Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home: Political and Academic Agendas

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

ABSTRACT: Since the early 1960s, Scandinavian anthropologists have made considerable contributions to the study of ethnicity, an early high point having been reached with the 1967 Wenner-Gren conference leading to the publication of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries in 1969. Later Scandinavian research on ethnicity and social identifi ca- tion more generally has been varied and rich, covering all continents and many kinds of majority/minority relations. However, over the last twenty years, anthropologists have increasingly focused on the study of the relationship between immigrant mi- norities and the majorities in their own countries. There are some signifi cant general diff erences between ethnicity research overseas and at home, shedding light on the theoretical constructions of anthropology as well as the ‘double hermeneutics’ be- tween social research and society. It can be argued that anthropology at home shares characteristics with both European ethnology (with its traditional nation-building agenda) and with sociology (which, in Scandinavia, is almost tantamount to the sym- pathetic study of the welfare state), adding a diluted normative relativism associated with the political views of the academic middle class (to which the anthropologists themselves, incidentally, belong). The article refl ects on the consequences of embroil- ment in domestic politics for anthropological theory, using the experiences of overseas ethnicity research as a contrast to ethnicity research at home, where anthropologists have been forced, or enabled, to go public with their work.

KEYWORDS: ethnicity, history of anthropology, immigration, minorities, Norway, Sami

In Norway, anthropological engagement with ences, o en including anthropology), by NGOs domestic political issues has been consistent and political interest groups and, occasionally, (and complex) ever since Norwegian anthro- by a wider readership. The anthropology of pologists began to do research among minorities Norway is, in other words, public whether the ‘at home’. Even the most meticulously descrip- anthropologists like it or not. Some in fact use tive, or arcanely analytic, research monograph their position, and their research, in a empting on the Sami or on immigrants is bound to be to infl uence public opinion and policymak- interpreted, largely by non-academic readers, ers directly. Many Norwegian anthropologists in a political context where issues of minority thus write for the press, appear on radio and rights, national cohesion, multiculturalism and television, and publish the occasional book problems of cultural diversity have been at intended for the general reader. the forefront for many years. Anthropological No anthropologist writing about ethnic mi- studies are perused by civil servants (many of norities in Norway can aff ord to be oblivious whom, in fact, have a training in the social sci- of the political connotations of their work,

Anthropology in Action, 16, 2 (2009): 27–38 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action doi:10.3167/aia.2009.160203 AiA | Thomas Hylland Eriksen

and the boundaries between scholarship and hold this chair (social anthropology took over engagement, or between research and poli- entirely from the 1950s), was responsible for tics, are continuously blurred. Naturally, there the decision, as early as 1951, to move the Sami is considerable refl exive awareness of this collections of the museum to the open-air Nor- among anthropologists working ‘at home’ al- wegian Heritage Museum (Norsk Folkemuseum), though we, like any profession, have our blind arguing that since the Sami were a Norwegian spots, and besides, anthropologists o en feel people, their material culture should be exhib- that they are being misrepresented and mis- ited alongside Norwegian peasant artefacts understood by non-academics relating to their and buildings (Bouquet 1996: 45). A strong work. Since research agendas and journalistic political statement at the time, Gjessing’s deci- or political agendas o en diff er, a frontier zone sion refl ected his view that Norwegians and of negotiations and mutual misunderstand- Sami were ‘brethren peoples’ sharing the same ings, but also occasionally of fruitful collabora- territory, and ought to be treated as equals, tion and learning, has emerged in the area of notwithstanding their cultural diff erences and minority research over the last few decades. traditional hierarchical relationship. This essay explores some of the ways in which Engagement with, and direct infl uence on, the political and the scholarly merge, forc- Sami ethnopolitics has continued in Norwegian ing scholars to become public anthropologists anthropology up to the present day. However, whether they like it or not. Let us begin with I shall argue that a peculiar ‘homeblindness’ – the indigenous Sami and the anthropologist. a lack of refl exivity concerning one’s own cul- The Sami are an ethnic group numbering tural background – which is ultimately caused roughly 40,000 in Norway (with smaller num- by the anthropologists’ double role as scholars bers in the neighbouring countries of Finland, and as citizens, has contributed to this research, Sweden and Russia). Although they are as as well as that on immigrants, in largely un- diverse today as the majority Norwegians in noticed ways. their ways of life, Sami are symbolically associ- ated with reindeer herding