Workshop 5 : Abstract

Workshop 5: Whiteness and gender

Workshop-organizer: Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor, Cultural Complexity in the new Norway, University of Oslo, t.h.eriksen@culcom.uio.no
Discussant: Anne-Jorunn Berg, Senior Scientist, SINTEF Technology and Society 
 
When Majority Becomes Minority. Swedish Girls in a Multi-Ethnic Suburb
Maria Bäckman

What happens when a majority group locally becomes a minority, when a structurally superior and societally dominant group, situationally, becomes marginalised and is seen as somewhat deviant? In the Swedish debate, the suburb has become a sign that represent something other than the typically Swedish, a stylised marker for something that diverges from the norm. But what happens to Swedishness when it is no longer seen as unmarked normality?

My informants are teenage girls, living in the suburbs, who are identified both by themselves and by others as Swedish. But they are Swedes living in what is usually called an immigrant suburb. Thus they are seen as different. Ideas and practices regarding gender, sexuality and intimacy must be understood as an important arena for the making of normality. The girls may be called into question, or cause surprise, by living with a young man without being married. They may encounter prejudices such as the idea that Swedish girls act and dress in a sexually provocative way or that blonde girls are easy.

On a theoretical level, there is currently a discussion about the challenge to make whiteness visible and show the constructed nature of normality. But what happens when whiteness is locally the exception from the norm? When what is racialised is in fact “blondeness”, and whiteness is made manifest and questioned? And if this reversal happens locally and situationally, what does the suburb mean as the site of such a process?

 
Whiteness and Gender
Rozanne Drost

In contemporary multicultural society the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is apparently growing. Was the world once divided in democrats and communists; nowadays it is the western world that stands opposed to the Muslim world. In European countries with Islamic immigrants, like the Netherlands, the tension is perceptible. Immigrants in the Netherlands, persistently called ‘allochtonen’1, face problems integrating or even refuse to be an active part in Dutch society. I will argue that the omnipresence of the ethnicity of the white inhabitants, constructed as neutral, plays an important role in the proclaimed failure of multicultural society. Working with theories of white racism by Wellman2, and Omi and Winant4, I will argue that the maintenance of the white status quo is one of the most important issues when looking at whiteness in contemporary society.

In this battle over scarce resources, one of the battlegrounds are women’s bodies. The black (Muslim) bodies represented in the media need saving from fundamentalist, misogynist Muslims. The white bodies need protection to maintain there ‘emancipated’ lifestyles. Once they were unmarked by whiteness, are they now marked as white?Through the life story interviews I will conduct with young white women in the Netherlands, I aim to look at how the identities of young white women are constructed when ethnic and gender differences are played out in the media, but their own ethnicity seems so racially neutral? How can the role of white women as participants in a racist society be made more visible?

I hope to conclude my paper by giving some of the result from my forthcoming master-thesis.

Notes
1. Once a neutral terminology that now resembles a negative connotation.
2. David T. Wellman, Portraits of White Racism (1977, revised 2nd edition 1993)
4. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formations in the United States (1986, revised 2nd edition 1999) 
 
Exploring Shame and Creative Adjustment in a Multicultural Society
Turid Heiberg

Through a phenomenological approach 9 female co-researchers and the researcher gained a deeper understanding of how shame influences the lives of black, immigrant and refugee women in Norway. The research suggests that shame does not only occur in the family setting, but is also a significant factor in their meeting with society at large. Their stories are about a culture that resists integration and a white majority society that continuously judges them because of their colour of skin, their appearances and their so-called alien cultures. They feel rejected, shamed and downgraded. The research also shows how "whiteness" is an invisible premise, the background of decisions and shaming messages. The contributions of the white people are celebrated, while the achievements of the black citizens remain mostly invisible and are even questioned.

By understanding these ground conditions the society can offer support through the dialogical approach of truly valuing, accepting and appreciating the uniqueness and otherness, the qualities and creative adjustment of each individual. The research suggests that adopting an I-thou attitude and a field perspective, was experienced by participants as beneficial. 
 
