Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism

316 Pages·2015·2.35 MB·English

by  Pnina Werbner

critique confronts the world. Without dogma,
without new principles, it refuses to conform and
instead demands insurrection of thought. It must
be ruthless, unafraid of both its results and the
powers it may come into conflict with. Critique takes
the world, our world, as its object, so that we may
develop new ways of making it.
influence is a step from critique towards the
future, when effects begin to be felt, when the
ground becomes unstable, when a movement
ignites. These critiques of the state of our world
have influenced a generation. They are crucial
guides to change.
change is when the structures shift. The books
in this series take critique as their starting point
and as such have influenced both their respective
disciplines and thought the world over. This series
is born out of our conviction that change lies not
in the novelty of the future but in the realization of
the thoughts of the past.
These texts are not mere interpretations or reflections,
but scientific, critical and impassioned analyses of
our world. After all, the point is to change it.
TiTles in The criTique influence change series
Reclaiming Development The Lords of Human Kind
An Alternative Policy Manual European Attitudes to Other Cultures
by Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel in the Imperial Age
by Victor Kiernan
Realizing Hope
Life Beyond Capitalism Male Daughters, Female Husbands
by Michael Albert Gender and Sex in an African Society
by Ifi Amadiume
Global Governance and the New Wars
The Merging of Development and Marxism and the Muslim World
Security by Maxime Rodinson
by Mark Duffield
Planet Dialectics
Capitalism in the Age of Globalization Explorations in Environment and
The Management of Contemporary Development
Society by Wolfgang Sachs
by Samir Amin
Another World is Possible
Ecofeminism Popular Alternatives to Globalization
by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva at the World Social Forum
edited by William Fisher and
Patriarchy and Accumulation on a
Thomas Ponniah
World Scale
Women in the International Division
of Labour
by Maria Mies
Grassroots Post-modernism
Remaking the Soil of Cultures
by Gustavo Esteva and
Madhu Suri Prakash
Debating Cultural Hybridity
Multicultural Identities and the Politics
of Anti-Racism
edited by Pnina Werbner and
Tariq Modood
A Fundamental Fear
Eurocentrism and the Emergence
of Islamism
by S. Sayyid
More criTical Praise for Debating Cultural HybriDity
‘This work, written by some of the most eminent
current social theorists, is even more necessary
today than when it was first published.’
Ricard Zapata-Barrero, Pompeu Fabra University
‘The reissue of these seminal essays reminds us
that the turn to hybridity was never an invitation to
celebration, but rather a challenge to think about the
necessary conditions for an emancipatory politics.’
Gavan Titley, Maynooth University
‘With its prescient, rigorous examination of cultural
hybridity and emancipatory politics, this landmark
volume still has much to teach us nearly twenty
years on. Indeed, reading it again in light of
subsequent political developments makes its
contribution all the more striking and compelling.’
Stephen May, University of Auckland
‘This volume continues to be the indispensable
guide to hybridity. Many of the contributions to the
volume have become classics but their genuine
value is that they still allow us to discover elements
of a politics of difference that responds to our
current conjecture.’
Jan Dobbernack, University of Lincoln
abouT The ediTors
Pnina Werbner is professor emerita in social
anthropology at Keele University. She is an urban
anthropologist who has studied Muslim South
Asians in Britain and Pakistan and, more recently,
the women’s movement and the Manual Workers
Union in Botswana.
Tariq Modood is professor of sociology, politics
and public policy at the University of Bristol and
the founding director of the Centre for the Study
of Ethnicity and Citizenship. His website is
www.tariqmodood.com.
debaTing
culTural
hybridiTy
MulTiculTural
idenTiTies and
The PoliTics of
anTi-racisM
ediTed by
Pnina
Werbner
and Tariq
Modood
WiTh a foreWord by
hoMi K. bhabha
Zed Books
London
In memory of Stuart Hall, 1932–2014
Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-racism
was first published in 1997 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK
This edition was published in 2015
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Editorial copyright © Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood, 1997, 2015
Copyright © individual contributors, 1997
Foreword © Homi K. Bhabha, 2015
The rights of Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood to be identified as
the editors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Typeset in Monotype Bembo by illuminati, Grosmont
Cover designed by www.alice-marwick.co.uk
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978–1–78360–161–5 pb
ISBN 978–1–78360–188–2 pdf
ISBN 978–1–78360–189–9 epub
ISBN 978–1–78360–190–5 mobi
Contents

