Blind slaves of our prejudices: Debating ‘culture’ and ‘race’ in Norway

Abstract

Despite an upsurge in the number of panels on ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural studies’ at annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline has not been in the vanguard when it comes to debates on race, racism and multiculturalism, or revising the canon. Yet the failure of the discipline to be at the vanguard of such debate stems in part from a belief that it has, all along, been at the vanguard. Indeed, has not anthropology stood precisely for the equality and relative value of all cultures. The very issues the ‘culture wars’ seem to raise? visweswaran 1998:70 This article discusses the works of two anthropologists who have applied the notion of racism to contemporary Norwegian society. Inger-Lise Lien defines racialization as a natural process, and racism as acts with hostile intentions, while Unni Wikan defines racism broadly in terms of the concept of culture: ‘Culture’ has become a new concept of race in that it functions in a reductionist manner to make ‘them’ lesser human beings than ‘us’. While Lien defines racism in such a way that very few practices can be discussed as possible examples of racism, Wikan’s definition makes almost everybody a racist, at the same time as she only applies her definition to a limited set of acts. In spite of their differences, the two authors seem to share a widespread but unacknowledged majority perspective which includes blindness to the effects of racialization and racism on the people affected when these effects do not confirm hegemonic majority ideas. The article discusses the reasons for the general majority blindness and the challenges it poses for anthropology.

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