Download 1 - University of Warwick

1. Gunther Jikeli
“*Jew” as an insult and as a pejorative adjective in **French **and
German today*
The German and French word for “Jew” (“Jude” and “juif” or the verlan slang word “feuj”) is
used among some as an insult against non-Jews and in a pejorative way in recent years. I want to
discuss this phenomenon by reviewing the findings of three empirical studies, some newspaper
articles on the issue and analysing own empirical data from interviews in Berlin and Paris. I examine
its antisemitic connotations and its function within the social circle where it is used. Is it part of an
antisemitic ideology and is it different from other similar pejorative expressions as e.g. “getürkt”,
“scheiss Türke” or “travail arabe” or “sale arabe” and if it is different, in which ways?
2. Monica Moreno
'Mestizaje as Fragmented Whiteness; The Logics of Mexican Racism'
This paper focuses on the contemporary understandings of the notion of mestizaje as an
ideology of racial mixture and its effectiveness as a category of analysis to explore the lived
experience of racism. I will argue that mestizaje can be analysed as a form of 'fragmented' whiteness,
that is, as a site of privilege that is not consistently attached to the white body but to the legitimacy
of the Mestizo subject and her body. Mestizaje will be critically assessed simultaneously as a political
ideology, as a complex configuration of national identity, as a racist logic that organises everyday life
and deepens the strategy of negotiating national identity and as both an achieved and ascribed
status. Based on empirical research that explores Mexican women's understandings of mestizaje,
Mexicanness and their experiences of racism, the paper explores how racism exists in Mexico
through practices structured around racialised constructions of identity and within a 'raceless'
(Goldberg 2002) social configuration. Through an analysis of racist moments the paper engages with
the debate about the existence of racism and the ways it operates in its 'omnipresent dimension'
(Knight 1990) in Mexico. It will also emphasize a critical analysis of the subjects that can assert
themselves within the category of Mestizas and investigate how they understand their positioning
and the dynamics related, generated and produced with such identification.
3. Peter Martin
Attitude or discourse or ideology? Mixing methods in racism research
In the empirical study of everyday racist ideology, qualitative and quantitative paradigms are, on the
whole, still vigorously opposed to one another. Researchers who conceptualize racism as a social
representation, or a discourse, use interviews and interpretive textual analysis to describe features of
racist rhetoric and thinking. Survey researchers, on the other hand, view racism as a prejudice, a
specific form of attitude. Discourse analysts and other qualitatively minded scholars tend to criticize
the survey researchers’ concepts of ‘prejudice’ and ‘attitude’ as too narrow, and the survey situation
as too artificial, to represent the complex structures of racist ideology. Survey researchers, on the
other hand, tend to ignore this critique and to get on with their business of measuring. This paper
presents a case study of racism in contemporary London that aims to bridge the gap between
qualitative and quantitative paradigms. The study design has the form of a sandwich: qualitative
cognitive interviews both precede and follow a survey study. On the methodical level, qualitative
data collection and analysis facilitate and complement the quantitative survey; that is, the qualitative
data are helpful both in improving the survey design, and in limiting the danger of facile
interpretation of survey data. On the theoretical level, I shall argue that although some of the
criticism against survey studies of racism is justified, it can be addressed by a reconceptualization of
the concept of a ‘racist attitude’ as a stance taken within contexts of ideological controversy.
Key words: Mixed Methods, Racism, cognitive interviews
4. Claudia Globish
Claudia Globisch, Department of Sociology, University of Leipzig
On the Interrelationship of (Anti-)Racism and (Anti-)Anti-Semitism
Two crucial events in the last years may be regarded as exemplary in that they demonstrate
the highly problematic relationship of anti-racist positions towards Antisemitism: The UN World
Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 and, in 2002, the suspended publication of a survey
conducted by the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA, Berlin) which had been commissioned
by the former European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), now the European
Union Agency for Fundamental Rights
While in Durban attempts were made at declaring Israel a racist state and introducing the term
‘holocausts’, results of the survey by Juliane Wetzel and Werner Bergmann from the ZfA were
criticized for diagnosing Anti-Semitism within the studied groups of ‘young Muslim’ or ‘Arabic or
North-African Muslim migrant’ perpetrators. Beate Winkler, then director of EUMC, declared this
group description a „not sustainable and damaging/ dangerous generalization” (cf. the interview by
Igal Avidan, Platform Quantara.de, 2004) and thus justified a non-publication of the study. One may
surmise this to have been a political decision by the EUMC, which saw its own anti-racist work
endangered by the description of Muslims as perpetrators. As I will argue, similar stances towards
Antisemitism in Muslim contexts on the one hand and with regard to Israel (as were taken in Durban)
on the other can be found in many texts by leftist groups.