The lingering ghost of colonial racism in White Feminism
Ane Kierkegaard

This paper is explorative, and based both on my own experiences, and the critique of white feminism raised by Feminists of Colour. In White Feminism this critique is appropriated rather than perceived as transformative and intellectually challenging. It is added on to the list of things “we” as white feminists ought to consider (among race, class, sexuality, ethnicity etc.) in “our” theoretical and empirical work, but which we may exclude as soon as it has been mentioned. It is not however seriously considered, analysed and used productively to challenge structures, which we are part of ourselves, structures which place “us” above “them”. The critique is used to confirm that we are open-minded, respectful and apologetic towards “them”; it is in other words appropriated because it allows our feminism to seem inclusive, when in practice it is not, hence keeping our greener pastures to our selves. It is appropriated with the result of closing doors on those who would like to see a real intellectual debate in a truly global form, a debate, which is based on respect of the works and thoughts of intellectual, academic and activist feminists from the South as well as from the North. With this paper I hope to inspire to both a thoughtful, spirited and open debate on the discursive practices of feminist whiteness.  
 
Postcolonial Feminist Challenges
Eske Wollrad

My paper consists in two parts: in the first I will look at the development of the “European Research Forum on Whiteness and Gender” and why it was criticized by Black German women. In the second part will I outline the frame of reference needed to avoid future shortcomings.
I.
In September 2002 I founded the “European Research Forum on Whiteness and Gender” (ERF) as a pilot project at Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany. The aim of the Forum was to offer a platform for researchers (both academic and activist) dealing critically with issues around Whiteness and Gender. However, many Black intellectuals, especially Black women, argued that the construction of Whiteness cannot be grasped without analysing the construction of Blackness and that this analysis has to take into account various intersecting axes of violence – not only sexism. Therefore, the title of the ERF was changed into “European Research Forum on Constructions of Whiteness and Blackness in the Context of Racism, (Post)Colonialism, Migration and Diasporas”.
The shortcomings of the ERF uncover basic problems regarding the exploration of Whiteness (perhaps not only) in Germany: the analysis of Whiteness apart from Blackness, the exploration of Whiteness as an academic endeavour without any reference to social relations of power and privilege and especially without any cooperation with marginalized Black intellectuals, who have been problematizing Whiteness for a long time as part of their critical social theory.

II.
To avoid shortcomings as outlined above I argue that the adequate frame of reference for analysing Whiteness and Gender is postcolonial feminist critique. “Postcolonialism” here denotes a political category of analysis which makes it possible to discern echoes of colonial knowledge production in contemporary constructions of “Germanness” and “foreigness”, of “us” and “them”, “manhood” and “womanhood”. These echoes are explored by feminist researchers located at the margins of German society who also undermine the supposed incompatibility of being German and being Black and, therefore, the normativity of Whiteness as the naturalized signature of Germanness. 
 
Post colonial feminism, the politics of identification and the liberal bargain
Amalia Sa'ar

The paper addresses power differentials among women and the possibilities of inter-ethnic solidarity within feminist groups. I offer the term liberal bargain, paraphrasing Deniz Kandiyoti's patriarchal bargain and Cynthia Cockburn's ethnic bargain, to speak about the complex positioning of women from a variety of social backgrounds with respect to liberalism and liberal dividends. The liberal bargain indicates the particular consciousness and symbolic whitening that 'colorized' (i.e., excluded/oppressed) people and women generally tend to adopt when they attempt to cash in on the liberal promise. It facilitates a distinction between identities, which are heavily dependent on ascribed attributes such as skin color, ethnic origin, or religion, and identifications, particularly the adoption or rejection of critical consciousness.
I suggest this concept as a substitute for the color metaphors that are habitually used to address issues of hegemony and ethnocentrism within feminist movements, and which I regard as analytically dissatisfactory.  
 

Please contact KILDEN, phone + 47 24 05 59 95 or e-mail crossroads@kilden.forskningsradet.no if you have any questions regarding the conference.