and transhumance (seasonal migration), an economic activity mo- Stages in Anthropological Research nopolised by (certain) Sami and invested with on Sami considerable prestige. Following a centuries- long period of Norwegianization (a empted Modern anthropological research on Norwe- ‘acculturation’ and assimilation), a modern gian Sami, which has chiefl y been undertaken indigenous rights movement began to develop by Norwegian researchers (Robert Paine being in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the early 1980s, one prominent exception), can be divided into the Sami movement has achieved political three stages equally refl ecting the intellectual recognition, leading to new legislation on land development of the discipline a er the Second tenure and language rights, and the formation World War and the political circumstances im- of a Sami parliament in 1990, with limited pinging on it. A representative work in the fi rst but real legislative power over the Sami core stage, to which Gjessing himself was a diligent regions (notably Finnmark county, the north- contributor, was Vorren and Manker’s Same- eastern corner of Norway). kulturen (‘The Sami Culture’, 1957), a book that Anthropologists and ethnologists have been went through many reprints and was still on involved with the Sami movement since the the mandatory reading list for fi rst-year un- beginning of academic research in the country. dergraduates in the early 1980s. The book fi ts Professor Gutorm Gjessing at the Ethno graphic into an ethnological discourse where the main Museum in Oslo, the last cultural historian to objective of the science of culture consists in the 28 | Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home | AiA classifi cation and description of presumedly began to phase out the wide-ranging cultural clearly bounded cultures. The authors describe science represented by Gjessing at the Eth- pa erns of se lement, beliefs, technology (the nographic Museum, following which Fredrik fi rst hundred pages of the book are devoted to Barth and his students developed a powerful ‘material culture’ – we had just been taught the department of social anthropology in Bergen Geertzian concept of culture and were mildly (see also Eriksen 2008a), there was a shi in fo- disgusted by the idea that culture could be cus and emphasis in Sami studies. This second material), social organisation and artistic ex- stage in modern Sami studies was defi ned not pressivity. Vorren and Manker’s classifi catory only by the shi from a cultural history para- subdivisions of transhumant Sami, coastal digm to a sociologically oriented social anthro- Sami, forest Sami and Skolt Sami (thus named pology, but also by the publication of Harald because of their characteristic headdress) are Eidheim’s few but infl uential articles about controversial today, both for political reasons Sami-Norwegian ethnicity (see Eidheim 1971 and because the categories do not necessarily for a selection). Eidheim’s perspective on eth- correspond to sociologically interesting facts; nicity, which was a clear infl uence on Barth’s but the most obviously dated part of the book (1969) celebrated introduction to Ethnic Groups is the short chapter which discusses the Sami and Boundaries (where Eidheim’s chapter has as a biological people. The chapters about the the Goff manesque title ‘When Ethnic Identity coastal and forest Sami have a perceptible ele- Is a Social Stigma’), was initially inspired by ment of cultural history since their ‘form of symbolic interactionism and the Manchester culture proper has been covered up quite com- school (Gluckman, Clyde Mitchell et al.), but prehensively by the cultural evolution of the was later enriched by Bateson’s system theory last centuries in the Sami homeland’ (Vorren (Eriksen 2008b). In his string of articles where and Manker 1957: 83). This is, briefl y, a work of he saw ethnicity as a relationship, not as a descriptive ethnography, which takes Roman- cultural essence, Eidheim was concerned with tic notions of cultural purity for granted, and the ‘fashioning of identity’ and the phenom- which emphasizes the uniqueness of the Sami. enon later known as strategic essentialism, It is a work of splendid cra smanship, and whereby minorities actively overcommuni- stands squarely in an ‘Orientalist’ tradition cate and undercommunicate (Goff man’s terms typical of Sami studies since the nineteenth again) aspects of their culture, for strategic century. Although the authors do discuss reasons. Through this approach, the ‘essence questions of minority rights and do not see the of Sami culture’, hitherto a defi ning aspect of impact of modernity as pernicious per se, they Saminess, became part of the defi ned space (cf. confi rm a common image of the Sami as noble Ardener 1989); the cultural needed accounting savages, and their book arguably contributed for rather than accounting for behaviour; it be- to strengthening a widespread Norwegian came explanandum rather than explanans. fascination for the simple life of the North, as In parsimonious, precise prose, Eidheim well as a notion of the Sami as being radically identifi ed the signifi cant relationships defi n- diff erent from other Norwegians. In this, Vor- ing the Sami-Norwegian space, and showed ren and Manker’s volume was out of sync with how ethnicity could be studied semantically, the mainstream Anglophone anthropology of as processes of signifi cation. Key terms were the 1950s, which eschewed race and tried to dichotomisation (contrasting with the other), develop a neutral, non-exoticizing language in complementarization (matching with the other), its ethnographic practice. opportunity situation (a term from Barth) and At the same time as the newfangled social stigma (from Goff man). He showed how par- anthropology, largely an import from the UK, ticular cultural diacritica became authoritative

