The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics

Caroline Howarth, Eleni Andreouli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317601388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics examines the ways in which politics permeates everyday life, from the ordinary interactions we have with others to the sense of belonging and identity developed within social groups and communities. Discrimination, prejudice, inclusion and social change, politics is an on-going process that is not solely the domain of the elected and the powerful.

Using a social and political psychological lens to examine how politics is enacted in contemporary societies, the book takes an explicitly critical approach that places political activity within collective processes rather than individual behaviors. While the studies covered in the book do not ignore the importance of the individual, they underscore the need to examine the role of culture, history, ideology and social context as integral to psychological processes. Individuals act, but they do not act in isolation from the groups and societies in which they belong.

Drawing on extensive international research, with contributions from leaders in the field as well as emerging scholars, the book is divided into three interrelated parts which cover:

• 
  
  

• The politics of intercultural relations

• 
  
  

• Political agency and social change

• 
  
  

• Political discourse and practice

Offering insights into how psychology can be applied to some of the most pressing social issues we face, this will be fascinating reading for students of psychology, political science, sociology and cultural studies, as well as anyone working in the area of public policy.

Part I

The politics of intercultural relations

1

Everyday multiculturalism as critical nationalism

Caroline Howarth

While many politicians assert the importance of national identities and affiliation to the nation, most politicians around the globe from across the political spectrum agree that multiculturalism has failed. And yet despite this political rejection of multiculturalism, for certain scholars multiculturalism is alive and well (Harris, 2013). They cite evidence including examination results in highly diverse schools and measures of citizenship and creativity. While the horrific attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015 are regarded by extreme right parties as proof that multiculturalism has failed, there is evidence of broad multicultural support in the marches of sympathy and protest across Europe. While some minoritised groups no doubt feel under pressure to ‘display’ their patriotism and loyalty, in such events others are there with the same set of political attitudes as peers from majority groups.

So has multiculturalism failed, or is it part of our national cultures to uphold and cherish it? Part of the problem is that we use different definitions of both nationalism and multiculturalism; sometimes these collide, sometimes these concur. For some, multiculturalism is a description of a demographic fact and “an inescapable reality” (Green & Staerkle, 2013), particularly when we recognise the ‘super-diversity’ of many contemporary cities (Vertovec, 2010). This ‘de facto multiculturalism’ (Nesbitt-Larking, 2014) or ‘everyday multiculturalism’ examines mundane intercultural encounters and practices, showing the very real, practical and embodied ways in which identities and cultures are negotiated in everyday micro-interactions in markets, through the media, commercial exchanges and social relationships (Harris, 2013; Wise & Velayutham, 2009). This resonates with Gilroy’s work on the conviviality of contemporary intercultural exchanges – those “ordinary experiences of contact, cooperation and conflict across the supposedly impermeable boundaries of race, culture, identity and ethnicity” (Gilroy, 2004). Such mundane, pragmatic experiences of cultural diversity are often far removed from top-down understandings of ‘panicked multiculturalism’ (Noble, 2009).

While recognising the ‘apparentness’ of multiculturalism in the everyday, it is important to recognise the different forms of multiculturalism as public policy and governance strategy that generally are “designed to cope with already divided communities in order to sustain peace and promote equality” (Nesbitt-Larking, 2014, p. 281). An array of texts (e.g., Kinnvall & Nesbitt-Larking, 2011) outline the different policies related to multiculturalism in different countries on a continuum from accommodationist to integrationist. What these works demonstrate are the ways in which different policies in different nations connect to everyday practices of multiculturalism in the everyday, as a form of ‘emotional governance’. Richards (2007) developed this concept in examining political leadership as emotional management, particularly in connection to political discourse on terrorism and nationalism in the media and how this relates to public emotions. Kinnvall (2014) uses this in a broader Foucauldian sense to include the surveillance and manipulation of emotions, particularly around otherness and cultural diversity. Here we can see that multiculturalism can be understood as political discourse or as public sentiment in relation to cultural diversity, and we need to examine the connections between the two.

The same is true for nationalism: we can take a top-down approach that examines nationalism as a political principle (Gellner, 1983) and we can take a more bottom-up everyday approach that examines the ways in which explicit and often implicit symbols of the nation shape everyday interactions and relationships (Billig, 1995; Howarth, Andreouli & Kessi, 2014). Furthermore, in addition to a bottom-up, everyday level and a top-down, policy level of both multiculturalism and nationalism, some psychological works on both multiculturalism and nationalism examine these as individual psychological traits and develop scales of support for multiculturalism and/or nationalism (e.g. Berry & Kalin, 1995; Verkuyten, 2014). For example, Dekker, Malovå and Hoogendoorn (2003) define nationalism as an individual’s attitude consisting of national liking, national pride, national preference and national superiority, and they depict multicultural attitudes and nationalistic attitudes as oppositional. We return to this point later.

Clearly, these three levels of analysis (top-down, everyday and psychological) need to be integrated. Politicians claim that multiculturalism has failed, the media often amplify this and people often assert this in the context of their everyday lives (Verkuyten, 2014). Yet there is also some evidence for the opposite. The UK legislature is becoming increasingly diverse, there is increased cultural diversity in the media (Al Jazeera English, for example, is followed by 220 million people in over 100 different countries and is by no means limited to Muslim or Arabic audiences), and there is increased diversity in what we eat, what music we listen to and our social networks and friendships. Our children even are evidence of the success of multicultural relationships and communities. More than this, some are mobilised into displaying a sense of connection and allegiance across assumed (or constructed) divisions of difference (Gilroy, 2004), such as the 2014 “I’ll ride with you” Twitter campaign from Australia that went viral within hours and which demonstrated support for Muslims and a stand against Islamophobia. Given these examples that suggest that our world is simply multicultural, why do many insist that multiculturalism has failed?

