifically
Calixthe Beyala’s diptych Le Petit prince de Belleville (1992) and Maman a un amant
(1993). Although the first � a tale of immigrant life in Paris � fits less clearly under
Loingsigh’s rubric of ‘literature of travel’, she for the most part succeeds by examining
the diverse modes of mobility manifest in both novels. Interesting here is Loingsigh’s
recasting of the home (and the women inside it) from a patriarchal space of
confinement and restricted movement to a space of dynamic and distinctly feminine
agency, a ‘‘place of transit’’ as Loingsigh terms it (157). Her analysis, however,
ultimately falls short of elaborating a truly feminist project in Beyala’s texts. For what
transforms the home, after all, is the contact it encourages between diverse women,
contact being a crucial element of travel practices and of transnational feminist
theory. Loingsigh’s analysis of tourism and women’s dress in Maman a un amant is
useful but would have benefitted greatly from the inclusion of critical work that has
been done on gender and dress in African contexts.
In general, Loingsigh’s analyses are well developed, clear and concise. However,
where the reader might want close readings and deeper textual analysis, Loingsigh
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disappoints with sometimes lacklustre expository citations from otherwise rich
literary texts. Additionally, some of the citations that Loingsigh includes from
theorists and critics are either redundant, decontextualised or simply unnecessary to
advancing her argument. Despite these weaknesses, the book offers a unique and
much-needed African perspective on journeying and experiencing � albeit tempora-
rily � the world of an-other.
JULIE NACK NGUE
University of Southern California &
UCLA Center for the Study of Women
Los Angeles, CA, USA
# 2010 Julie Nack Ngue
Unity in Diversity: Interfaith Dialogue in the Middle East
MOHAMMED ABU-NIMER, AMAL I. KHOURY & EMILY WELTY
Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2007
336 pages ISBN 978601270139
In a lucid, objective and concrete style, without abandoning the critical discourse, Unity
in Diversity explains the meaning of interfaith dialogue and its application in several
diverse Middle Eastern settings. It is a testimony to the good intentions of the authors
and all those who have been involved in a careful, honest and exhaustive fieldwork.
The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 explains basic challenges facing
interfaith dialogue (IFD) in the Middle East. The basic premise of IFD is that conflict
persists at least partly due to ‘‘ignorance and a lack of constructive interaction with the
‘other’’’ (3). Understanding the faith of the other becomes the core strategy in promoting
peace. The methodology is concise with a standard list of questions as a guide for local
researchers. The authors acknowledge many challenges including a high rate of rejections
from potential interviewers. The ones who agree are a diverse group with at least five years
of experience as IFD activists in their regional setting. Data analysis relies on emerging
themes and general patterns in responses from the fieldwork.
Chapter 2 aptly describes the research in interfaith dialogue and enumerates a
number of models and concepts each with weaknesses and strengths. For anyone
interested in this issue, careful reading of this chapter is a must. IFD does not claim to
be the only viable model for peacebuilding, however, where politics is so intensely
influenced by religion, secular peace plans cannot ignore interfaith dialogue as an
important tool for reducing dehumanisation. This form of conflict resolution uses
religious rather than secular concepts. In this context dialogue is neither preaching
nor debate but simply a process of transformation ‘‘from postures of intolerance or
passive tolerance to attitudes of deep understanding and respect of the other’’ (8).
Authors believe that IFD is often neglected or marginalised by secular politicians or
the non-governmental organisations. In discussion of the IFD models in operation,
people’s attitude towards religion in general is important and may be divided into
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four categories of exclusivism, syncretism, pluralism and transformation. Each is
discussed separately assessing their relevance to different situations. For instance, despite
pluralism’s popularity in the Western culture, it remains a problematic model in the
Middle East. General concerns revolve around the refusal of pluralism to engage difficult
issues, to pass any ethical judgment and to value the importance of transformation.
The strength of Chapter 2 is its deep excavation of all the positive and negative
aspects of IFD. It discusses the stumbling blocks of theological dialogues in all
Abrahamic religions and how each have different expectations from the other’s
religious texts. Some models which stem from the common beliefs of these religions
may be useful; the authors describe the use of the confession and forgiveness model yet
remain cognizant of different understandings. Politics is also a contentious issue and
cannot be ignored or dismissed in some cases. Rituals are another powerful mode of
communication and those involved may participate in one another’s spiritual practices.
Yet, even here, the pitfalls are not ignored. Some have criticised interfaith dialogue on
the ground that it does not accomplish anything tangible. In this setting, the action/
advocacy model may be helpful. While this is not a form of dialogue, it can unite the
participants as they carry out a common action or project. The authors further explain
the process of religious transformation from religiocentric to religiorelative views and
set up ground rules which will enable IFD to work in an atmosphere of openness and
honesty. Some of these points are reiterated in the concluding chapter as well.
The next few chapters focus on research findings in the cases of Israel and
Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. Religious identities have played a crucial role
in ‘‘the creation, escalation, and outcomes of the Israeli�Palestinian conflict’’. Yet, the
conflict resolution studies as well as politicians have ignored the role of religion. By
focusing on the goals, assumptions and motivations of IFD workers in the field,
Chapter 3 shows us a different angle of the conflict. Many issues are revealed:
Muslims feel the need to correct the negative images of Islam, Christians are fearful of
their dwindling numbers and their status as a ‘double-minority’, Jews focus on their
history of persecution, and the overall interaction and inquiry about religion is
hampered by the fear of being proselytised. The concerns as well as positive outcomes
are discussed openly with recommendations of how to improve the IFD activities.
