Calendar

Sep
1
Tue
IMER Lunch Seminar: Thomas Solomon – The Play of Colors: Staging Multiculturalism in Norway @ UNI Rokkan center (6 etg)
Sep 1 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

The Play of Colors: Staging Multiculturalism in Norway

Fargespill (lit. “play of colors”) is a series of musical performances in Norway that have been staged from 2004 to the present. Each performance consists of a sequence of musical and dance numbers performed by children from different minority and immigrant groups, many of whom came to Norway as refugees, together with white Norwegian children. The songs and choreographies represent the home countries of the children who perform, and have included for example music and dance from Somalia, Myanmar (Burma), Rwanda, Kurdistan, and Eritrea, combined together with Norwegian folk music in often elaborate production numbers with colorful costumes and complex musical arrangements. While the specific musical numbers used and cast members change from performance to performance, the concept remains the same – a representation of ethnic, racial and cultural diversity in Norway staged through the voices and bodies of the children on stage. From its beginnings as an cultural initiative in the city of Bergen, Fargespill has gained increasing national attention within Norway, leading to performances in other cities such as Oslo and Trondheim.

Using as a starting point recent theorizations of multiculturalism and critical discussions of race and racism in Norway, this paper analyzes the Fargespill performances. The paper also uses Deleuze and Guattari’s twin concepts of majoritarian/minoritarian to interpret Fargespill’s representations. While the public face of Fargespill is that of children of various immigrant and minority groups, behind the scenes the performances are actually conceptualized, scripted, and extensively stage-managed primarily by majority (white) Norwegian adult arts professionals. The paper especially explores the question of whether the representations of Fargespill constitute a positive contribution to creating a climate for embracing difference in Norway, or whether Fargespill is better understood as a reassuring story white Norwegians tell themselves about multicultural Norway that, at best, naively sidesteps ongoing problems of racism and intolerance toward minorities and immigrants endemic in contemporary Norwegian society. Fargespill’s use of the performing bodies of refugee children to tell its story about a supposed Norwegian multicultural utopia can be seen as especially problematic in the context of the Norwegian government’s recent practices regarding the forced return of long-dwelling child asylum seekers to their country of origin.

Thomas Solomon - outdoors photoThomas Solomon is Professor in the Grieg Academy-Department of Music at the University of Bergen. He has previously taught at New York University, University of Minnesota, and Istanbul Technical University. He has done field research in highland Bolivia on musical imaginations of ecology, place and identity, and in Istanbul on place and identity in Turkish hip-hop. His publications include articles in the journals Ethnomusicology, Popular Music, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Yearbook for Traditional Music, as well numerous chapters in edited volumes on topics such as music and indigeneity in highland Bolivia, orientalism and gender in Turkish popular music, music and postcolonialism, and music and race in American cartoons. He is also editor of Music and Identity in Norway and Beyond: Essays Commemorating Edvard Grieg the Humanist (2011) and African Musics in Context: Institutions, Culture, Identity (2015), and co-editor of Ethnomusicology in East Africa: Perspectives from Uganda and Beyond (2012).

A light lunch, coffe and tea will be served.

Download poster here: Thomas Solomon on the play of colors (pdf)

 

Sep
22
Tue
IMER LUNCH SEMINAR: Johannes Servan – On social distance – the idea of justice and different levels of social interaction @ UNI Rokkan senteret (6 etg)
Sep 22 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

In the tradition from Hegel we have become accustomed to think of marginalized subjects as a source of critique and moral development. Concerning immigrants we find a similar idea in Giorgio Agamben’s suggestion on taking the paperless migrants as a paradigm for political reform. Considering extensively debated cases in the Norwegian public, such as the case of Nathan, we might ask whether this reforming potential is part of the picture. How should we conceive the relation between our imagined societies, the “human interest”-stories and the political engagement of non-citizens in cases like this? Based on Alfred Schutz’s analysis of different types of social interaction, this question can be explored in principle as a matter of interconnections between different levels of social distance. If we accept that there is a certain continuity in the moral development from ingroups based on face-to-face interaction to imagined nation-state societies, the central problem could be formulated like this: Should we assume that our obligations to all human beings (non-citizens included) comes out of and is an extension of the kind of sympathy experienced in exclusive ingroups?

Bilde Johannes ServanJohannes Servan is a PhD-student at Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen (UiB). His thesis “Phenomenology of the citizen” (working title) discusses migration as a phenomenon that brings to the foreground a certain tension in our social imaginaries of universal human rights and nation-state citizenship. More specifically it is concerned with the epistemological relevance of the perspective of foreigners to the parochial biases in our social imaginaries and policy-making of a specific nation-state.

