| Abstract: |
In his work on a Welsh border village, Ronald Frankenberg showed how cultural
performances, from football to carnival, conferred agency on local actors and
framed local conflicts. The present article extends these themes. It responds
to invocations by politicians and policy makers of ‘community cohesion’ and
the failure of communal leadership, following riots by young South Asians in
northern British towns. Against the critique of self-segregating isolationism,
the article traces the historical process of Pakistani migration and
settlement in Britain, to argue that the dislocations and relocations of
transnational migration generate two paradoxes of culture. The first is that
in order to sink roots in a new country, transnational migrants in the modern
world begin by setting themselves culturally and socially apart. They form
encapsulated ‘communities’. Second, that within such communities culture can
be conceived of as conflictual, open, hybridising and fluid, while
nevertheless having a sentimental and morally compelling force. This stems
from the fact, I propose, that culture is embodied in ritual and social
exchange and performance, conferring agency and empowering different social
actors: religious and secular, men, women and youth. Hence, against both
defenders and critics of multiculturalism as a political and philosophical
theory of social justice, the final part of the article argues for the need to
theorise multiculturalism in history. In this view, rather than being fixed by
liberal or socialist universal philosophical principles, multicultural
citizenship must be grasped as changing and dialogical, inventive and
responsive, a negotiated political order. The British Muslim diasporic
struggle for recognition in the context of local racism and world
international crises exemplifies this process. Classification- |