Transcript Identity and the Challenges of Diversity

Identity and the Challenges
of Diversity
ippr presentation to NMDC
23rd May 2007
1. Introduction
Key Questions
• What are the prospects for social justice, democracy and citizenship
in a society characterised, as ours increasingly is, by high levels of
diversity and individualism?
• Background provided by ongoing arguments around multiculturalism and citizenship.
– A growing number of progressive thinkers, policy makers and politicians
(not least GB!) are now arguing that we need to build shared identities,
at national and local level, that can embrace the different cultures and
faiths within our society and sustain the public realm.
– But this contested from left and right
• We look at this through the lens of identity:
–
–
–
–
What is happening to identities in the UK?
What are the problems and opportunities in these developments?
Does a democracy like our need a shared identity – a shared culture?
How might culture and heritage play a role?
1. Introduction
Methodology
• 6 months desk top research into identity theory in sociology,
social psychology, political philosophy and political science.
• A comprehensive analysis of survey data showing what has
happened to identities in the UK over time.
• 12 focus groups with residents in four towns in the UK, of
different ethnic backgrounds and of different lengths of residence
in the UK, to test whether and in what way identity matters to
them.
• In-depth interviews with local government officers in eight
different local authorities in London, the Midlands and the North
West, to gauge how they are approaching community cohesion
on the ground and whether and in what way identity plays a role.
1. Introduction
Outputs
• Three events
– Identity, Culture and the Challenges of Diversity with Tessa
Jowell MP June 2006
– ESRC seminar exploring the latest empirical trends in identity
June 2006
– Expert roundtable to explore preliminary findings November
2006
• Two working papers to be published February 2007.
– Who Are We? Identities in Britain 2006 Lucy Stone.
– The New Identity Politics Rick Muir
• Final report to be published July 2007.
1. Introduction
Today
• Chance to tell you about our findings and arguments
• And, explore further their implications for your institutions
2. Context
Overlapping identity agendas: how identities might contribute to different public policy goals
Progressive Britishness
Local place-based
identities
Political
The ‘respect’ agenda
participation
Community-level
civic activism
and
active
citizenship
Community
cohesion
support for local public
goods
Support for
diversity
Tackling
discrimination
Support for national public
goods e.g., the
welfare state
Support for
redistribution
Maintaining the Union
Support for the EU
Improving Britain’s
image abroad
2. Context
Evidence of challenges to citizenship and community
cohesion in the UK.
•
Growing class profile to social capital and citizenship in the UK
•
The disturbances in the North West in 2001 and in Birmingham in
2005.
•
Communities still living ‘parallel lives’
•
‘race and immigration’ now highest concern issue (MORI).
•
Support for BNP and illiberal forms of Islam has grown
•
Levels of racial harassment and racist violence remain stubbornly
high (Home Office 2003/04).
4. Why identity?
• There are a number of different ways of seeking to promote
citizenship and greater community in the UK.
• There 3 main ways the state can help foster greater community
cohesion
• Legislation: baseline legal equality
• Social policy: distributive justice in outcomes and procedural
fairness in process
• Cultural change: changes in people’s attitudes towards one
another, affected by the beliefs and practices through which they
understand themselves and organise their lives.
• So what can a shared identity contribute? In particular what can a
shared identity do that other things can’t?
4. Why identity?
•
Three main approaches to achieving cultural change
1.
Contact and exchange
2.
Shared values
3.
Shared identity
4. Why identity?
Contact and Exchange
• This approach seeks to combat prejudice and promote positive intergroup relations by fostering meaningful contact between citizens of
different backgrounds.
• ‘contact theory’ finds that under certain facilitating conditions contact
can be a powerful force for reducing prejudice.
• Importance of longer term structural changes that could encourage
greater interaction, such as schools policy to encourage children to
mix and urban planning to encourage mixed developments and
greater access to well designed public spaces.
• But also ‘easier’ interaction-based initiatives supported by local
authorities around the country. Very many of these projects use
‘neutral’ activities, especially cultural pursuits (music, drama, visual
art) and sport, to bring people together from very different
backgrounds
• Cultural exchange – an extension of contact?
4. Why identity?
Shared values
• Agreement around a set of shared values or a common
public philosophy, essentially the values on which our
common citizenship is based.
• This has been taken up actively by the Labour
government, which has introduced citizenship classes in
schools and citizenship tests and ceremonies for new
migrants.
• Brown has proposed some sort of written statement of
British civic values
• Despite this, and though shared values have their limits,
do we do enough to support them – especially
cosmopolitan values?
4. Why identity?
Shared identity
• Identity has a distinctive contribution to make to community
cohesion because of its capacity to foster affective attachments
between potentially quite large numbers of people.
• A criticism of the interaction-based initiatives that tend to dominate
much local government work on community cohesion is that they
have a limited effect beyond their direct participants. Identity by
contrast has the potential a wider cultural impact.