Lebanon poses a different challenge. Citizens are constrained by geographical
setting, separate educational system and lack of ‘‘one national unifying collective
memory’’ (101). Dialogue has been viewed as a tool which benefits opportunists on
all sides. One model used by IFD workers focused on the Muslim and Christian youth
in undertaking development projects with a positive outcome such as reforestation.
Here challenges and recommendations are clearly different from those discussed in
Chapter 3, and the pluralist model along with others become relevant.
The case study of Egypt deals with Muslim�Christian relationships, especially the
Copts. Here many who are involved in the interfaith dialogue refused to be interviewed
and those who were interviewed wanted to remain anonymous. Printed materials show
competing narratives. The authors clearly explain Coptic experience in Egypt and
identify a myriad of specific overlapping problems, which are social, political and
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administrative in nature. They openly discuss problems among Coptic groups such as
tensions between individual members and the institution of the church. Both Muslims
and Christians blame the state for their problems with religious identity, yet they hold
deep fears and are suspicious of each other. The authors conclude that the state of
dialogue is repressed in Egypt and success seems to lie at local levels with smaller
groups. In conclusion, the obstacles are identified: overpoliticisation, lack of grassroots
initiatives, suspicion and separation, and lack of vision.
Jordan is the final case study. Here Christians have not been subject to persecution and
do hold high-level government and private sector positions. Interfaith dialogue has existed
in Jordan since its establishment; it was formalised in the 1980s. The study discusses
various IFD groups and their activities and principles. Compared to others, Jordan’s case
is less severe. The challenges remain in disseminating information about IFD and reaching
wider groups of people, need for a structured preparation and lack of financial resources.
Finally, while the state and the royal family have supported and sponsored IFD helping its
survival and strength, it may have created ‘‘a high level dependency’’ making it ‘‘vulnerable
to shifts in the dynamics within the royal family’’ (206).
Unity in Diversity is both sincere and practical in its portrayal of the strengths and
pitfalls of interfaith dialogue in the Middle East. Despite an honest identification of
problems, an optimistic overtone runs through the book keeping it refreshing and
interesting.
ELIZ SANASARIAN
Department of Political Science
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA, USA
# 2010 Eliz Sanasarian
A Passion for Cultural Studies
BEN HIGHMORE
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
151 pages ISBN 9781403997180
Ben Highmore’s latest book emerges at a time of renewed interest in theories of
emotion and affect throughout the humanities and social sciences. As an enthusiastic
participant in these wider trends myself, it is a delight to read his singular take on this
broadening field and its correlation with key concerns in cultural studies. The book
opens with a quote from Clifford Geertz, and one of the pleasures this author excites
is his willingness to share a deep and broad investment in resources gleaned from
anthropology, philosophy, critical theory and popular culture across centuries. Indeed
the introduction, ‘‘Passionate Culture’’, establishes the book’s project by surveying the
ways that passion has become close to hegemonic in present-day public rhetoric and
epistemologies, whether as a sales strategy for real estate, as a job requirement for
service industries or as a means to good health and psychic well-being.
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‘‘Passionate Culture’’ is also Highmore’s way of offering a beginner’s guide to the
world of affect. Current scholarship in emotion and affect is extended to a longer
tradition of writing on the passions, through Descartes, William James, David Hume
and others. Gregory Bateson’s idea of ‘ethos’ is also used to illustrate how groups and
societies create their own ‘emotional tonality’ enacted through specific ritualistic
actions: ‘‘hugs, handshakes, kisses’’ (13). In Highmore’s view, we must take notice of
these elements of culture: ‘‘Passion is about the pull and push of your connection to
the social world, about the ebbs and flows of your feelings, the peaks and troughs of
your liveliness, the pounding of your creaturely-ness’’ (3). This approachable writing
style is one of the book’s major achievements, and here it should be acknowledged
that the book is primarily pitched to an introductory student readership. Highmore
covers important ground by explaining culture as ‘‘the field of ‘second nature’’’ (x);
that the importance of studying across cultures � ‘‘both historically and geographi-
cally’’ � is to ‘‘alter our ‘own’ proximal culture’’ (x).
Highmore divides the book into a series of themed inquiries. Chapter 2, ‘‘Bitter
Tastes’’, extends Pierre Bourdieu’s insight that ‘‘aesthetic intolerance can be terribly
violent’’ (25). Covering a range of thinkers, including Julia Kristeva on the ‘abject’,
Charles Darwin in Origin of Species and George Orwell’s ethnographic accounts of
poverty in the 1920s and 1930s, Highmore shows how taste matters across cultures,
across classes and even in the trajectories of individual families. A focus on emotion
reveals how classed and racialised judgments manifest through the body, and here
Highmore acknowledges a tradition that includes Elspeth Probyn, Sara Ahmed,
Beverley Skeggs and Sally Munt, among others. For students in particular, this section
offers an effective way of understanding the basis for conflict between groups when
theories of ideology may be less appealing.
Chapter 3, ‘‘The Feeling of Structures’’, continues this line of inquiry through an
important extension of Raymond Williams’s notion of ‘structure of feeling’.