Foreword
Homi K. BHaBHa ix
Preface to the critique influence change edition
Pnina WerBner and Tariq modood xiv
Preface to the first edition xix
 Introduction: The Dialectics of Cultural Hybridity
Pnina WerBner 
part one Hybridity, Globalisation and
tHe Practice of cultural comPlexity
 From Complex Culture to Cultural Complexity
Hans-rudolf WicKer 
 The Making and Unmaking of Strangers
ZygmunT Bauman 
 Identity and Difference in a Globalised World
alBerTo melucci 
 Global Crises, the Struggle for Cultural Identity and
Intellectual Porkbarrelling: Cosmopolitans versus Locals,
Ethnics and Nationals in an Era of De-hegemonisation
JonaTHan friedman 
 ‘The Enigma of Arrival’: Hybridity and Authenticity
in the Global Space
PeTer van der veer 
 Adorno at Womad: South Asian Crossovers and the Limits
of Hybridity-Talk
JoHn HuTnyK 
part two essentialism versus Hybridity:
neGotiatinG difference
 Is It So Difficult to be an Anti-Racist?
micHel WieviorKa 
 ‘Difference’, Cultural Racism and Anti-Racism
Tariq modood 
 Constructions of Whiteness in European and American
Anti-Racism
alasTair BonneTT 
 Ethnicity, Gender Relations and Multiculturalism
nira yuval-davis 
 Dominant and Demotic Discourses of Culture:
Their Relevance to Multi-ethnic Alliances
gerd Baumann 
 Essentialising Essentialism, Essentialising Silence:
Ambivalence and Multiplicity in the Constructions of
Racism and Ethnicity
Pnina WerBner 
part three maPPinG Hybridity
 Tracing Hybridity in Theory
niKos PaPasTergiadis 
Notes on the Contributors 
Index 
foreword ix
Foreword
HomI K. BHaBHa

I write this foreword to the critique influence change edition of Debating
Cultural Hybridity in a spirit of collegial and convivial solidarity. We have
come together to celebrate a concept – the hybrid – that has established its
salience in a wide range of discourses relevant to the aesthetics of cultural
difference and the politics of minorities. The dedication of this edition to the
memory of Stuart Hall charges its pages with the exuberant and experimental
temperament Stuart brought to the project of thinking and acting. He let no
issue rest; he left no problem unprobed; and there was no occasion on which
he renounced the opportunity to think again or the chance to begin afresh.
For Stuart, the toil of historical understanding and the task of cultural justice
were always urgent – and inevitably unfinished. We cannot let his spirit rest,
for such stasis would be deeply at odds with the living legacy of his work.
Hybridity is a form of incipient critique; it does not come as a force from
‘outside’ to impose an alternative a priori ground-plan on the pattern of the
present. Hybridity works with, and within, the cultural design of the present
to reshape our understanding of the interstices – social and psychic – that
link signs of cultural similitude with emergent signifiers of alterity. The ‘dif-
ference’ that constitutes the subject of hybridity can be temporal, political,
racial, sexual, social or economic. These forms of ‘difference’, reconfigured
as spontaneous discrimination or systemic inequality, are neither historically
synchronic nor ethically and politically equivalent. What the minoritarian
presence reveals are the limits of pluralist ‘progress’. Hybridity as a critique
gets straight to the point on this issue: the failures of minoritarian rights and
protections ‘are repressed contradictions that haunt modern politics: in this
ix