Obviously, most anti-racist discourses claiming to ‘speak (out) for the Other’ reject any
allegations of antisemitic argumentation or of relativizing Islamist Antisemitism within their own
formation. They invoke both their antifascist agenda and their professed multiculturalism in order to
clear their own positions from all suspicions of Anti-Semitism – a knee-jerk response to such
criticisms which, as I will argue, does not only short-circuit the problem but does simply not address
the point in question. For the strategy of legitimation used simply makes evident how certain antiracist positions consider Antisemitism a mere variant of racism and how they conclude in the
assumption that antiracism automatically were to result in Anti-Antisemitism.
The glaring lack of analytical distinction between Anti-Semitism and racism (and their
negations) can be currently observed in a broad range of discussions which identify Anti-Semitism
with Anti-Islamism or ‘Islamophobia’ as well as in argumentative positions which declare Palestinians
to be today’s Jews. Evidently, apart from an attribution of antisemitic stereotypes to Israel, the
conflation of racism and Anti-Semitism has also resulted in a highly problematic attitude towards
Anti-Semitism among Muslim migrants. Oftentimes their Anti-Semitism is either made excuses for,
claiming that it were a mere result of their own oppression, or tiptoed around, fearing that locating
Anti-Semitism within Muslim migrant groups would only lead to their further discrimination.
Using as empirical examples select texts from both the radical right and radical left, my
presentation tries to develop a set of distinctive criteria for differentiating between Anti-Semitism
and racism. I will analyze potential connections between the two phenomena as well as foreground
current problems within anti-racist strategies of legitimation which result from a lack of
differentiation. I will also point out how and why a criticism of certain antiracist positions does not
necessarily entail an abandonment of a non-racist stance.
5. Mark Elchardus
Ethnocentrism as processed vulnerability
Many authors consider ethnic prejudice and ethnocentrism as a consequence of uncertainty
and vulnerability. That frequently observed relationship does however remain in need of a
theoretical explanation. The goal of this paper is to present such a theoretical argument.
Vulnerability can haven many causes (poverty, poor schooling, ill health, social isolation…) but
it is a condition or set of experiences that people have to cope with. They must “process” it to be
able to live with it without suffering too much psychic damage. Our basic proposition is that this
coping is not an individual process, but a collective one, based on socially constructed coping
mechanisms or interpretive frames, that perform a therapeutic function for the individual, while at
the same time stimulating ethnocentrism.
Two mechanisms play an important role in linking vulnerability and prejudice. The first is the
quasi universal tendency to associate threat with the strange and unfamiliar. That association should
probably be considered a legacy of psychological evolution. Its cognitive implication is that an
association between the sense of vulnerability and threat on the one hand, the presence of
“strangers” on the others, has an immediate plausibility.
That association does however not arise as an abstraction, but in a specific cultural context.
This context provides the second mechanism linking vulnerability and ethnic prejudice. It consists of
interpretive frames that can be diffused under the form of narratives and discourses, among others
by the mass media. Those interpretive frames or coping strategies proper must assign a concrete
cause to the risk or threat, that can be associated with the “strangers”, that makes the vulnerable
persons into victims of an injustice , and in that way justifies negative feelings towards the strangers
as the cause of the threat.
Three coping strategies were identified in the population under study. Vulnerability is
processed and ethnocentrism stimulated by (a) viewing the strangers as favored by government
policy to the detriment of the native population, (b) viewing the strangers as frequently involved in
crime, (c) viewing the strangers as profiteering from the social security system.