Highmore notes the problem with Williams’s theory is that ‘‘social structures are
primarily uneven in their distribution and are, thereby, experienced (felt) unevenly’’
(37) depending on context. For students and scholars in intercultural fields of
scholarship, this is a particularly useful chapter, since it uses a number of theorists
(C. L. R. James, Paul Gilroy) and examples (the Bringing Them Home report into the
separation of indigenous children from their families in Australia) to undo some of
the lingering effects of colonialism in formative cultural studies thinking. Highmore
focuses on migration, memory and ‘the slaves’ point of view’ as instructive
experiences of modernity; a discussion that takes on added force and poignancy in
the later chapter, ‘‘Events of the Heart’’. Here the author’s experience visiting the
Melbourne Museum’s Aboriginal Cultural Centre (Bunjilaka) sets the scene for a
longer discussion of sincerity and performativity in passionate culture, and a heartfelt
appeal for scholarship and a politics of reading ‘‘dedicated to hope’’ (109).
Other chapters address the lure of commodity culture, and the capacity for objects
to ignite our passions. ‘‘Commodity culture doesn’t address us as rational beings’’,
Highmore argues, ‘‘it addresses us as passionate sensualists, as willing or unwilling
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hedonists’’ (56). This claim is developed by documenting the sensual pedagogies
central to the function of World Fairs and international exhibitions in the past
century. Highmore also reads advertising strategies to show how ‘‘Passions are the
glue that allows commodities to attach themselves to humans: the thrill of danger; the
lure of the erotic; the wonder of new sensual realms’’ (66). This and the following
chapter, ‘‘Keeping in Touch’’, add further dimensions to how we might understand
technology’s relationship to feeling and emotion, how mediated experience has ‘‘re-
orchestrated’’ our passions in ‘‘perhaps surprising ways’’ (83).
Considering photography, sound and other archival media, Highmore follows
Barthes’s melancholic tone in noting the negative affects that are also part of
everyday culture. The propaganda machines of radio and phonograph are
considered as part of a discussion of ‘the uncanny’ in the history of broadcasting,
specifically the ‘‘alienating affects of having disembodied voices and ghostly visions
emanating from domestic furniture’’ (87). Highmore provides a novel reading of the
preconditions for what media scholars call ‘intimacy at a distance’ � how radio and
television overcame their initially unfamiliar properties to become ‘‘domestic and
sometimes comforting’’ appliances (87). The intention here seems to be to remind
readers of the specificity of media platforms and their histories as well as to note
our ongoing exposure to ephemeral spirits in communication. Highmore asks us to
imagine ‘‘this mediated world as spectral as much as spectacular’’ (92), even while
his subsequent reading of the film Moulin Rouge highlights the fun to be had in the
latter.
Given the title, this book runs something of a risk by asking readers to trust that the
subjects chosen for analysis and description will incite a worthy degree of passion,
whether positive or negative. The selections that constitute each chapter are an effort to
avoid the usual format of the introductory textbook genre, and they won’t necessarily
appeal to all in equal measure. Likewise, the book’s conclusion offers alternative
beginnings for cultural studies ‘‘in place of an ending’’ (110). This exercise in
questioning clear narratives of origin for the field may prove frustrating for students yet
to master the basic territory from which they are seductively encouraged to stray.
Ultimately for Highmore, ‘‘Culture is the social as it is intimately experienced; as it
moves from ‘out there’ to ‘in here’ � or at least to ‘near here’’’ (4). In this way, his
project heeds lessons from previous attempts to teach cultural studies. Pushing
beyond the world-weariness of poststructuralism to recognise the potential for
individual agency and sincerity, this book raises ethical questions to match an
increasingly intercultural, commoditised world. Moving quickly and dynamically
between the affects it describes, Highmore’s work issues an invitation for more
readers to embark on the interdisciplinary study of culture, and his example makes
this enterprise a prospect to be welcomed.
MELISSA GREGG
University of Sydney
Australia
# 2010 Melissa Gregg
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Everyday Multiculturalism
AMANDA WISE & SELVARAJ VELAYUTHAM (Eds)
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
296 pages ISBN 9780230210370
Multiculturalism has always suffered from a certain level of ambiguity. It can refer to
a normative view of how best to manage cultural difference through state policy. And
it can refer to a demographic reality, where a population includes a variety of cultural
identities. While multiculturalism has been the object of significant scholarly
attention in the past few years, this attention has primarily focused on multi-
culturalism as a normative and policy goal. But there has always been difficulty in
transitioning this analysis into practice, because in the realm of everyday life
multiculturalism remains both an aspiration and a demographic experience. These
difficulties, as well as the sense of disillusionment that inevitably accompanies any
effort to implement theoretical ideals in a real-life setting, are behind a widespread
sense of frustration. The general complaint is that, as presently conceived, the
multicultural ideal contributes to the reification of identity by fostering essentialised
cultural silos instead of productive forms of coexistence.