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in early Sami ethnopolitics, and which strate- fl exible and malleable, and that group mem- gies might be employed in order to achieve bership is a question of ascription by self and symbolic (and consequently political) equity. others, not of cultural traits. In this way, Eid- The focus was now on asymmetrical local heim’s studies have had real-world conse- power relationships and symbolic relation- quences, many would argue of a liberating ships, and on ‘the management of identity’. kind, in Sápmi. The President of the Sami Par- The semantic core in Sami identity, as it is liament from 1997 to 2005, Sven-Roald Nystø, described in these classic articles, consists in incidentally holds a degree in social anthropol- language and reindeer. The ‘impure’ coastal ogy from Tromsø. Sami, dealt with in the article on stigma, are A comprehensive standard work summing depicted here – as in earlier research – as ‘the up this second stage, both in anthropological poor cousin’. In Vorren and Manker’s book, it studies of Sami identity and in the history of is apparent that the coastal Sami have li le Sami ethnopolitics (the two are not always easy exotic value, and this also indirectly becomes to disentangle), is arguably Trond Thuen’s evident in Eidheim’s work, especially if one Quest for Equity (Thuen 1995), although oth- compares the stigma article with ‘Assimila- ers, including Robert Paine and his Herds of the tion, Ethnic Incorporation and the Problem of Tundra (1994), also produced important work Identity Management’ (the concluding essay in the period. Thuen’s book demonstrates the in Eidheim 1971). They regularly interact with growth of cultural refl exivity and political pro- ethnic Norwegians, and few visible diacrit- fessionalism among Sami from the late 1950s ica distinguish the groups from one another. to the early 1990s, a period culminating in Roughly in the same way as the ‘ethnically the inauguration of the Sami parliament and, impure’ Scandinavian travellers (tatere) have one might add to Thuen’s account, the offi cial been treated with much less romantic inter- apology to the Sami for Norwegian oppression est than Roma (Gypsies), the ‘impure’ coastal over the centuries, delivered by King Harald V Sami have, according to narratives of the Sec- in 1997. ond Phase kind, been off ered the worst of both A third stage in anthropological studies of worlds: stigma because they are diff erent, but the Sami may roughly be said to have begun few if any cultural signs to convert into iden- in the early 1990s, a period of transition world- tity capital. wide – one can mention the end of the Cold A veritable fl ood of dissertations, articles, War, the coming of the Internet and mobile books and lectures, especially emanating from phones, the beginning of the end of apartheid, the University of Tromsø (near the traditional the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Rushdie Sami areas, thus a racting many Sami stu- aff air – and also, in the far north, marked by dents), use Eidheim’s work as their analytical the state’s recognition of Sami autonomy. This foundation. His research perspective has also period in Sami research has been equally in- had a perceptible impact on its object, that is fl uenced by the legacy of the Eidheim/Barth Sami ethnopolitics and ethnic relations to the school of ethnicity studies, postcolonial theory majority. More recent scholarly work reports and that kind of ‘deconstructivism light’ o en on how ‘ordinary Sami’ actively relate to referred to as the ‘Writing Culture’ perspec- Eidheim’s stigma perspective (Hovland 1996, tive, where the evocative, rhetorical and cre- Thuen 1995). Another highly visible conse- ative aspects of anthropological writing are quence of the Eidheim approach is the recogni- simultaneously examined and openly made a tion, more clearly articulated among Sami than part of the research enterprise. in any other indigenous group I am aware of, This phase has been characterised by the that cultural identity is dynamic, relational, increased activity of Sami scholars and by 30 | Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home | AiA critiques and countercritiques of the concept group. Whereas Stordahl (1996) describes the of culture. Identity has replaced ethnicity as growth of state-sponsored cultural institu- a dominant term, possibly as a result of the tions supporting both cultural continuity and increased infl uence of American anthropology careful modernisation in inland Finnmark (the at the expense of the British tradition, leading reindeer herding areas), most of Hovland’s to an increased focus on psychological and Moderne urfolk (‘Modern indigenes’, 1996) de- symbolic processes instead of social organisa- voted to the more controversial aspects of the tion, which was the unquestioned basis for (re-)vitalisation processes in Kå ord, a coastal even Eidheim’s ventures into semantics. Vigdis area far from the core reindeer herding region. Stordahl’s dissertation and book about iden- Since very many of the inhabitants of North- tity dilemmas in Karasjok (Stordahl 1996) is ern Norway in fact have mixed origins, it is a central work in this stage (Stordahl being a perfectly possible