Papers, workshops and presentations are invited on any of the
following themes:

1. Challenging Old Concepts of Self and Other
~ Who is Self and who is Other?
~ The new value of social diversity and cultural multiplicity; breaking with homogeneity and sameness
~ What is the place of difference and alterity, of normality and
normalisation in defining identity and membership
~ How to account for social membership and cultural identity?
~ Making sense of transformations and their effects over culture, identity and membership
~ Othering, excluding, stygmatising

2. Nations, Nationhood and Nationalisms
~ What does it mean, today, to belong to a nation?
~ New migrants, new migratory flows and massive movements from peripheral to central countries
~ Resurgence of the local and the diminishing importance of the national
~ Are we living post-national realities?
~ What is the place of cultural claims in today’s forms of social membership?
~ Models of multiculturalism and the contemporary experience of multiculturalism(s)
~ Assimilation, integration, adaptation and other forms of placing the responsibility of change on the Other

3. Institutions, Organizations and Social Movements
~ Evaluating the promises and institutions of post-national governing
~ Institutions and organisations that do more for money than for people
~ Political battles over globalization
~ Social movements, new rebellion and alternative globalizations
~ Trans-cultural connections that escape institutional and political intentions or control
~ New forms of global exclusion

4. Persons, Personhood and the Inter-Personal
~ De-centering individuals and the making of persons; thinking and acting with others in mind and interpersonally
~ Tensions, contradictions and conflicts of identity formation and social membership
~ New sources and forms of belonging; new tribalism, localism, parochialism and communitarianism
~ Bonds of care across boundaries of inequality and exclusion, ideologies and religions, politics and power, nations and geography
~ Who am I if not the relation with others?
~ Non-recognition as cultural violence

5. Media and Artistic Representations
~ The role of new and old media in the construction of cultures and identities, of nations and place
~ Production and reproduction of cultural typing and stereotyping
~ The contested space of representing culture, identity and belonging
~ Art, media and how to challenge the rigid and impenetrable constructions of culture
~ Living, being and belonging through art
~ Life imitating art and fiction

6. Transnational Cultural Interlacing of Contemporary Life
~ What is shared from cultures? How are cultures shared? Who has access to the sharing of cultures?
~ Cultural claims and human rights
~ Exploring multiculturalism as a plural experience: Shouldn’t we be talking about multiculturalisms?
~ Living in a context with the cultural markers of a different context: Is that transculturalism?
~ Languages, idioms and new emerging forms of wanting to bridge the ‘invisible’ divide of cultures
~ Symbols and significations that connect people to places other than ‘their own’
~ Culture, identity and belonging by choice

7. New Concepts, New Forms of Inclusion
~ Recognition and respect without exclusion
~ An ethics for social relations in a new millennium
~ What to do with historically old concepts like tolerance, acceptance and hospitality?
~ Should not we all be strangers? Should not we all be foreigners?
~ Is there any use for cosmopolitanism these days?
~ Loving the other within the self; building fluid boundaries of belonging and being

For further details about the conference, please visit:

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/at-the-interface/diversity-recognition/multiculturalism-conflict-and-belonging/call-for-papers/

Post written by Tawnya Ravy

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On February 10, 2011, Dr. Priyamvada Gopal delivered a paper titled “Is Feminism Bad for Multiculturalism?” Inspired by one of her student’s projects, Gopal contemplated how the practice of the everyday complicates the politics of the public domain. Her student, for example, was looking to find sources on Muslim women who assert their agency by wearing veils or refusing to come out into public, but he was on the verge of changing topics because he could not find what he was looking for. Through this story Gopal brings to the forefront a question that is brought up again and again by scholars – how do we reconcile western liberalism with multiculturalism? In fact, Gopal noted that she was in part responding to Susan Okin’s well-known article “Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?” In it, Okin refers to the controversy of Muslim students’ rights to wear headscarves during school hours among other examples of minority policies. Both Okin and Gopal suggest that western liberalism and multiculturalism cannot be easily reconciled, but Gopal argues that, in fact, it is multiculturalism that brings liberalism to its limits. She also cautions us against viewing these ideas as binary opposites, and instead urges us to reconsider the basis for these oppositions. For one, she suggests that we rethink western liberal ideas of feminism which often undermine the global provenance of gender equality. For another, she urges us to always contextualize. Who and his or her tract record does matter when advocating minority rights as does contemplating ideas of feminism and multiculturalism in a post-9/11 world framed by the “global war on terror.”

Gopal brought up a striking example of these concepts in the protest of the play Behzti in Birmingham (December 2004). The Sikh community (represented by a so-called “faith” leader) reportedly did not protest the representation of their community as flawed in the play, but rather that the scene of sexual abuse takes place in a sacred temple. The play was swiftly canceled. Gopal noted that the appointment of “faith” leaders is problematic to start with, but that even more troubling was the construction of the sacrosanct – the community or religion as 1) unified in commonality and 2) so sacred that it must be shown respect. Instead, Gopal argues that we should be looking for heterodox in criticism and practice. We should be looking for “commonality across communities and difference within communities.” Although she warned us at the beginning of her presentation that she does not have a fast and ready answer to the question posed in her title, she does believe that the social practice of feminism is not incompatible with multiculturalism, and, in fact, we should view it as a way to rescue multiculturalism from its simplistic binaries.

After her presentation, several audience questions led Gopal to criticize the Academic Left for being so often inhospitable to critique. What do you think about this criticism? Furthermore, what do you think about the practical applications of these ideas? How do Gopal’s suggestions translate into government policies regarding minority communities? Do you have any examples from your own community that fall within this discussion? I look forward to your responses to these questions and arguments.

Dr. Priyamvada Gopal is University Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Churchill College. She has published two books, Literary Radicalism in India (Routledge, 2005) and The Indian English Novel: Nation, History, and Narration (Oxford UP, 2009). She also contributes to newspapers like The Guardian, The Hindu, and the weekly Outlook on politics and culture.

In the meantime, I realized that there is no perfect time and that all the “less positive” (to put it this way) things that are currently happening and that occupy the frontpages of all international newspapers do tell us a lot about the historic moment we all witness. And they all could be understood in the light of the topics addressed during the MCB4 conference.

We now face a moment of conflict, when people are capable of committing suicide and mass murders to defend their communities; thousands and millions of people go out in the streets and participate to protests spurted into revolutions, fighting for liberty in the countries they belong to. It may seem a political issue but beside that, we all are facing a moment of questioning our cultural roots and the role that religion should play in the life of the society. Moreover, just as we have evidentiated during the MCB4 conference, internet plays a more and more significant part in these events, changing, in a way that we are yet to discover, the structure and the evolution of the events themselves.

Thus, it appears to me that there is no better way to start our online debates. I have followed on the social networks Antonio’s interest and support for the events in the Arabic countries and I know about Anuradha’s efforts to spread the invitation to meditate on the idea of Onenness in all the world. I am sure that all of you have thoughts to share regarding this first month of 2011 and I hope that, by starting some productive conversations, we can, at least, learn something useful from this “not so promising” beginning of the New Year.

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