The Wise and Velayutham volume enters this debate from the side of the everyday
realities of multiculturalism. The editors explain that their volume ‘‘explores how
social actors experience and negotiate cultural difference on the ground and how
their social relations and identities are shaped and re-shaped in the process’’. It adopts
an ‘‘ethnographically oriented approach drawing on the sociology of everyday life’’
(3) and aims to avoid the kind of essentialisation of identity that the state-based ‘‘top-
down’’ multiculturalism model invites (3) by ‘‘recognizing others in their full
humanity, rather than as representatives of a particular category’’ (6). They suggest
that their volume ‘‘reveals complexities and ambiguities hitherto unrecognized in the
dominant paradigm of scholarship on multiculturalism’’ (15).
Scholarly work on multiculturalism can only benefit by becoming re-acquainted
with the everyday practicalities of cultural coexistence. Work in this area has already
begun, including Anne Phillips’s Multiculturalism without Culture (Princeton
University Press, 2007) and Tariq Modood’s Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea (Polity
Press, 2007), both of which aim to separate the normative aims around cultural
interaction from our frequent problems in interpreting cultural exchange. This
volume would make a substantial contribution to scholarship and social justice if it
could provide further empirical grounding for this ongoing effort. Unfortunately, the
volume does not succeed in escaping the problems it sets out to problematise, and
while it does deepen the sense of complexity associated with the demands of
multiculturalism (several of the volume’s authors place a stress on ambiguity and
problematising cultural interaction, for example), it’s not clear how the collected
work should be used to chart a path toward an alternative model.
The volume is admirable in its geographic reach, touching on multiculturalism in
Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Italy, Britain, Canada and the USA. It
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includes authors from a number of disciplinary backgrounds although it is weighted
towards Sociology, Cultural Studies or similarly ethnographically focused specialisa-
tions. As with any collected volume the quality varies between chapters, but at its best
it raises tantalising possibilities for the contribution this kind of scholarship can make
to the effort to rework multiculturalism. One standout chapter, for example, by
Goodall, Wearing, Byrne and Cadzow is a collective effort by a historian, a tourism
expert and two environmental specialists to outline the role that fishing plays in the
lives of Vietnamese immigrants to Australia. The chapter suggests fishing helps
newcomers orient themselves in their environment by simultaneously relating them
back to an activity associated with their place of origin, and relating them to the
people and topology of their new location. The activity, they explain, can be
understood as a kind of ‘‘exploration’’ (193), although it is not an unproblematic one.
There are environmental issues around fishing, social issues around engagement with
long-standing locals and cultural issues around nostalgia for homeland. Many of the
other chapters aim to bring out similar kinds of insights, highlighting the multi-
layered quality to everyday practices from shopping to working to volunteering to
simple socialising.
The Goodall et al. chapter works because it treats all parties to the practice with
respect and understanding even when tensions are involved. However, there are
points in the volume when the analysis seems less generous and one can’t help but
feel for the research subjects under scrutiny. The chapter by Duruz, for example,
a Cultural Studies specialist, focuses on the ‘culinary biographies’ of two older
working-class women of Anglo ethnicity. The chapter follows their shopping and
socialising experiences and clearly the women were both cooperative and open about
their daily lives and views. It’s therefore difficult to read Duruz’s comments
associating one woman’s (Meg) response with ‘‘insular and conservative forms of
classed, gendered and generational identity’’ (112�13). While she backs off from
committing to this assessment, she later suggests that Meg’s attempts to enjoy Spanish
or Italian culture while on vacation proved shallow, and concluded that once back at
home ‘‘her cosmopolitanism’’ is ‘‘less useful to her’’ so she abandons it for Englishness
(113). Duruz does not hold back, however, from commenting on the ‘‘incomplete-
ness, unevenness and inadequacy’’ of another woman’s exchanges with an Indonesian
friend (116).
It may be the case that these women lived less cosmopolitan lives than could be
imagined by the researchers who study them. But we must be cautious that analysis
does not become condescension. While Duruz attempts to avoid this tone her
analysis is based on a view of the possibilities that is broader than these two woman
can (apparently) fully appreciate. And this is precisely where the radical potential of
the volume can be lost. If it relies on a privileged point of view, one where we see the
landscape as a whole and can see where others miss their cosmopolitan opportunities,
then it can lay no credible claim to expressing the everyday, which is always situated,
limited and contextual. This problem is especially significant in a work committed to
avoiding the ‘‘top-down’’ error while capturing people’s ‘‘full humanity’’ (3, 6).
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At its best, the volume shows an evenhandedness in the evaluation of cultural
interaction that points towards possibilities for positive engagement. But this
evenhandedness takes conscious effort and it’s easy to fall short of this goal. When
scholars rely on established identity categories to pursue their research they may find
these categories tend to colour their own analysis in the same banal but troubling
ways that they colour the everyday life they set out to study.
CATHERINE FROST
McMaster University
Ontario, Canada
# 2010 Catherine Frost
Ethnicities and Values in a Changing World
GARGI BHATTACHARYYA (Ed.)
Farnham: Ashgate, 2009
188 pages ISBN 9780754674832
Haiti January 2010, another natural catastrophe, another shocking feature of human
losses and the ambiguous political causes of its social outcome is hitting the news. Is
it pure aberration or purpose that media spectacle and knowledge production work
together, seemingly, in covering misery as nature?