for thousands of North Nor- Sami herself); similarly, Arild Hovland’s (1996) wegians to overcommunicate, selectively, parts comparative study of identity management in of their heritage that makes them credible Nor- Kå ord and Kautokeino. wegians, Sami or kven (Norwegians of Finnish In a certain sense, however, this phase may origin, the third major ethnic group in the have been initiated by Ivar Bjørklund’s Fjord- area). Thus, Hovland shows, neighbourhoods, folket i Kvænangen (‘The Fjord People of Kvæ- circles of friends and even nuclear families nangen’, 1985). Bjørklund discovered that the risk to be divided in a situation of heightened population of this ord were ‘actually’ Sami, ethnic awareness and multiculturalist politics. but that their Sami identity had been lost – they Arriving in a local community in the coastal had forgo en their Sami origins. Kvænangen North some time in the early 2000s, I was met was probably one of the communities Eidheim with the self-mocking greeting, ‘Welcome to had in mind when he wrote, two decades ear- the Yugoslavia of the north’. lier, about coastal hamlets where most of the Like Eidheim in his working paper Stages population had at some stage been Sami, but in the Development of Sami Sel ood (1992), both had gradually become assimilated into an eth- Stordahl and Hovland describe a condition of nically Norwegian identity. refl exive modernity, where the ‘natives’ have In the years following Bjørklund’s fi eldwork, absorbed anthropological jargon and concep- a notable ethnicization of the coastal Sami has tualisations, using terms like ethnic stigma taken place. Hitherto, the conventional le ist and identity management as well as construc- view among Norwegians associated the Sami tivist and dynamic concepts of culture actively ‘quest for equity’ with the ‘authentic’ reindeer in their identity work. Although both schol- herders, and there is a clear continuity be- ars have produced well-researched work of tween early modern Norwegian conservatives high analytical sophistication, neither of them and their romantic a itudes towards the au- critically interrogate the strategic essentialism, thentic savages of the north and, generations sometimes tinged with postmodern self-mock- later, the children of 1968 and their wish to ery, which gives ethnic identity the pride of salvage authentic Sami culture. place compared with other possible forms of The causes of the ethnicization of the ‘im- identifi cation. pure and inauthentic’ coastal Sami are at Whereas the fi rst phase in post-war re- least partly obvious. From the early 1980s, an search on the Sami was chiefl y ethnological, the ideological situation developed, in Norway second phase was interactionist and system- as elsewhere in the world, where it became theoretical, and the third phase has been char- possible and sometimes even politically prof- acterised by constructivist perspectives on itable to promote one’s interests qua ethnic identifi cation and deconstructivist approaches

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to culture, inspired by recent theoretical devel- tion in Finnmark, or Stordahl’s descriptions opments in Anglophone anthropology. None- of Sami modernities lodged between a mono- theless, there are some clear continuities which lithic ‘Norwegianness’ and a more diverse run through the entire period. Sami cultural world. The fact that emic notions First, the discourse is almost completely de- and political realities encourage such dichoto- void of a class perspective, which must be a mies is no excuse – anthropologists have to result of the strongly politicised situation giv- do be er than serve as mouthpieces for their ing priority to ethnic labels. The NSR (Norske informants if they are to function eff ectively as samers riksforbund, The National Association of critical intellectuals in a public sphere. Norwegian Sami), supported by most of the anthropologists during the Alta dam contro- versy around 1980, is led by academics, and Some Anthropological Contributions has been the most important political vehicle to Immigrant Research for the reindeer herders and ‘authentic Sami culture’. The competing SLF (Samenes landsfor- The second important minority discourse in bund, The National Sami Caucus) gets much of the Norwegian public sphere in general, and its support from the coastal Sami, and has been in anthropology in particular, concerns immi- much more oriented towards class questions grants, refugees and asylum-seekers. In this than the NSR; in practice, the SLF, dominated fi eld, the academic dominance of anthropol- by social democrats, has o en been willing to ogy has been much less obvious than in Sami sacrifi ce ethnic uniqueness in order to achieve research. Both criminologists, sociologists, me- equality (and is, in this respect, more reminis- dia researchers and education scholars have cent of an immigrant minority NGO than of an produced important contributions to immi- indigenous movement). grant research. As a result, class and gender Secondly, exoticism is still perceptible, 30 have fi gured more prominently, culture less years a er the publication of Orientalism. As so, than in research on Sami. I shall neverthe- Hovland (1996) has pointed out, however, this less limit myself here to commenting on a few exoticism sometimes appears through self- anthropological contributions to Norwegian exoticization, o en informed by earlier anthro- immigrant research. pological studies of themselves. Early anthropological studies of immigra- Thirdly, most remarkably, Norwegianness tion to