Sep
25
Fri
EMERGING URBANITIES LUNCH SEMINAR: Hans Sagan – The role of urban space in protest policing. @ UNI Rokkan Centre (6 etg)
Sep 25 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

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Political protest is an increasingly frequent occurrence in urban public space. During protests, urban space transforms according to special regulatory circumstances abrogating normal laws. Territorial control is central to securitization of urban space. Protest is disruptive of urban spatial relations, so law enforcement considers it a threat conflated with crime and terrorism. The means to achieve spatial control vary by mode of protest policing, which are products of dominant socioeconomic models of society, influenced by local policing culture and historical context. Spatial tactics of control are outgrowths of the militarization of policing and the securitization of urban space. Protest policing innovation under neoliberalism has led to new modes of tactical spatial engagement, working to strategically nullify political dissent through manipulation of urban space. This has significant consequences for urban design and emergent urban form, particularly through the professional practice of CPTED, or crime prevention through environmental design.

sagan portrait Hans Sagan holds a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California – Berkeley. His recent work investigates the role of urban space in protest policing. He teaches architecture and urbanism at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Oct
13
Tue
EMERGING URBANITIES LUNCH SEMINARS: Anouk De Koning -Echoes of race in Amsterdam @ UNI Rokkansenteret, (6etg)
Oct 13 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Echoes of race in Amsterdam

Skjermbilde 2015-08-25 kl. 19.53.36In this talk, I will discuss how racialized discourses on multicultural failure and the trouble with the children of migrants is taken up and contested in multicultural Amsterdam. Like in other Western European countries, multiculturalism backlash discourses have dominated public debates in the Netherlands since the 1990s. I ask how people who are framed as part of the problem engage the moral imperatives of such backlash discourses and the anxieties they broadcast. Amsterdam’s Diamantbuurt provides a good vantage point for such an exploration since the neighbourhoods’ unruly Moroccan-Dutch young men have played an important role in Dutch backlash discourses. How do Moroccan-Dutch Diamantbuurt residents, who are closely identified with these iconic bad guys, negotiate the dominant narrative regarding their neighbourhood? This article demonstrates that for these residents, the anxieties articulated in backlash discourses become the grounds for an anxious grappling with abjectness and identification.

Skjermbilde 2015-08-25 kl. 19.53.23Anouk de Koning is assistant professor in Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. She is the author of Global Dreams: Class, Gender and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo (AUC Press, 2009) and, with Rivke Jaffe, Introducing Urban Anthropology (Routledge, 2016).

 

A light lunch will be served

Nov
10
Tue
CANCELED: Emerging Urbanities Lunch Seminar: Håvard Haarstad – More information about eventual replacement will be available soon. @ UNI Rokkan centre (6 etg)
Nov 10 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

CANCELED  More infoermation about eventual repacements will be available sook

 

Dec
1
Tue
IMER LUNCH SEMINAR: Marte Knag Fylkesnes – From the parents point of view: Child welfare and social justice in Norway @ UNI Rokkansenteret (6 etg)
Dec 1 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Child welfare services in Norway are currently internationally debated. A key question relates to multicultural challenges, whether services are sensitive to cultural differences and ethnic minority families specific challenges. As part of a larger research project, we interviewed parents with refugee backgrounds about their experiences of contact with child welfare services in Norway. Despite parents describing both positive and negative experiences, and trust as well as distrust, we found that fear of the child welfare services was a central theme. The paper will focus on the representations of the child welfare services that fear was related to. The theoretical framework will be Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser’s understandings of recognition and social justice.

Marte Knpassbildeag Fylkesnes is a PhD student, working at the HEMIL-center UiB. In her thesis she discusses multicultural challenges in relation to the Norwegian child welfare system, from the perspective of service users.

Dec
3
Thu
Seminar: Innenfor og utenfor det gode selskap – forholdet mellom legitim innvandringsmotstand og høyreekstremisme @ SV-fakultetet, UiB
Dec 3 @ 11:15 am – 2:00 pm

Norsk Nettverk For Migrasjonsforskning inviterer til seminar på Universitetet i Bergen med tema:

Innenfor og utenfor det gode selskap – forholdet mellom legitim innvandringsmotstand og høyreekstremisme

Norsk Nettverk for Migrasjonforsknings årlige seminar vil i år fokusere på relasjonen mellom innvandringskritiske røster som regnes som legitime og dem som regnes som illegitime eller ekstreme. Elisabeth Ivarsflaten og Lars Erik Berntzen holder innlegg om innvandringskritiske politiske aktører og høyreekstreme nettverk. Thomas Hylland Eriksen gir oss innsikt i hvordan det er å være gjenstand for ekstreme ytringer mot et multikulturelt Norge. Vi stiller spørsmålet som i kjølvannet av terroren 22. juli 2011 har ligget under norsk innvandrings- og integreringsdebatt. Hvor går grensene, og hva slags forbindelseslinjer finner vi, mellom legitime innvandringskritiske aktører i den norske debatten, og den potensielt voldelig høyreekstremisme som synes å være på fremmarsj i Norge og Europa? Gjennom diskusjoner av forholdet mellom legitime og illegitime former for innvandringsmotstand tilbyr vi et seminar med stor relevans for både forskere, organisasjoner på feltet, sentrale policy-aktører og andre interesserte.

Seminaret er åpent for alle og deltakelse er gratis. Det vil bli lett servering.