Whereas nations and individuals all over the world don’t hesitate to offer money
trying to bring disaster relief to the victims of this horrendous earthquake we witness
delays in aid provision. As journalists and media reports suggest, this might be due to a
lack of coordination and destroyed local facilities. Some argue that it also might be
shaped by US geostrategic and home security interests. A striking contradiction
between global human solidarity on the one hand, and the continuity of hegemonic
power interests on the other, demonstrates to us what is the core argument of this edited
collection: we are facing a rapid change in patterns of ethnic and national belonging, in
local and global articulations of race regimes and in concrete approaches to humanity
and ethics. These are vital changes, indeed, as in the twenty-first century most human
catastrophes remain man made, and require both our full political stand and a robust
academic analysis. Accordingly, we should engage forcefully in international debates on
shifting notions of morality, institutionalised racism and collective belonging.
As Winant argues in Ethnicities and Values in a Changing World, among other
elements there is a legacy of conquest, slavery, race and revolution we have to take
on board while teaching how to comprehend race and racism in the twenty-first
century. ‘‘This is an evident but under-explored connection visible, for example, in
the historical legacy of the Haitian revolution’’ (41). One of the strengths of
Bhattacharyya’s edited collection is taking up these challenges while considering left-
wing, feminist and critical community activism as well as thorough academic
argument. Apart from different chapters by outstanding and internationally
renowned scholars on racism, ethnicity and gender, as for example Winant, Lentin
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or Bhachu, contributions span those by Ugba, Sandoval Garcia, and Gabriel and
Harding, who show in what ways group agency is articulated more concretely by
African Pentecostals in Dublin, by a bi-national community in Costa Rica and
refugees in London. Finally, the chapters by Farrar and McVeigh exemplify, too,
how the fruitful incorporation of academic views offers strong links to political
activism.
Closer to home and in a British context, the first decade of the twenty-first century
brought the political re-emphasis on community cohesion and national identity.
These debates were played out against multiculturalism as Bhattacharyya’s introduc-
tion makes clear. Hence, ‘morality and loyalty’ as problematic terms have to be placed
at the centre of current debates concerning the formation of ethnic identities, but also
gendered boundaries. As the editor in the beginning emphasises ‘‘ . . . the collection
seeks to challenge the contention that ethnicity is static or that it represents
necessarily traditional values and cultures’’ (1).
The conversation between Bhachu and Bhattacharyya is a particularly inspiring
text. We get insights how biographical locations matter to the journey (geographically
and intellectually) of both female academics, also revealing the impact of national
academic institutions in channelling their critical knowledge. They explore how their
life stories, their belonging to specific generational cohorts and certain national
contexts affects individual perspectives on values and processes of ethnic identifica-
tions. As Bhachu remarks:
I am interested in what are the creative processes through which people produce
their work, how people think about you and how to extend the range of ways that
people perceive you, their perception of what Asians and people of colour are
about. I think that is critical otherwise what are you doing? You just shut up. (64)
McVeigh’s chapter adds another passionate voice to the collection. Tracing back less
known details of the Porrajmos, the holocaust of European gypsies, he links the denial of
the past with contemporary policy and racist actions against Roma in Italy and Ireland.
Racism in that regard is working alongside EU anti-discrimination efforts, which
otherwise target discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity. Remarkably, it is ‘‘racism
without racism’’ (84) that underscores contemporary changes in state agendas. These
changes affect the construction of ethnic belonging as well as attempts to judge minority
and majority values in terms of tolerable or unacceptable values. Sandoval Garcia
discusses the marginalisation of Nicaraguans in a place called La Carpio in Costa Rica;
here, poverty becomes associated not only with a particular city space, but even more it
functions as a stigma of the poor (here, the Nicaraguan immigrant minority).
Therefore, the reader is enabled to understand local processes of exclusion in Costa Rica
operating not unlike those leading to social marginalisation and criminalisation of
Roma in Europe. These two chapters illustrate very well how structural positions of
ethnic and national minorities match; they span distinctive continents and particular
group belonging.
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What racism and the racial state mean in the contemporary moment and how to
tackle the ambiguity of race, gender, ethnicity and conflict, is of concern to all authors
though in a variety of styles and sophistication. All chapters highlight how
individuals and different groups re-negotiate ascribed, but also religiously contained
values. Their efforts resonate with a widely embraced, but contested way how to
interpret, translate and communicate group difference and values. The collection of
chapters is framed by Bhattacharyya’s introduction and conclusion, but unfortunately
not further organised through topical sections. Such organisation might have eased
following the logic of the running argument. For example, the useful reprint of
Winant’s 2003 essay in the beginning of the book, setting out an agenda for New
Racial Studies, is taken up as programmatic view in the conclusion (169), but not
worked explicitly through for all chapters.
It is the merit of the editor (and of the publisher, of course) giving space to
significant critical voices, which address the empowering dimension of ethnicity and
the transmittance of religious or cultural beliefs into agency. Not unlike other
(hardback) books focusing on the role of states in prolonging politics of belonging it
is relatively costly though. This is regrettable given that the content is very timely in
its analytical response to what otherwise gets presented to the world as human
tragedy.
ULRIKE M. VIETEN
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The Netherlands
# 2010 Ulrike M. Vieten
Beyond Multiculturalism: Views from Anthropology
GIULIANA B. PRATO (Ed.)
London: Ashgate, 2009
236 pages ISBN 9780754649427
This volume is an outcome of the XV International Congress of the International
Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences held in Florence, Italy in 2003.