Norway include, inter alia, Grønhaug is scarcely problematised at all in these stud- (1979) and Kramer (1979). Writing at a time ies of Norwegian–Sami relationships. From when non-Western immigrants were few and Vorren and Manker to Hovland and Stordahl, recent (total immigrant numbers rose from one is given to understand that there exists a 20,000 in 1973 to 450,000 in 2008), Reidar Grøn- Norwegian culture with particular traits, to haug explained the internal logic of labour which Sami relate in a variety of ways (ranging migration from Anatolia to Norway, pointing from voluntary assimilation to total rejection). out how the asymmetrical symbolic power The variation in cultural identity strategies relations between Turks and Norwegians en- among Sami, thus, does not appear to be a re- tailed a form of cultural disqualifi cation, in a sult of associating with diff erent versions of way not entirely unlike Eidheim’s analysis of Norwegianness but of mixing the ‘Norwegian’ cultural stigma. Julian Kramer, himself an im- and the ‘Sami’ in varying ratios. Briefl y, the migrant from South Africa, showed how the boundaries remain, even in the most sophis- Indians of a middle-sized Norwegian town ticated accounts of Sami identity work, such tried to combine full integration into Norwe- as Hovland’s discussion of cultural creoliza- gian institutions with maintenance of cultural 32 | Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home | AiA and religious identity. So far, culture had not immigrants in Norwegian society. Wikan was been politicised to any great extent. duly criticised, by colleagues and others, for Since these modest beginnings, a great num- not problematizing, or even discussing, the ber of anthropological studies of immigrants ‘Norwegian culture’, but her book had a per- have been produced. Some of this work has ceptible impact on the public discourse and been commissioned by local or state govern- offi cial policy over the ensuing years. ment, but even much of that which is not, The same period saw the publication of a di- strictly speaking, applied research, discusses verse range of academic or popularised books questions of ‘integration’ from a point of view by anthropologists on minority issues, includ- virtually indistinguishable from that of the ing Øivind Fuglerud’s erudite and thorough state. book on long-distance nationalism among Typical publications from the fi rst period of Tamils (Fuglerud 1999), Mary Bente Bringslid’s anthropological engagement with immigrants study of refugees in a small Western Norwegian are Long Li Woon’s edited, interdisciplinary community (Bringslid 1996), Torunn Arntsen Fellesskap til besvær? (‘Community of troubles?’, Sørheim’s work on health and disease among 1992), which discusses issues of identifi cation, Pakistani-Norwegians (Sørheim 2001) and In- discrimination and integration; O ar Brox’ Jeg ger-Lise Lien’s book on racist a itudes among er ikke rasist, men … (‘I’m not a racist, but …’ , Norwegians and Pakistani (Lien 1996). Several 1991), a survey of xenophobic a itudes among of these books, especially those by Wikan and ethnic Norwegians; my own Veien til et mer Lien, were subject to controversy in the press eksotisk Norge (‘Towards a more exotic Norway, and in seminar rooms, as they voiced critical Eriksen 1991), a critical essay on the role of cul- views towards immigrants and ‘their culture’. tural relativism in majority–minority relations; In an earlier article, Lien (1991) had raised criti- and a sprinkling of others with varying, but cal questions concerning the normative aspects perceptible public impact. The debate, both of immigrant research, asking rhetorically if it inside and outside of anthropology, focused at was the duty of the anthropologist to defend the time on racism and discrimination on the practices and a itudes among ‘their people’ one hand, and problems of integration on the even if they were objectionable. One typical other. By the mid-1990s, as new groups of im- answer to this question would be that the work migrants (refugees mostly) entered the country, of the anthropologist consists in translating public and academic interest in the issues grew, and analysing social and cultural contexts, not and disagreements among the anthropologists to grade them on a moral scale. However, in became apparent. Increasingly, an impatient the area of immigrant research, just as in Sami public demanded of the immigrants that they research, normative questions seem to be un- ‘integrate’ as soon as possible; the benign ‘col- avoidable; the boundary between the political ourful community’ rhetoric of the 1980s was and the academic is chronically thin, slippery suddenly condemned as being ‘politically cor- and permeable, and the work of anthropolo- rect’, and issues to do with enforced marriages gists becomes public by default. As Aud Talle and Islam came to the fore. Unni Wikan wrote at the University of Oslo discovered in the Mot en ny norsk underklasse? (‘Towards a new early 2000s a er having been lampooned as a Norwegian underclass?’, 1995), which in no dangerous relativist in the largest newspaper small degree implied that patriarchal ideolo- in the country, doing research on female cir- gies among immigrants (especially Muslims) cumcision among Maasai or Somali is unprob- were instrumental in hindering not only the lematic as far as the wider public is concerned, freedom of minority women but also the full but identical research on Somali refugees in integration (participation? assimilation?) of Norway is fraught with moral implications.

