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    Baumann - Dominant and Demotic

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    Mario Orospe

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    a i a al : 208 DEBATING CULTURAL KYERIOITY lesinges, Arthur M. Je (ig9s) The Dining of Amerce Refletons om @ Mil call Soir. New York, WW. Notte, Sivanandan, A. (1983) 4 Difient Hurge, London: Pino Press Schierap, Cari-Uinik(1y95) ‘Muleiculturhian and Universo in the USA and EU Europe’, Paper dels 2-4 March Sessiuls, Daiva K. (1990) “Theorising Connections: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Chas’, in BLS (ed) Race and Edie Relanore in “Toronto: Oxfond Univesiey Pres Stasis, Daiva and Nira Yoval-Davis (ed) (1995) Urs lations of Gener, Eowity, rte and Cla ‘Teing, Anna Lowenhaupt (1993) Nj: Princeton University Pres red at the Nation ad Edy workshop, Been nt Seer Soci: condom: Sage the Diamond Queen. Princeton, the Rese of Turner, Bryan (1990) ‘Outline of 3 Theory of Ciizenship. Sa man, Anna (1yp2) ‘Minories and the Newletter 4,32 1-03 ‘Young, eis Marion (1993) Juste and dhe Pali of Dien, Princeton, Nj Princeton niversey Pres sval-Davis, Nita (1991) “Ed Bits and Avalon Rie Natis sions and th Racial and Gender div (ed) Imi ty and Race i cuceta and Brain. London: Instieste of Commons Nira (19923) "Zionism, Ansi-Zionism ane! the Constuction af Com: “Jewishnes". Reriaw of Mile East Sud Yaval-Dasis, Nisa (1992) ‘Secu “Joan of vt Fandamertalion 8-10. Yutal-Davis, Niro (tg73c) "The Gendered Gulf War: Women’ Cidzership and Modern Warne’, H, Breshesth and N, Yuval-Davi (eds) Ue Gulf Wi ond the Naw Wold Onder London: Zed Books: 219-22 Yuval-Davis, Nira (1993) ‘Gender and Nation’. Buble and Raval Sues 16, 4 sm, Janam and the Zionist Dilemma’ 1: Vural: Davis, Nes (2994) “Women Shifing Kdentien, Shifing Racin’ in K. Uhavnani and A. Phoenix (ed Feminism and Poybolgy 4. 179-98. ‘Yoval-Davis, Nira (i997) Gender and Nutn, Londons Sage ‘Yossl-Davis, Nirs and hia, es) (1980) Hh ‘Macmil ran = Nation = Si DOMINANT AND DEMOTIC DISCOURSES OF CULTURE: THEIR RELEVANCE TO MULTI-ETHNIC ALLIANCES Gerd Baumann INTRODUCTION of mui-eth Assuming a nic alliances must entail a process TT and “community” differences, it is worth asking we. Tn this chapter propose that there are owo constructions involved. Qne concepraal praxis in the fist p how such dilferences are conee iferences of “culture al lines, In doing 50, this discurs = hete called the dominant discourse imag’ te be home! munity’, de us with differences of ethnic’ identity and of ined on quss-biote praxis reduces both culture and ‘ethnic’ di te sd a6 "ke" or “plain ence to reified essence cannot, however, in any simple way be rubbi competence of citi jcatory’, for ie forms pa from ‘ethnic’ minorit inves t© function a5 one element in the negotia alidate and describe it as such, however, has little to gain fom an uncritical acceptance of its dominant scatus and hegemonic effectiveness. Rather, ic needs t0 be studied as 1 we alternative diseourse, hete called the demotic Whete the dominant discourse views ‘culeure’ asthe re to an equally ips oF ‘commuitiee, the demotie discourse questions and On dissolves shis equation between “culeure’, ethnos, and ‘comm the basis of this dual discussive compe are rendered into terms of active negotiation and deb processes that underlie the forging of multi-ethnic ‘com m9 NAU CLINE LIBRARY 20 DEBATING CULTURAL HYERIDITY out off reified ‘communities’ of “cut demotic alongside the do ing, suggest, tanding how mi The documentation of the inant discourse thus fas an immediate bear ethnic alliances actually pro. tiation of ‘cura’ or ‘community’ diferences as locally positions was of resident research in Southall lected dating ie suburb of people of internally ish backgrounds, 2 mylti-ethn ibb ‘The obvious suting point for fieldw been a ommunity study’: selecting one ‘community’, preferably reli onal or ‘ethnic’ it, $0 far as was ally Yee what struck me most ally over the first year o s was the multitude of cross cculsaral cleavages. Tracing religious cleava ‘Was a town of Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, and various Christian ‘communi- c5, it was a town of Punjabi, Gujerati, and several English-speaking ‘commnnities’; tracing the clea ians of different religions and Aiican-Asian 2s opposed to subcon lritude of crosscutting cleavages rendered Southall a palpably plural society, and eo do justice to this plurality meant ra sgorical divides of seemingly autonomous ‘commu sof ‘euleute’ Equally importantly, it was Sous cllians themselves who could be seen "e themselves, in a variety of contexts, from the “co) ies! within ‘communities aw