• A criticism of the shared values approach is that values are simply
too thin and abstract to foster the allegiance of citizens.
Appreciating that one shares values with others is a rather
intellectual exercise. In addition to shared values (which are clearly
important) citizens also need a shared sense of belonging to the
community in which they live and possess a shared desire to
continue living together.
4. Why identity?
Identity matters to people, perhaps more so than in the past
• Growth in leisure time and consumption opportunities and shift
to post-material values
• Signs of a hankering for shared identity and shared cultural
experiences: world cup fever, popularity of public art aimed at
large audiences – Exodus, etc
• Ippr focus group work found that insecurity over culture and
identity plays a role in fostering anti-immigration sentiment
– anti-immigration views were not only generated by material
concerns, but also came from a fear of cultural change.
– white participants saw identity as an issue of distributive justice,
just like housing and other material goods. They were resentful
about public support for minority identities.
– but insecure about their identity, and confused about how it
should be represented.
5. Identity and public policy
7 characteristics of identity formation
• People’s identities are always open to change and the ways in
which they are represented and understood shifts over time.
• People have to want to identify with something – identities
cannot be imposed.
• We all have multiple identities and different aspects of our
identity become more or less significant in different scenarios.
• Identities are formed in part through the interaction of power
and resistance.
• Symbols and narratives play an especially important role in
shaping identity.
• There are multiple sources of identity, including the family, the
body, everyday habit, popular culture, the state and
organisational life.
• Identity is always brought about through comparisons of
similarity and difference.
5. Identity and public policy
Liberalism and Multi-Culturalism
• Two principles, ‘neutrality’ and ‘recognition’ often in tension.
– Neutrality dictates government should remain neutral when
it comes to culture
– Recognition dictates that cultures should have official
recognition and support
• But ‘liberal multi-culturalism’ not a contradiction in terms,
where
– Illiberal practices forbidden
– Recognition given in even-handed way
– Debate and reflection required within groups
– Contact and cultural exchange encouraged between them
5. Identity and public policy
Liberalism and National Identity
•
Liberalism and Nationalism are often in tension
–
–
•
Liberalism dictates that the state should remain neutral,
the ‘principle of nationality’ demands recognition of a common
national culture.
But ‘liberal nationalism’ not a contradiction in terms
–
–
–
–
–
National values = some version of liberal democratic values
Content of national identity established democratically
National narratives liberal and inclusive
Efforts made to ensure that minorities are supported in
integrating and learning national language(s), national history
and ways of life, and every one has access to shared heritage
– institutions, countryside, public spaces
minority cultures supported as part of ‘national way of life’.
5. Identity and Public Policy
National Identity where, are we now?
• National Identity in slight decline
• Identification with national institutions low, with values, and
non-official icons taking their place
• ‘Civic’ national identity on the rise
• Strong class profile to how we identify
• Concern about ‘what we stand for’ widespread
• Laissez fair approach giving way to more active one, but not
always successful (think Dome)
• More talk than action
5. Identity and Public Policy
National Identity – ways forward
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
National service?
National rites of passage?
More defined distinction between citizens and denizens?
Greater recognition of our democratic heritage?
Rehabilitation of the flag – but which?
More civic, civic calendar?
More history teaching in schools
Statement of British values or rights
Promotion of shared enjoyment of nature and public spaces
Culture and sport – access and participation
• But developing a shared identity should be a bottom-up
democratic process.
5. Identity and public policy
Local Identity
•
•
•
•
•
Very under theorised or studied.
Yet obvious potential
Strong civic identities in the 19th century due to economic
strength of cities, a business class with strong local
loyalties, new public buildings and spaces linked to locale
and powerful local government leadership.
Decades of economic and political centralisation have, with
other factors, undermined the ability of local authorities to
fashion a strong civic identity.
And yet local identities retain a surprising resilience.
5. Identity and public policy
Local identity - ways forward
•
•
•
•
•
•
New powers for local government
Use of local authorities’ public voice to articulate an
inclusive local identity.
Projects/interventions and longer term changes to promote
contact and interaction will be a basis for an inclusive civic
identity.
Local sport and cultural activities can help foster contact
based around shared interests.
Support for local heritage, such as through local museums
and work in schools on local history.
Planning function is key: promoting good urban design and
preserving places and buildings people value in common.
6. Museums and identity
Key contributions
• Economic integration
• Contact and cultural exchange
• Shared values
• Honouring and supporting minority identities
• Shared civic identities: national, local, super-national
6. Museums and identity
Challenges
• Museums often remote from places where cultural conflict is
most intense
• Museums struggling like all organisations to keep up with the
do it yourself age. The internet revolution has transformed
the media, the music industry, graphics – and politics. But has
it transformed museums and empowered their users?
• Culture is ever more central in meeting the challenge of ‘how
we live together’, but there is a fine art to balancing the claims
of contact, recognition and civic identities, not to mention the
other things museums are meant to do.