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Of the many later publications on minority the labour and housing markets, in the educa- issues, Marianne Gullestad’s Det norske se tional institutions and so on. Whereas the Sami med nye øyne (‘Norwegianness in a new key’, represent the Fourth World, immigrants repre- Gulle stad 2002) deserves special mention. This sent the Third World; in academic discourse, book explores the cultural categories and se- the former are an indigenous population, mantics prevalent in the majority, showing how while the la er represent a globalised prole- discourse about minorities and immigrants is tariat. Whereas the Sami lay claim to a unique based on tacit assumptions of cultural supe- culture under siege from the modern state, im- riority and the ‘backwardness’ of immigrants. migrants cannot do so, both because they have Drawing on postcolonial theory rather than the their origins in many diff erent countries, and Barth-Eidheim ethnicity perspective, Gulles- because their culture appears to be perfectly tad’s monograph marked, in many ways, a new safe and sound in their home country. As a start. student once wrote, in an exam paper, ‘Why Inger-Lise Lien’s view, in her important 1991 should one protect the culture of 150 Indians article, was that a particular political agenda in “Rivertown” [Kramer’s pseudonym], when had informed and contributed to shaping re- there are several hundred million Indians in search, with the result that academic work on India anyway?’ minority issues became partial and partisan. In mainstream Norwegian politics, views In fact, anthropologists have enjoyed direct and policies on Sami and on immigrants/im- infl uence on Norwegian integration policy, not migration have not corresponded in a simple least Lien herself, for years an active member way to the le –right continuum. The le have of the Labour party, and Wikan, whose advice by and large been pro-immigrant, but have has been sought by several political parties. I been – and are – divided on multiculturalism, was myself a board member of an anti-racist the limits of tolerance and issues to do with re- NGO, Antirasistisk Senter, in the 1990s. ligion and women’s rights. Regarding the Sami, In order to assess the relationship between the a itudes on the le have also been am- Norwegian anthropological research on mi- bivalent, split between a wish to off er equality nority–majority relations ‘at home’ and the and full integration into the modern state and public sphere, it is necessary fi rst to describe the politics of recognition, which would also briefl y the role of minorities in mainstream entail the preservation of Sami culture. These political discourse. disagreements, incidentally, mirror the dilem- mas of liberals and le ists in many countries these days. Immigrants and Sami in The dominant Labour party has by and large Norwegian Politics of Culture been concerned with equality in both contexts, while the Conservative party has tried to de- In general, Sami and immigrant organisations fi ne cultural and religious identity as a private have chosen diff erent strategies in their quest ma er. Political debates pi ing cultural rights for recognition and equity in Norway. Whereas against equality have continuously caused the Sami organisations (notably the NSR) em- controversy both within and between political phasized cultural uniqueness, history and tra- parties. In 1997, the Finnmark section of the dition, immigrant organisations have tended Socialist Le party (SV) was split, and the local to emphasize equality, giving priority to the party organisation in Karasjok (a main inland struggle against discrimination. With a few ex- Sami town) disbanded itself, following a state- ceptions to do with language and religion, their ment by the top candidate on the Parliamen- objective has been to achieve formal equality in tary list of the party, where he went against the 34 | Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home | AiA idea that rights to land and water should fol- tity from the 1980s, Arne Martin Klausen’s low ethnic lines (an important issue for Sami edited volume Den norske væremåten (‘The Nor- organisations). His argument was that anyone wegian way of being’, 1984), contains excellent who lived in Finnmark should have the same analyses of cultural styles, the rural–urban di- rights regardless of ethnic identity. vide, gender and nature worship, but just one As a minority group with special rights, the chapter on minorities (by the aforementioned Sami nevertheless have much more credibility Julian Kramer), and minorities were absent in the wider public sphere than do the immi- from the analyses of mainstream Norwegian grants, and they have a special legal status as society. Minorities were also conspicuously ab- an indigenous group. sent from the work of Marianne Gullestad, the Anthropologists position themselves explic- most important anthropologist writing about itly and implicitly in this political landscape. In Norwegians from the mid-1980s until her spite of the considerable diff erences between death in 2008, before she turned to this topic the Oslo region (where most of the immigrants in the late 1990s, which led to the signifi cant live) and Finnmark regarding minority issues, (and controversial) 2002 book (see Gullestad it is possible to identify some commonalities. 