6. Christine Achinger
The bourgeois subject and its enemies – ‘the Jew’ and ‘the Woman’ in Otto Weininger’s "Sex
and Character"
My research in recent years has been concerned with tracing the connection between
antisemitism and the rise of modern, capitalist society in a number of different genres from the late
18th to the early 20th century. I have been particularly interested in the relation between antisemitic
constructions of ‘Jewishness’ and other stereotypes of race and gender. Currently, I am working on
Otto Weininger’s best-selling book "Sex and Character" (Vienna 1903), a manichean theory of
modern life in general, based on the alleged opposition between male and female principle, which
devotes a whole chapter to the ‘Jewish Character’. Reading the text against theories of the modern
subject such as Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s "Dialectic of Enlightenment", I argue that Weininger’s
oppositions between ‘ideal man’ and ‘ideal woman’ as well as between ‘Aryan’ and ‘Jew’ can be
understood as outward projections of the immanent contradictions of the modern, bourgeois subject
onto racialized and gendered ‘others’.
7. Nonna Mayer et Guy Michelat
The perceptions of the "other" in France: foreigners, immigrants, Muslims_
Using the data of the annual survey on racism and xenophobia done for the CNCDH (National
commission for the defense of human rights), we analyse the way the representations of Muslims in
France are changing, with the rise, in the last three years, of new, although limited, forms of
islamophobia in the sense of a specific rejection of islam, distinct from the traditional forms of antiimmigrant prejudice.
8. Ian Law
'A State of Denial, racism against the UK Chinese population'
UK Chinese people are subject to very substantial levels of racist abuse, assault and hostility.
Because of their distrust of police and other criminal justice agencies - a distrust based on many
years of experience of a lack of their complaints being taken seriously - many Chinese people have
given up reporting racially-motivated crimes against them. This general experience of agencies,
together with the failure of many statistical and research reports to identify the experience of
Chinese people separately from that of 'other' minorities has meant that their experience of racism
remains hidden from view. This paper will report on a recently completed national study carried out
in conjunction with Min Quan, which is a TMG (The Monitoring Group) project based in London.
9. Marieke van Londen
Effects of Issue Frames on Aversion to Ethnic-Targeted School Policies1
Authors: Marieke van Londen, Marcel Coenders, Peer Scheepers
Abstract.
In this contribution, I would like to discuss the results of a survey experiment designed to
examine the impact of issue framing on the level of aversion to ethnic-targeted school policies in the
Netherlands, in 2000 and 2005. Emphasizing the costs for Dutch children increased the level of
aversion to these policies, compared to the level of aversion expressed by respondents in the
unframed, control group. Emphasizing the benefits for ethnic minorities was less effective in altering
the level of aversion. Moreover, when respondents were confronted with both the cost and benefit
frame – a situation which closely resembles the political and public debate – they still showed less
support for ethnic-targeted school policies. We also found that aversion to ethnic-targeted school
policies is driven by negative considerations such as a preference for hierarchical societal relations
and perceptions of ethnic threat. Emphasizing out-group benefits did neither decrease the impact of
these negative considerations on the level of aversion to ethnic-targeted school policies nor
strengthen the liberalizing effect of education.
Keywords: issue framing, counter-framing, affirmative action, equal opportunity policies,
computer assisted survey experiments
10. Robert Fine
Ways of thinking about antisemitism: difficulties in relation to contemporary Europe
1
Marieke van Londen is PhD-student at the Department of Social Science Research Methodology, Radboud
University Nijmegen. Marcel Coenders is Associate Professor at the Department of General Social Sciences,
Utrecht University. Peer Scheepers is Professor of Social Science Research Methodology, Radboud University
Nijmegen. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Marieke van Londen, Department of
Social Science Research Methodology, Radboud University Nijmegen, PO Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The
Netherlands [e-mail: [email protected]].
