Living with and confronting diversity is often becoming a daily condition of western societies. We are testimony of a quick diffusion of a greater sensitivity for individual and collective specificity, which is transformed in a central rhetorical tool for both the formulation of new demands of inclusion and for the claim of rights and privileges. Cultural difference is often becoming a central concern in everyday urban practices and represent one of the main frame for the definition of urban situations, encounters and conflicts. The sociological discussion about difference was often absorbed by the debate on multiculturalism. A debate which somehow remains narrowly limited either to normative issues – philosophical perspective, theory of justice – or to pragmatic issues – social policy, affirmative action. In both these perspectives a specific sociological point of view is missed: the one that allows to catch how difference is presented in actual empirical contests, how social actors use it in everyday relationships to make sense both of their actions and their realities. The concept of difference by itself, when it is used as an analytical tool, seems to be too confuse, compelled into the dichotomy “essentialism” versus “radical social construction” or used as a mere equivalent for identity. In order to overcome this narrow dichotomy, the paper proposes a more specific and sociological definition of difference. A definition able to highlight the character of situated resource for interaction, communication, identity and self-esteem that difference is assuming in the contemporary societies. The stressing of its aspects of situated resources allows an anti-essentialist deeply rooted in urban, everyday life description of contemporary forms of representation of and confrontation with difference. The concept of “everyday multiculturalism” is introduced to put in evidence situations and contexts – typically urban and globalized – in which the constant presence of otherness needs an active work of “domestication” of reified differences produced on the macro level. A mundane work that takes place in situation where power, capability and resources are differently distributed, not shared in condition of equity and equality. The concept of “everyday multiculturalism” intends to describe both a category of practice – the daily, mundane, (apparently) unproblematic relations in local urban contexts requiring a constant ability to recognise and use differences, to construct and deconstruct boundaries, to sustain and resist common representations of otherness – and a category of analysis – a specific sociological point of view oriented to detect how difference is constructed and contested, who use it, in what situation, to mark what kind of distinction, for what goal, with what results. As an analytical tool, everyday multiculturalism avoids either the fallacious reductions of considering difference as a static, uniform and essential reality or an endless mixing process, without stable solution and internal consistence. On the contrary, a more sociological definition of everyday multiculturalism allows the recognition of the status of social construction of difference without missing to put in evidence how the social constructions – to be effective, to aspire to become “doxa” – have to assume the consistence of social facts, which have real effects. Some examples from empirical researches carried out by the authors in the Italian urban context – the differentiated use of difference in an urban context to construct boundaries and alliance, to fight or sustain gentrification; the relevance of difference in the everyday relationship between women employers and their immigrant women domestics in order to overcome disconnection and tensions between power asymmetry and gender solidarity; the central role played by difference in voluntary associations constituted by natives and immigrants for the definition of goals, power hierarchy and forms of social collective action – will help to make more explicit the possible use of the concept of “everyday multiculturalism” both as a category of practice and a category of analysis.

Everyday Multiculturalism : The Practices of Difference / E. Colombo. ((Intervento presentato al convegno Everyday Life in the Global City tenutosi a Manchester (UK) nel 2007.

Everyday Multiculturalism : The Practices of Difference

E. Colombo
Primo
2007

Abstract

Living with and confronting diversity is often becoming a daily condition of western societies. We are testimony of a quick diffusion of a greater sensitivity for individual and collective specificity, which is transformed in a central rhetorical tool for both the formulation of new demands of inclusion and for the claim of rights and privileges. Cultural difference is often becoming a central concern in everyday urban practices and represent one of the main frame for the definition of urban situations, encounters and conflicts. The sociological discussion about difference was often absorbed by the debate on multiculturalism. A debate which somehow remains narrowly limited either to normative issues – philosophical perspective, theory of justice – or to pragmatic issues – social policy, affirmative action. In both these perspectives a specific sociological point of view is missed: the one that allows to catch how difference is presented in actual empirical contests, how social actors use it in everyday relationships to make sense both of their actions and their realities. The concept of difference by itself, when it is used as an analytical tool, seems to be too confuse, compelled into the dichotomy “essentialism” versus “radical social construction” or used as a mere equivalent for identity. In order to overcome this narrow dichotomy, the paper proposes a more specific and sociological definition of difference. A definition able to highlight the character of situated resource for interaction, communication, identity and self-esteem that difference is assuming in the contemporary societies. The stressing of its aspects of situated resources allows an anti-essentialist deeply rooted in urban, everyday life description of contemporary forms of representation of and confrontation with difference. The concept of “everyday multiculturalism” is introduced to put in evidence situations and contexts – typically urban and globalized – in which the constant presence of otherness needs an active work of “domestication” of reified differences produced on the macro level. A mundane work that takes place in situation where power, capability and resources are differently distributed, not shared in condition of equity and equality. The concept of “everyday multiculturalism” intends to describe both a category of practice – the daily, mundane, (apparently) unproblematic relations in local urban contexts requiring a constant ability to recognise and use differences, to construct and deconstruct boundaries, to sustain and resist common representations of otherness – and a category of analysis – a specific sociological point of view oriented to detect how difference is constructed and contested, who use it, in what situation, to mark what kind of distinction, for what goal, with what results. As an analytical tool, everyday multiculturalism avoids either the fallacious reductions of considering difference as a static, uniform and essential reality or an endless mixing process, without stable solution and internal consistence. On the contrary, a more sociological definition of everyday multiculturalism allows the recognition of the status of social construction of difference without missing to put in evidence how the social constructions – to be effective, to aspire to become “doxa” – have to assume the consistence of social facts, which have real effects. Some examples from empirical researches carried out by the authors in the Italian urban context – the differentiated use of difference in an urban context to construct boundaries and alliance, to fight or sustain gentrification; the relevance of difference in the everyday relationship between women employers and their immigrant women domestics in order to overcome disconnection and tensions between power asymmetry and gender solidarity; the central role played by difference in voluntary associations constituted by natives and immigrants for the definition of goals, power hierarchy and forms of social collective action – will help to make more explicit the possible use of the concept of “everyday multiculturalism” both as a category of practice and a category of analysis.
10-lug-2007
Everyday Life ; Multiculturalism ; Difference
Settore SPS/08 - Sociologia dei Processi Culturali e Comunicativi
Manchester Metropolitan University
Everyday Multiculturalism : The Practices of Difference / E. Colombo. ((Intervento presentato al convegno Everyday Life in the Global City tenutosi a Manchester (UK) nel 2007.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2434/37345
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