2006). When minorities were fi nally brought In 1996, the Pakistani-Norwegian intellectual into the analysis of mainstream Norwegian Naushad Ali Qureshi wrote a lengthy newspa- society, it happened largely under the aegis of per article where he accused the social anthro- the Eidheim–Barth ethnicity paradigm. pologists of having dri ed from an exoticizing to a condemning a itude towards minori- ties. Both a itudes demarcate sharp boundar- Conclusions ies between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and immigrants are stereotyped and objectifi ed, regardless of An ethnicizing framework for engagement whether the gaze of the researcher is admiring with social and cultural phenomena has its or disapproving (Qureshi 1996). In particular, costs, whether it is used by politicians or by Qureshi targets Wikan (1995), but his article researchers. An example could be the pre- is a general critique of culturalism in social dicaments inherent in the wide-ranging edited research: through emphasising cultural diff er- volume Becoming Visible (Brantenberg, Hansen ences and/or ethnic boundaries, one contrib- and Minde 1995), which off ers a representative utes to strengthening them. Moreover – and sample of the discourse on the Sami. The con- this may be the largest problem in Norwegian tributors are academics, activists, high-rank- minority research ‘at home’ – the Norwegian ing bureaucrats, politicians and artists. The side of the ‘boundary’ is rarely problematised, starting point of the book, shared by nearly but instead stereotyped or neglected (but see all the contributors, is the injustice commi ed Gullestad 2002, 2006). Norway is depicted, in against the world’s indigenous peoples for research on immigrants (and one might add, centuries, and it also becomes apparent how on the Sami), either as a monolithic, liberal many such groups, over the last decades, have society where universalist morality, love mar- made progress regarding recognition for their riages and human rights predominate, or as language, customs and land rights. Five basic an ethnonationalistic, xenophobic society with predicaments are apparent in the book, all of li le tolerance for cultural diversity. them indirectly relevant for immigrants as It must be kept in mind that for many years, well and, for that ma er, recognizable in simi- academic scholarship on Norwegianness ig- lar research elsewhere in the world. nored minority issues. Tellingly, the most au- 1. Indigenous peoples risk building an opin- thoritative collective work on Norwegian iden- ion based on the premise that they are ‘threat-

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ened by extinction’ in the same way as whales 1. With the exception of ‘native’ research- and pandas. In this case, they risk being ac- ers such as Anh Nga Longva (who has writ- cepted as Sami on the condition that they be- ten about Vietnamese in Norway) and Vigdis have like Sami (whatever that entails). Immi- Stordahl, very few have learnt the languages in grant minorities have nothing to gain from question well. This is nothing short of a profes- such a rhetoric – on the contrary, their ‘cultural sional scandal, considering the centrality of the impurity’ signifi es their lesser value. Similarly, Malinowskian emphasis on language learning the very many Sami who cannot credibly pose in Norwegian anthropology when fi eldwork as ‘authentic’ are placed in a vulnerable and takes place abroad. precarious situation. 2. Norwegianness is scarcely problematised 2. The right to a cultural identity may be- (except in Gullestad’s aforementioned, recent come a straitjacket for individuals who would work). It is either taken for granted, or it remains prefer not to have one. The implicit (and some- unmentioned. Thus, the Norwegian obsession times explicit) message is that a rooted iden- with gender equality, for example, becomes an tity is an unquestionable asset. Here, political implicit premise for research on, for example, debate and actual policy on immigrants take gender roles in the Pakistani-Norwegian fam- a diff erent route, and the second generation is ily, rather than empirical data to be analysed in virtually encouraged (by politicians and com- its own right. As a result, scholars more or less mentators, but also by many academics) to unwi ingly tend to adopt problem formula- distance itself from the parents’ culture. tions originally framed within their own cul- 3. When ethnic membership is made the tural value system. This in turn hampers their basis for rights, groups or individuals who ability to ask critical questions to the framing cannot lay claim to an ethnic identity are ne- of the issues in the dominant public discourse. glected. Thus, the social exclusion of people Incidentally, this form of ‘homeblindness’ is with no particular ethnic identity – the poor of not unknown in Anglophone anthropology São Paolo, unemployed people in Oslo – may either, where great pains are o en taken to go unmarked. describe fi ne nuances in the local cultures un- 4. The emphasis on history (and, not least, der study, which are then cursorily contrasted prehistory) in indigenous politics makes it with something called ‘Western culture’. diffi cult for these groups to make a common 3. There is a tendency to adopt uncritically cause with other ethnic minorities. In Norway, the classic ethnicity paradigm (which was, in there has scarcely been any collaboration be- its time, an important advance over earlier tween Sami and immigrants. models), according to which the social universe 5. The relationship between equality and is constituted of ethnic groups and boundaries, complementarity is unclear in the indigenous rather than, for example, kinds of relationship. discourse. Rights, universal or cultural as the The dynamic (and suitably fuzzy) concept of case might be, are claimed situationally, de- culture which has predominated in recent pending on the opportunity situation. years (in what I have labelled the third phase in Sami studies) has done li le to change this Faced with these dilemmas, anthropological approach, which conceals non-ethnic social research and public interventions, rather than phenomena and may ultimately lead to reduc- complementing and critically interrogating tionist ethnographies. identity politics in the public sphere, has tended 4. The dominant analytical framing of cul- to reproduce its categories. This voluminous tural diff erence is more indebted to Norwegian body of research is, in general (there are excep- debates about culture than to anthropological tions), fraught with the following problems: research on cultural diff erences. This has made 36 | Norwegian Anthropologists Study Minorities at Home | AiA