As is true of many edited volumes of selected conference papers, this book embodies
the virtue of exploring a wide variety of topics, but also the vice of discussing issues
too diverse for one work. The authors engage in interesting and intellectually
stimulating discussions about the lived experiences of a set of populations that may
be referred to, for the lack of a better term, as ethnocultural minorities.
Contrary to the implication of the title, only a few chapters of Beyond
Multiculturalism engage the issue of multiculturalism as it has been conventionally
defined. Even in those chapters (e.g. Chapters 4�7), the issue of multiculturalism is a
peripheral topic rather than the centre of analysis. Readers expecting a more focused
discussion of how anthropology can shed new light on the multiculturalism debate
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may find this lack of direct references to multiculturalism throughout the book
disappointing and the title of the book somewhat misleading.
In this review, I focus on the editor’s introduction � it is there we find the
major arguments against multiculturalism � and mention other chapters when
relevant. In ‘‘Introduction � Beyond Multiculturalism’’, Prato does a nice job of
summarising the controversies and tensions surrounding multiculturalism, such as
the tension between individual freedom and community rights and the ambiguous
line between cultural relativism and moral relativism in multicultural thinking.
She is also absolutely right in arguing that ‘‘we should ask whether the protection
of minorities or, more generally, of cultural diversity alone eliminate discrimina-
tion’’ (7).
However, Prato’s discussion of multiculturalism, as well as Beyond Multicultural-
ism’s potential contributions to the general discussion of multiculturalism, are
insufficient for several reasons. First, her arguments against multiculturalism are not
sufficiently supported by the following chapters, although Prato argues that they are.
It is a valid concern that multiculturalism, when put into practice, often takes the
form of ‘‘a new cultural production controlled by specialist managers that transcends
reality’’ (15). However, the following chapters do not fully support this concern.
Some of the chapters maintain a neutral stance or lack direct references to
multiculturalism (e.g. Chapters 1 and 9�11). Other chapters can be interpreted as
providing support to multiculturalism (e.g. Chapters 3 and 4). Only Chapter 5
(written by the editor) and Chapters 6 and 7 provide evidence in support of Prato’s
arguments. In Chapter 12, Surrenti provides an insightful understanding of what
culture means and how people consume culture; her discussion is reminiscent of the
arguments Waldron (1995) raised against multiculturalism. Although interesting and
insightful on its own, Chapter 12 does not necessarily provide any support for the
editor’s overall arguments against multiculturalism. In addition, one cannot, as Prato
wants to do, discredit multiculturalism as a theory simply because it has been
inappropriately implemented.
Regardless of whether her characterisation is supported by the chapters in the
book, one may also question whether Prato does justice to multiculturalism as theory
in her characterisation. As Kymlicka (2001) argued, the multiculturalism debate has
witnessed three stages. The first stage is the debate between communitarianism and
liberalism. The second stage is the debate among liberals as to whether or not
multiculturalism is compatible with political liberalism and whether multiculturalism
can indeed advance ethnocultural justice. Acknowledging the role of the state in the
process of nation-building has significant moral and theoretical implications for the
current understanding of liberal states vis-a-vis ethnic diversity. The intended or
unintended consequences of the state’s nation-building efforts are the marginalisation
of cultural minorities and the unfair pressures placed on cultural minorities to
conform to the culture of the dominant ethnic group. Having defined multi-
culturalism as a call for a fairer method of building a nation, Kymlicka conceptualises
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different ethnic groups as having varying types of multicultural rights based on the
kinds of injustice they have suffered as a group.
Prato’s discussion considers the first and second stages. However, the third stage of
the multiculturalism debate, that is, considering multiculturalism as a response to the
nation-state-building process, is missing from the discussion. This omission is
significant because, if we understand multiculturalism as a response to the nation-
building process, some of the empirical chapters in the volume support multi-
culturalism. For example, the ‘‘effective immigrant settlement policies’’ (51) Fong
argues for in Chapter 3 and the findings of Chapter 4 align with ideas about
immigrant multiculturalism.
Had the edited volume done what it set out to do, it would appeal to many scholars
and policy-makers across various disciplines, particularly against the backdrop of
waning interest in multiculturalism in Western Europe. Although the volume fails to
achieve this goal, nonetheless it makes a valid contribution to our understanding of
culture and diversity in an age of globalisation. An insightful discussion by Vazquez
and Rodrıguez in Chapter 7 examines how the idea of tolerance assumes the
superiority of the person (in many cases a member of the national majority) who
tolerates the presence of the minority group; according to the authors of the chapter,
this sense of superiority is inherent in the concept of multiculturalism itself. The
authors of the chapter suggest replacing multiculturalism with an alternative notion
of puri-culturalism that ‘‘not only recognizes the multicultural character of societies
but also considers [cultural diversity] to be a driving force for the enrichment of the
society as a whole’’ (136). In Chapter 6, Pardo’s discussion of the difference between
tolerance and toleration seems to suggest a contrasting scenario. Pardo argues that
everyone has a right to decide to what extent to tolerate members of other groups.
From her perspective, multiculturalism as an ideology violates the individual’s right
to choose whether or not to tolerate and ask only majority to tolerate. Whether
multiculturalism entails the majority’s generous gesture of tolerance or the minority’s
imposition of tolerance on the majority is a subject for debate. Indeed, the
discussions of puri-culturalism and tolerance vs. toleration focus on neglected
aspects of cultural diversity and therefore provide a helpful contribution to current
scholarly discussion of multiculturalism.