The answer is surprisingly simple. Multiculturalism has succeeded. Multiculturalism is changing aspects of citizenship, participation and governance. Indeed multiculturalism, for some, is too successful. Its success now means that those ‘othered’ in previously marginalised communities are now part of all systems of decision making and governance, from school governors, to university councils, to police associations, to local government and national politicians, even if they still experience prejudice in these contexts. No longer is multiculturalism imagined as angry black men rampaging on the streets (who can be contained or imprisoned) or submissive Asian women who can’t speak English properly (who can be ignored); now ‘the problem’ is that it is clear these people are just like ‘us’ – they care about their children’s education, they care about doing well in life, they vote, they produce comedy, they make us reflect on ‘our’ own cultural values and points of hypocrisy. Furthermore, they teach our children, they treat us in hospitals, they police our streets, they inform us about political decisions. More than this, not only do they participate in all forms of civic society, but they want to participate in the fullest sense of the term, that is, they want their representations to have consequence (Howarth, Andreouli & Kessi, 2014). And finally we begin to see that this distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is ideologically constructed, politically motivated and sometimes reinforced in academic studies of cultural differences (Gunaratnam, 2003; Howarth, 2009).

Take, for example, the so-called Trojan Horse Affair which was a major issue of national debate in the UK. An investigation was launched into local schools after an anonymous (probably hoax) letter was received in 2014 that outlined a Muslim ‘Trojan Horse’ plan to take over school governance. In response, the government, official educational bodies and the media maintained that this was about reducing the threat of extremism, safeguarding our children and promoting British values. Yet if we look carefully at the evidence produced, we see something quite different. Far from being construed as a Muslim plot, the affair can be regarded as an attack on Muslim communities. For many, the assumed privileges of whiteness of all political institutions and systems of governance are under threat (see also Van Oudenhoven & Ward, 2013). Hence debates about multiculturalism have become debates about nationalism or at least threats to the nation, and they currently produce a problematic form of nationalism as we see later in the chapter. What is needed is a clear examination of the points of tension and connection between these concepts in order to see whether there is a more constructive way to address the inherent diversity of all nations that involves both majority and minoritised groups.

In order to achieve this, the next section of the chapter provides a detailed examination of the conceptual tensions between multiculturalism and nationalism and includes a discussion on postnationalism, banal nationalism and cultural essentialism. The following section explores the ways in which we can connect multiculturalism and nationalism through critical identities, counternarratives and critical nationalism. Throughout the chapter I draw on a range of studies from social and political psychology and related disciplines to illustrate the points of connection and tension. Many of these studies concern ways in which young people are positioned in discussions about the nation and multiculturalism. This is partly because this is my own focus in research, but also because many studies with young people examine what we can call the ‘political imaginary’ – how we not only make but also imagine future worlds (Moscovici, 1988), imagine our own place within these and therefore contribute to the mobilisation of different possibilities (Sirin & Fine, 2007) and different politics (Phoenix, Howarth & Philogene, forthcoming).

Connecting multiculturalism and nationalism: An ideological dilemma

In drawing nationalism and multiculturalism together, there are at least three conceptual and practical challenges to address that are evident in social science as well as everyday debates:

• 1 The idea that global, multicultural, cosmopolitan or even postnational identities may be more significant today than national identities
• 2 The assumption that nationalism is a feature of violent conflicts and prejudices between different cultural groups
• 3 The claim that multiculturalism ‘ignores’ majority national groups as well as sustains a problematic form of cultural essentialism.

Are contemporary identities multicultural and thereby postnational?

When thinking about the everyday level of intergroup relations, some argue that nationalism (as discourses of proud affiliation to the nation) and national identities (as overtly identifying in national terms) are of diminishing significance in today’s world. This is a global world where “individuals, through diverse neighbourhoods, foreign travel, work abroad, global media and online social networks, will be in constant interaction across cultural and national boundaries” (Modood, 2014, p. 2), although this may be more true for middle-class migrants than others. As Gleibs and Reddy discuss in Chapter 5, globalisation has fundamentally changed daily life – what we eat, what we listen to, what we believe in (Vertovec, 2010). As we increasingly live in a world of everyday multiculturalism (Harris, 2013), have national identities become less significant? Some theorists argue that actual and symbolic (through consumption and intercultural exchange) movements across borders and the development of more globalised connections mean that collective identities and loyalties will become more salient at human and global levels, where cosmopolitanism replaces the nation state and we enter an age of postnationalism (Nesbitt-Larking, 2014) with commitments to a single human community and a shared morality (Appiah, 1997). Hence, community and national bonds may weaken as more cosmopolitan, multicultural or intercultural identities emerge (Barrett, 2013; Moghaddam, 2008).

However, when national identities are threatened by transnational and global encounters and identities, they may be fiercely (re)asserted, defended and fought over (Wagner, et al., 2012). Thus, as Calhoun has argued, “globalization has not put an end to nationalism… . Indeed, globalization fuels resurgence in nationalism among people who feel threatened...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface: Everyday politics
• Part I The politics of intercultural relations
• Part II Political agency and social change
• Part III Political discourse and practice
• Conclusion: The social psychology of everyday politics: Beyond binaries and banality
• Index