Norwegian research on ethnicity ‘at home’ stimulating and, perhaps paradoxically, more more provincial than necessary. relevant politically. My intention with this brief, but critical exploration of Norwegian anthropology on minorities ‘at home’ has been to show the References powerful interrelationship between domestic Ardener, E. (1989), ‘Social Anthropology and politics and anthropology at home, rendering Population’, in The Voice of Prophecy and Other public anthropology necessary but also im- Essays, (ed.) M. Chapman (Oxford: Blackwell), mensely diffi cult. I have also tried to identify 109–127. the dangers of not only methodological but also Barth, F. (ed.) (1969), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: moral homeblindness. The scholar’s gaze, even The Social Organization of Culture Diff erence. (Ber- gen: Univertsitetsforlaget, Scandinavian Univer- when critical of government policy and hege- sity Books). monic ideologies, is shaped by the scholar’s Bjørklund, I. (1985), Fjordfolket i Kvænangen (Oslo: embroilment with domestic aff airs, and risks Scandinavian University Press). merely reproducing or mechanically negating Bouquet, M. (1996), Bringing It All Back Home … To a hegemonic discourse, rather than establish- the Oslo University Ethnographic Museum (Oslo: ing an independent approach growing out of Scandinavian University Press). Brantenberg, T., J. Hansen and H. Minde, (eds) professional concerns. One inevitable conclu- (1995), Becoming Visible: Indigenous Politics and sion is that we Norwegian anthropologists Self-government. Proceedings of the Conference should extend an open invitation to foreign on Indigenous Politics and Self-Government, anthropologists to do research on our society 8–10 November 1993 (Tromsø: Universitetet i and participate in public debates about it. Tromsø). Similar problems are likely to occur else- Bringslid, M. B. (1996), ‘Bygda og den framande: Ein studie av det lokales de- og rekontekstua- where, and they do in countries where anthro- lisering i ei vestnorsk bygd’. Dr polit. disserta- pologists carry out research ‘at home’. What tion, University of Bergen. is gained in political infl uence may be lost in Brox, O. (1991), Jeg er ikke rasist, men … (Oslo: academic relevance, unless anthropologists in Gyldendal). their public interventions are more self-con- Eidheim, F. (1992), Se nordfra (Oslo: Scandinavian scious about their own role and professional University Press). Eidheim, H. (1971), Aspects of the Lappish Minority duties as purveyors of the gaze from afar. Situation (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). Anthropologists working at home could, and ——— (1992), Stages in the Development of Sami should in my view, draw more actively on an- Sel ood. Working paper no. 7 (Oslo: Institu for thropological perspectives developed in other sosialantropologi). empirical se ings. This would enable them to Eriksen, T. H. (1991), Veien til et mer eksotisk Norge achieve the analytical distance necessary in (Oslo: Ad Notam). (2008a), ‘The Otherness of Norwegian An- order to ask questions growing out of the aca- ——— thropology’, in Other People’s Anthropologies, demic discourse rather than domestic political (ed.) A. Boskovic (Oxford: Berghahn), 169–185. concerns. Since one of anthropology’s tasks, ——— (2008b), ‘Interview with Harald Eidheim’. seen in a wider intellectual context, consists Norsk antropologisk tidsskri 19, nos. 2–3: 177–188. in asking the unexpected, but illuminating Fuglerud, Ø. (1999), Life on the Outside: The Tamil question, and that question might well fi rst Diaspora and Long-distance Nationalism (London: Pluto). have been raised in South Africa or Melanesia. Grønhaug, R. (ed.) (1979), Migrasjon, utvikling og Through such an act of liberation from domes- minoriteter (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). tic public discourse, anthropological interven- Gullestad, M. (2002), Det norske se med nye øyne tions might become both intellectually more (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press).

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——— (2006), Plausible Prejudice: Everyday Experi- Paine, R. (1994), Herds of the Tundra: A Portrait of ences and Social Images of Nation, Culture and Race Saami Reindeer Pastoralism (Washington DC: (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). Smithsonian Institution Press). Hovland, A. (1996), Moderne urfolk. Samisk ungdom Qureshi, N. A. (1996), ‘Det står menneskesyn på i bevegelse (Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag). spill, men hvilket?’ A enposten, 18 May. Klausen, A. M. (ed.) (1984), Den norske væremåten Sørheim, T. A. (2001), Kultur og kommunikasjon: (Oslo: Cappelen). Familier med pakistansk bakgrunn i møte med hel- Kramer, J. (1979), ‘Indiske innvandrere i en norsk’, sevesenet (Oslo: Gyldendal). in Migrasjon, utvikling og minoriteter, (ed.) I. R. Stordahl, V. (1996), Same i den moderne verden: En- Grønhaug (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). dring og kontinuitet i et samisk lokalsamfunn (Ka- Lien, I. L. (1991), ‘En god forsker eller et godt men- rasjok: Davvi Girji). neske?’, Ny norsk tidsskri 8, no. 2: 177–185. Thuen, T. (1995), Quest for Equity. Norway and the ——— (1996), Ordet som stempler djevlene: Hold- Saami Challenge (St John’s: ISER). ninger blant pakistanere og nordmenn (Oslo: Vorren, Ø. and Manker, E. (1957), Samekulturen Aventura). (Tromsø: Tromsø Museum). Long Li Woon (ed.) (1992), Fellesskap til besvær? Wikan, U. (1995), Mot en ny norsk underklasse: Aspekter ved nyere innvandring til Norge (Oslo: Innvandrere, kultur og integrasjon (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press). Gyldendal).

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