ros ‘communities, ‘community’ and ‘culture’, dominant as it is in rniich public discourse about ‘ethnic’ minorities, disintegt get t0 know local people, As 1 have indicated, Sou replicated the equation squation berwe: fans indeed vween 2 ‘community’ and “ie “culate” ina ber of contests. Yer in of! the same Southallians could disolve dominant equation by statements su "In our community, we don't have 4 cufcure’; ‘OF course we have a culture, but we ally part of 01 lysing such data, it thus became necessary to ak look mitstions of the domina ised by deconstructing the community’; ot “That [other] community is 8 ie salient features, and the discourse itself This may briefly be summ THE DOMINANT DISCOURSE hhave establish ial Ethnographers" uses of the word ‘Culture lta’ is not 4 real thing, but an abstract and elf, “i does not “cause” behaviour, but poine of t ction from it, and is t rople understand c world, As a deliberate abstraction its use is in concep- 2 heuristic means toward: explaining how and act tualisng } werchanging “complex Whole” (Iylor £958) through people engage in the continual ing, in a ‘meaningful manner, for what ssy,and mighe think, Cultare thus Drmied, and even then the onto exist only in 0 far as it is ysical abstraction. Thie ethno- ined even against the Boasian status of the term is that of a pointedly a he has heen clarified, and ens! ogy. By a new coniensis 1994; Sablins graphic ins heritage of American andhe ise approaches co culture (Barth 1994; Keesing Ousside mobilising ethniciy fom paychologisl or count or social daeun into plisca leverage forthe purpose of akering or riufciag... stems of stuceur equality Betscen and among ethnic exegories Roshscbid 1981: 2: emphasis Im this process, eshnopolitical activ cress, ideologies, ries, moditis, and somedimes sireull al heritages of the ethnic ge putatively disinctive and unigue ¢ mobiles. (bid: 3) labels age thus validated as referring to actual ‘ethnic groups’, and Ethni these ‘groupe’ are def ‘homogeneous and discrete "e hypothesis share, An early example of 1 of cultare’ was the Black Consciousness Whereas the Civil Rights Movement equal individual rights for al citizens, regardless of who they 15 Movement addressed its constituents not were, the Blick Conscious rns, but a6 a distinotive col wy political discourse, in which civil righes “eulure’, In this n n demic. abstra c' and ‘vskural” identities, ‘culture’ as an basis of 18, referring to 4 perpetually changing process of cilied yinaking’, is replaced by ‘cultur ig-aking Y an DEBATING CULTURAL HYBRIOITY GERD SALMANN, 2 definite substantive content and assumes the status of 2 ‘thing’ that people seem neces to effect mobilisation, This mobilisation of al those who by have’, ‘belong’ to or ‘are members In this new context, the word ‘culture’ c purely analytical abstraction; it has co be ‘filed with traits’ ~ that i, od as a substantive her are deemed fo ‘have the same culture’ is hel Ihete the semantic imtrca ¢ that is normative, predictive of indi~ munity’? Suffice it to say that in the dominant discou ard ukimately a cause of ‘why’ ual bridge that connects “cule” wit hs ‘ethnos as they do. Kaplezer (1988) has described such process wit te an lend a spurious plausibility to the asumption that ethnic’ minori- regatd t0 the rise of extreme nationalism 2s ‘the reification of culture, eee ty Ine very fat of the ethnic’ bond ivel, share the same the production of culture a an object in isell” (198%: 87), and. bas “euleure. This slippage i all ee cuter since ‘culture’ appeats alcaly ad tris a “systematically ro= 4 entiog and it is a general propensity of cofving choughe that nthe word of instieutions appears tO merge with the 1 and Luckmanm 1967: 108). Thas ‘culture’, and can indeed appeae 252 un shown how selected esta ved patterns moved from their embeddedness in the flow of daly life, fashioned into symbolic things, and placed in a stable, do: Such a reification of cultute muse app: word is to serve in the contest especially ‘ethn natural Ls, 2s the nec! nice of biological over a new kit fot all public discourse about minoriy “c their reified Teuleures’, needs ¢0 im woke this assumed coltural imperative explicitly. Is # ne the less, 7 for it offers ewo d by Ti? biclogical of political contes- ‘An appeal to biological yin the face of stl a popal terns of ethnic inequality and resource compe: a Human Rights, These ‘community’ rights ar substantive 2 popular denied ~ on ds mal ie allows for discursive closure ‘caltare see (1993) rightly svesses the elem setionism is not surprising, of course, wi fasion when he describes how “Toinidad Hin orge used about ‘ethnic! minorities, Er ‘object in itself so as to articulate