This paper is about difficulties in understanding antisemitism in the current period. My
propositions are i) there is little or no common agreement on what antisemitism is; ii) this lack of
agreement is partly because antisemitism today, unlike in the past, rarely declares itself; iii) either
the old European antisemitism vanished (inexplicably?) into thin air in the post-Holocaust period or it
lies concealed because it is discredited; iv) the post-Holocaust condition of Europe has given rise to
two polarised discourses, ‘new antisemitism’ and ‘no antisemitism’ which now dominate public
debate; v) these discourses feed off mutual hostility and negative caricatures of one other; vi) there
is agreement that the Holocaust was not a ‘learning experience’ for most Europeans after the war
but that everything began to change in the 1960s; vii) these changes were seemingly for the good but
their benign character was contested both by ‘new antisemitism’ and ‘no antisemitism’ approaches;
viii) the former detected the emergence of a new antisemitism behind the universalistic language of
the European postnational project; ix) the latter hears talk of antisemitism in the context of no
actual antisemitism as the expression of a new conservatism and of a new inhibition on critical
thought, especially in relation to Israel; x) in the context of these polarised and negative ways of
thinking, the difficult task we face is to reconstruct a sense of European responsibility not only for
recognising the antisemitism of the past alongside other forms of European racism but also for
combating the antisemitism of the present.
11. Jean-Yves Camus
If I have the necessary material, I shall distribute a short paper with the main results of the
2008 survey of antisemitism in Europe, commissioned by the European Jewish Congress
12. Robin Stoller
"Antisemitism and the perception of social processes and structures. A qualitative pre-study (in
Germany).". We are doing a qualitative pre-study (20 interviews) on the realationship between
Antisemitsm and the perception of labour, state, nation, globalisation, US, Israel, history etc.
13. Thierry Desrues & Africa Jimenes
On the research program "Perceptions of Islam and Muslims in Spain". We are researchers at
the Institute of Social Advanced Studies of the Spanish Council of Scientific Research (IESA-CSIC). We
have led two national surveys on perception of immigration in Spain (2005 and 2006) for the Spanish
Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia. Our lecture is entitled "Discourses of Spaniards about Islam
and Muslims". We will present some results of the research program I have mentioned above.
14. Abe Sweiry
‘Visibility and the experience of antisemitism’
‘The paper will be drawn from the preliminary findings of research examining the experiences
and perceptions of antisemitism of British Jews. The relationship between the visibility of individuals
as Jews and their experiences, and questions relating to visibility awareness and management will be
discussed.’
15. Dario Padovan & Alfredo Alietti
Antisemitism and Islamophobia: a survey in Italy
This paper presents the outcomes coming from a survey led among a representative sample of
the Italian national population. Purpose of the paper is to discuss the following aspects:
Relevance of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia among Italian population
Connections, if any, between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
Causes of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia related to structural variables such as anomie index,
relative deprivation, experiences of social mobility, living place.
The distribution of anti-Semitism among right wing people to understand the durability of old
anti-Semitism and new Islamophobia.
The distribution of anti-Semitism among left wing people to understand connections with antiSionistic attitudes.
The qualitative relevance of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia among young targeted people
such as Arab/Muslim migrants and eastern Europe migrants.
16. Séverine Mathieu
Anti-Semitism at school: some reflections from an European survey about school and religion"
Since 2006, a survey about religion in school is conducted in eight countries (REDCO). Even
though anti-Semitism is not the core of the inquiry, it appears among the interviews conducted with
students aged from 14-16 that it is a dimension that no one could excluded. I will focus on antiSemitism and anti-Zionism as it is expressed by the pupils, and I will try to show how this is linked to
the social class dimension.
17. João Filipe Marques
Some conclusions of my research on racism and xenophobia in contemporary portuguese
society.
18. Abram De Swaan (Topic to be confirmed)
'Anti-israeli enthousiasms....' Said he’ll give title and abstract “in due time” (???)
19. Joelle Allouche
20. Ivo Budil
21. Alexandra Poli
22. Chris Allen
23. Gary Craig (intend to)
24. Evelien Gans
I cannot send you an abstract yet, but I have a few subjects I want to share: some ideas about
a research program on contemporary antisemitism I’m trying to develop at the Netherlands Institute
for War documentation (NIOD); a symposium I will organize in about a year (of one day only – for a
mixed public of regular students and adult, mostly Jewish, ‘contractstudents’) on contemporary antiSemitism as well; and last but not least: a lecture (which I will hopefully give at a conference on
‘Political correctness’ just before coming to Paris) with the preliminary title: ‘Political incorrectness in
The Netherlands and its meaning for public discourse on Jews and Zionism. Two case-studies.’