Sted: Lille Auditorium, Lauritz Meltzers hus (SV-bygget)

Dec
15
Tue
Emerging Urbanities Lunch Seminar: Bjørn Bertelsen – Predatory security: Reshaping the city and the state in Mozambique @ UNI Rokkan centre (6 etg)
Dec 15 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Predatory security: Reshaping the city and the state in Mozambique

Notions and practices of security colonise both state and urban contexts across Africa. Arguably, these notions and practices are also integral to wider global political formations where urban formations in Africa are often cast as pre-figuring the shape of future global cities more generally. Based on fieldworks in the Mozambican cities of Maputo and Chimoio, this paper sees security there as related to violent crime and capital accumulation in ways that undermine policy-oriented representations of security provision as solely undertaken by state police supplemented by neoliberal assemblages of security firms. Rather, and more specifically, the paper shows how security is not only subjected to a spatialized logic of race and social control but also renders violence – in all its forms – central to its exercise and cosmologies. This point will be emphasised by analysing how various forms of policing must be understood beyond the security-development nexus. These forms of policing increasingly involve a gradual emergence of what I call ‘predatory security’ that is central to violent modes of capital accumulation that shape African urban landscapes as well as define the contours of the state. The paper suggests that as a configuration of accumulative violence such predatory security has consequences for how we should approach calls for rights to the city as well as the state in urban African orders and beyond.

Bjørn_enge_bertelsen_pressebilde_UiB_mars_2010Bjørn Enge Bertelsen, associate professor, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, has researched issues such as state formation, violence, poverty and rural-urban connections in Mozambique since 1998. Bertelsen has published extensively internationally and is publishing the monograph Violent Becomings: State Formation, Culture and Power in Mozambique (Berghahn Books, 2016) and has co-edited the anthologies Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (with Bruce Kapferer, Berghahn Books, [2009] 2012) and Navigating Colonial Orders: Norwegian Entrepreneurship in Africa and Oceania, ca. 1850 to 1950 (with Kirsten Alsaker Kjerland, Berghahn Books, 2015).

Feb
9
Tue
IMER lunch seminar series Migration responses: Cathrine Moe Thorleifsson (UiO) – Nationalist responses to the crisis in Europe: Old and New Hatreds @ Sosiologisk institutt, ground floor
Feb 9 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

The populist radical right has emerged as the spearhead of a larger renationalization process directed against positions of global and European integration. Based on anthropological fieldwork in the postindustrial towns of Doncaster (South Yorkshire, UK) and the Hungarian town of Ózd in 2015, the paper examines the various historical, material and socio-economic factors in the rise of Ukip (United Kindom Independence Party) and the extreme right-wing Jobbik (Movement for a Better Future).

In their politics of fear, minorities and migrants are marked as posing cultural-religious threats to communal harmony and the nation-state. Through participant observation and interviews with Ukip and Jobbik politicians and supporters, the paper examines how knowledge about ‘threatening others’ is produced, circulated and contested.

Cathrine Moe ThorleifssonDr. Cathrine Thorleifsson holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2012). Her chief theoretical interests lie in anthropological approaches to the study of nationalism, migration, borders and xenophobia.

 

Welcome! A light lunch will be served.

 

About the Seminar series:

Migration responses

Debating the current refugee crisis in Europe

The IMER Bergen Seminar series for the spring of 2016 will discuss a wide range of responses in the wake of the current migration crisis. How can the theoretical and empirical research currently being conducted on migration, ethnic relations, peace and conflict contribute to understanding the multi-faceted landscape of politics, boundaries and everyday lives of the refugee crisis?

Feb
23
Tue
IMER lunch seminar series Migration responses – Torgeir Uberg Nærland (UiB): Recognition through reception @ Sosiologisk institutt, ground floor
Feb 23 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm

Illustration: Wallpapercave

Hip hop music and the forging of civic bonds among minority youth in Norway

A vast body of research documents that media coverage of ethnic minorities in Norway is systematically imbalanced and problem oriented, which in turn engenders a sense of exclusion. At the same time, hip hop music and artists are today regular fixtures in various media formats, and a genre that comprises a number of prominent performers of multi-cultural background.

Set against the backdrop of the exclusionary effects of news media representations, this interview study of a group of minority youth makes evident that mass mediated hip hop music is for them taken to entail public representation of minority experiences and sensibilities that engender a sense of democratic inclusion.

By combining recognition theory and reception theory, Nærland shows how hip hop-related media coverage is experienced to involve a positive affirmation of minority identity that also contributes to the formation of civic identity and affinities. The study argues that musical media events constitute ‘moments of recognition’ where dynamics of recognition is intensified.

Torgeir NærlandNærland further argues that recognition theory makes up a valuable supplementary framework for our theoretical understanding of the civic dimensions of media reception, and the role of popular music therein.

Welcome! A light lunch will be served.

 

 

About the Seminar series:

Migration responses

Debating the current refugee crisis in Europe

The IMER Bergen Seminar series for the spring of 2016 will discuss a wide range of responses in the wake of the current migration crisis. How can the theoretical and empirical research currently being conducted on migration, ethnic relations, peace and conflict contribute to understanding the multi-faceted landscape of politics, boundaries and everyday lives of the refugee crisis?