a shared ecknie iden ition, found as easily among, anthropel nsfied ¢ 1993) clings ~ much like “ibe ass media across the globe, that indeed, lke the scientfielly discredited notion 2 condensed example of this refied view biological fa of teuleare” in snes’, The image it evokes is snd wide not of young people performing culture a5 2 process of g sense of which even che term ‘race’ contimte each other and of adult ochers, but of a cultute-less flock lost bi race’ ~ de These purportedly ‘natu al cleavages between hurnans ssoviared with cleavages of ‘culuare’, The ter: ty with of biology as the foundation of cultural diversity is evidence, if any two immovable object: named ‘cultures’. The political consequences o' 1, for the persistent appeal of common-sense biologism: the such an essentialise approach to ‘cultural’ and ‘community’ difference have seul founded in natural ones. This been documented in rare detail By Kalka (1991), whose data originate biclogiom is understandable, and eve rnographie record of p fom ¢ north of Soud colonial dames deliberate transformation of local poliies into @ contestation berween systems, ine e London borough situated jmmediat Jete with peoples who regarded their own kinship 1 prohibitions, family structures, polisial sonomic and pats of “cule” le finic? ile“ rivalries and highly divisive deb: religious convent as Tmstural’, It is thus not surprising that even es notional collectives such 2s ethic munontues should be cre dents in the borough were totally unaware of the struggle conducted ne reassuring quality of being, at once, bth natural and cult presutnably on theit behal? (Kalka 1998: 319). From the strliation of ethnic’ categories into “communities d To note eeifcatory asumptions in a public discourse is not to call 1 refed ‘culture’, protgoniss of the dominave discourse can thus progess chat discourse fale and, a5 i€ sete, be dane with it, For analytical p to a portayal of minorities at forming ethnic-cum-culurl ‘communities: poses, of course, rif well-wora [At this point, discursive closure is complete. The two key terms In 2 discourse rmually reinforce for those defi nd even must form a “community” ba nakes no sense, In Whitehead phrase, i involves the of politcal contestation, bh ied ‘culture’; and their oe NAU CLINE LIBRARY as DEGATING CULTURAL HY@AIDITY must appear in teified form, because eh unity’ In cases where a reified minority" swith a particular “ethnic group’, the plausibility from popular forms of biological reductionism. Ie can reduce all the cultural complexities, both whole, plural so community = ethnic i are, after all, a san be equated ircular discourse can seek added shin “communities” and across fe #0 an astonishingly simple equation: ‘Culture = tity = mature = cl I shall end here my short — and, by necessiy, sum the dominant discourse without interrogating the possible causes of its hegemonic position.‘ For our present purposes ~ that is, in ss ~ it will be clear that we need 1 go. i may well be used amon has addeesed this sien ves, Gilroy (10 the 1980s ‘anti-ricism’ movement. He notes new forms of racism which ... | are distinguished by extent to which they idennly race with che ie" and elaboration o nsity”” (Gilroy 1992: 53). In other words - and if I understand Gilroy hey — the terms for ‘race’. Gi ‘culture’ The ‘may function 35 surreptitious \deed pursues his argument down to the New R in the ab uiment is that both # and the conception of culture and secondly by a eulturalist conception of race and ethnic identicy’ (i Sach a eritieal id: 50) spprasal of the dominant discourse cannot, however, absolve the ethnographer from studying its manifestations, Speaking of iy own da Southa s, too, use the dominant discourse whenever their judgements of context or purpose make it seem appropriate. Ie ‘would be naive to pitch a Southall demotic discourse agsinst the domi- nant one, and presuinptsous for an ethnographer to adjudicate their rela- tive merits. There ate, at any rate, perfectly good re should reify the culuire that, in other contexts, they afe aware of te orming. Culture-making, after of social continuity placed withi making, reshaping, and re is not an dal chang: discourse as well as the demotic one, They refy ‘cultu same tinte making culture. Even when they explicily engage the ie discourse, the faultlines of # 1e dominant one are effective and than that, empirically visible, Thus, the patteros by which, s sean Southallians, ‘whites’ or Muslims and remain, divi GERD BAUMANN as discou counterpart to an equally eff ied the ds he: otic THE DEMOTIC DISCOURSE w the dom ideas of “sulture’ and 'commanity’ are thus rendered

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