Works Cited
Kymlicka, W., 2001. Politics in the Vernacular. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waldron, J., 1995. ‘‘Minority Culture and the Cosmopolitan Alternative.’’ The Rights of Minority
Cultures. Ed. W. Kymlicka. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 93�119.
NORA HUI-JUNG KIM
University of Mary Washington
Fredericksburg, VA, USA
# 2010 Nora Hui-Jung Kim
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Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms: New Dilemmas for Teachers
JENNIFER MILLER, ALEX KOSTOGRIZ & MARGARET GEARON (Eds)
Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2009
290 pages ISBN 9781847692160
In recent years there has been a shift in the teacher education literature from seeing
diversity as a problem that had to be dealt with to seeing diverse classrooms as
beneficial for all students. Miller, Kostogriz and Gearon begin their book on this
hopeful note, quoting the European Commission’s assertion that ‘‘[a] successful
multilingualism policy can strengthen life chances of citizens . . . and contribute to
solidarity through enhanced intercultural dialogue and social cohesion. Approached
in this spirit, linguistic diversity can become a precious asset, increasingly so in
today’s globalised world’’ (3). But I think it is safe to say that practice has not yet
caught up to theory, and the book raises several salient issues for teacher educators,
policy-makers and practitioners.
Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Classrooms arose from the co-editors’ shared
interest in how language education teacher educators might approach the changing
face of classrooms in a globalised context, and how to better serve the needs of pre-
and in-service teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. However,
they recount that as the project unfolded the scope expanded to include policy,
curriculum, pedagogy and changing theoretical conceptions of language learning and
use (6). They have therefore divided the book into three parts: ‘‘Part 1: Pedagogy in
Diverse Classrooms’’; ‘‘Part 2: Language Policy and Curriculum’’; and ‘‘Part 3:
Research Directions in Diverse Contexts’’, and have included contributions by a range
of scholars from the UK, Spain, Finland, Australia and Canada. Given this wide scope
of topics, I cannot do justice to the book as a whole, so I will limit my discussion to
three chapters � one from each part.
In Part 1, I found Jennifer Miller’s chapter, ‘‘Teaching with an Accent: Linguistically
Diverse Preservice Teachers in Australian Classrooms’’, particularly engaging in that it
echoed many of the experiences of students in our own programme for foreign
trained teachers seeking local certification. Miller draws on a subset of data gleaned
from a wider study on English language proficiency and teacher readiness among
non-native-speaking pre-service teachers. She addresses the complexities of identity
formation and negotiation; the role of authority and ‘believing listeners’; and the
cultural gap between the pre-service teachers and the students and staff in their
practicum schools that emerged in written reflections and focus group sessions with
five of the research participants. While many such programmes focus on trying to
reduce the differences between linguistically diverse teachers and their new English-
dominant contexts, Miller challenges teacher educators to ‘‘do more than pay lip
service to the value of diversity’’ (52). This does not mean that teachers from diverse
language backgrounds are exempt from responsibility for their own language
development, but it does mean that as teacher educators, we need to change the
context within which linguistically diverse teachers are measured as more or less
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competent. And this in turn means that we must interrogate our own assumptions
and beliefs about language and identity, as well as our assumptions about professional
competence, and build in the necessary supports for linguistically diverse teachers
(52�53). Only then will we be able to ensure that the linguistically diverse graduates
of our teacher education programmes are on the path to becoming successful
practitioners in predominantly English language classrooms.
Part 2 includes Alex Kostogriz’s chapter, ‘‘Professional Ethics in Multicultural
Classrooms: English, Hospitality and the Other’’. Against the backdrop of neo-liberal
reforms in Australian education, Kostogriz draws on Derrida, Levinas and Bakhtin to
explore the possibility of a ‘‘dialogical ethics in linguistic and cultural encounters � in
pedagogical zones of contact and ‘face-to-face’ relations with alterity’’ rather than
‘‘the monological and decontextualized views of professional ethics as caring at a
distance’’ (134). While I am familiar with the literature on Levinas and education
more generally, I am less familiar with how such work might be taken up in language
education, and I am somewhat cautious of attempts to ‘apply’ continental ethics � in
this case Levinas’s conception of responsibility and Derrida on hospitality � to
classroom contexts. I think Kostogriz has successfully resisted the tendency toward
prescriptions for practice and has utilised their work instead as a productive way to
theorise language education as a fundamentally relational and ethical act. Kostogriz
acknowledges that it would require a book-length project to fully unpack ethics and
hospitality as themes in language education but his chapter does a fine job, in my
view, of introducing readers who are unfamiliar with this body of work to a new way
of conceiving pedagogical relations with the Other.
In the last chapter, ‘‘Bringing Home and Community to School: Institutional
Constraints and Pedagogic Possibilities’’, Canadian researchers Suzanne Smythe and
Kelleen Toohey report on an ethnographic study of children from a community with
a large number of English language learners. The study focused on the discursive
contexts for literacy and language learning with the aim of ‘‘interrupt[ing] the
dominance of English-only knowledge and literacy in the classroom, and con-
tribut[ing] to the re-valuing of newcomer children’s linguistic and cultural resources’’
(272). An especially interesting aspect of the research described here is the section on
the photo-story project wherein grade 6 and 7 students were invited to become
‘‘junior ethnographers’’ (283). Smythe and Toohey provided the students with
disposable cameras and asked them to create photo representations of their out-of-
school lives. Through the use of computer software and the addition of music,
captions, etc. the students worked in groups to turn the photos into stories of their
lives which were then shared with their families. Most revealing to the researchers was
the recurring theme of identity transition. It was not, however, as one might expect,
an identity transition from newcomers to Canadians but rather a transition from
young children to children ‘‘claiming identities within a multimodal, culturally
diverse pop and global culture’’ (284). While Smythe and Toohey were pleased with
the students’ enthusiasm for the project, they felt that the research fell short of
making full use of the pedagogic possibilities (286) and they point to possible future
Journal of Intercultural Studies 445
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research questions including investigating why such projects, which are potentially
very educative, are so difficult to integrate into day-to-day life in schools. Smythe and
Toohey’s chapter thus challenges us to rethink the traditional separation between
home and school and to work more intentionally at valuing all aspects of students’
lives as integral to their language learning and literacy.
In closing, I commend this book not only for its attention to the complexities of
preparing teachers for culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, but also for
opening up new ways of framing language education and teacher education in a
globalised world.
ANN CHINNERY
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC, Canada
# 2010 Ann Chinnery
The Ethics of Migration Research Methodology: Dealing with Vulnerable
Immigrants
ILSE VAN LIEMPT & VERONICA BILGER (Eds)
Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press (Distributed by Gazelle Book Services,
www.gazellebookservices.co.uk), 2009
180 pages ISBN 9781845193317
In this co-edited book, diverse methodological issues and their ethical implications
for search with vulnerable, hidden and hard to reach migrant populations are
examined and questions such as access to, building trust in and minimisation of
potential harm for participants with problematic immigration status are explored. In
light of the large and increasing number of undocumented immigrants, refugees and
asylum seekers worldwide, this is an important and timely topic, which deserves an
in-depth scholarly dialogue.
The book is organised in three parts. The first part focuses on the institutional
context of migration research and related ethical and methodological concerns.
Specifically, challenges of conducting research in the prison system are discussed and
illustrated in two reports about studies about incarcerated immigrants in a US and
a Swiss prison.
The second part includes three articles that address questions relative to choosing
the most appropriate methodological approach. The articles in this part discuss
ethnography, document analysis, interviews and experts’ opinions as well as issues
related to translation in cross-linguistic research, sampling issues and strategies for
identification, gaining access and recruitment of participants in populations of
migrant undocumented, smuggled and trafficked immigrants, asylum seekers and
sex-workers in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. Furthermore, ethical issues
are discussed implicitly as well as implied and illustrated indirectly; specifically in the
description by the editors of the power struggle with the scholarly community to gain
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support for the importance of documenting information from individuals who
personally experienced being smuggled (Chapter 5).
The third part of the book emphasises the examination of the role of the researcher
in studying migrants in uncertain situations. One article explores benefits and
challenges of conducting research when the researcher shares the ethnic background
and language of those studied and demonstrates it relative to studying Bulgarian
immigrants in Athens, Madrid, London and Brighton, focusing specifically on issues
of possible bias, manipulation and boundaries. The second article looks at
conceptual, methodological and ethical aspects of studying Moroccan minors who
immigrated to Spain on their own, unaccompanied by an adult. Specifically, the
author looks at the issue of dual role as a researcher and a social worker or a social
educator (the concepts are used interchangeably and are not clearly defined).
The volume has some strengths such as addressing diverse cultures of origins, ages
and precarious situations from Moroccan unaccompanied minors in Spain,
undocumented Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands to Bulgarian immigrants in
Greece and the UK as well as addressing ethical aspects of quantitative, qualitative
and mixed methods projects. Furthermore, the discussion of illustrative case studies
is also helpful.
However, it could also benefit from some improvements. First, while the editors
addressed a timely topic, a more comprehensive review of relevant literature could
have greatly benefited the readers. For example, in light of the editors’ statement that
‘‘we rarely get information on the design of the research or the research processes
such as how participants were identified and accessed, to what degree participants
were involved in the research. How translation issues were handled etc.’’ (2), it is
somewhat surprising that they did not report about the handful of studies that
address exactly these issues (e.g. Weiss, T. and Berger, R. ‘‘Reliability and Validity of
a Spanish Version of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory.’’ Journal of Social Work
Research 16 (2006): 191�99). In addition, it would have been interesting to know if
the composition of the authors of the individual chapters supports the editors’
observation that ‘‘Today migration is one of the most cross-disciplinary fields in
academia’’ (2). Furthermore, the organising principle of the chapters and the articles
they contain is sometimes confusing; for example, similar issues of sampling are
discussed in various parts of the book, making the development of a comprehensive
perspective on the issue. A ‘heavier’ editorial hand could have been helpful in
enhancing clarity as well as improving the scholarly quality of some of the chapters.
Finally, a concluding chapter analysing general ethical issues in research of vulnerable
immigrant populations across the diverse methods, population groups and authors’
perspectives would have helped enhancing the cohesiveness of the book.
RONI BERGER
School of Social Work, Adelphi University
Garden City, NY, USA
# 2010 Roni Berger
Journal of Intercultural Studies 447
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