IV: Encounters

Posisjon  5

IV: Encounters

Participants:
Anne Britt Flemmen, University of Tromsø
Marit Aure, University of Tromsø
Percy Oware, University of Tromsø
Marianne Brekke, University of Tromsø

Encounters between people is somewhat the organising concept in this group, but as observed from our first group session in Roskilde, we have divergent methodological approaches to it. Thus, the obvious challenge for the group is to both challenge and complement each other's ideas and efforts.

The concept of encounters conveys different meanings depending on the context. It means interaction and social relations between people on one hand and, on another, implies avoidance and exclusion of people. Since people are bearers of the differential attributes society assign to their backgrounds (gender, ethnicity, class, race etc.), encounters are naturally influenced by structures of differentiation. Or diversity and differentiation characterise encounters between people.

Multiculturalism or encounters between people with varying ethnic and cultural backgrounds
is our focus. The encounters between an immigrant and an ethnic Norwegian are often on unequal footing, making it difficult to discount structures of differentiation in contemporary global flows - people, images and ideas. What sort of attributes matter in such multicultural encounters? How do structures of differentiation manifest themselves in global encounters?

Studying encounters therefore involve knowledge about people's social and cultural backgrounds. We also ask if we can use the term 'cultural encounters' when we discuss encounters in multicultural contexts. By using the term 'cultural', there is the risk of reducing encounters to cultural differences. While culture may be a relevant focus in some contexts, in others, other issues may be more relevant. What is then defined cultural has to be limited to specific issues and situations rather than allowing it to cloud all studies of encounters.

Research projects
Encounters between ethnic Norwegians and Russians and other non-Western countries is a shared interest in the group. Marit Aure and Anne Britt Flemmen are interested in relations between Russians and Norwegians. Marit's research project focuses on work migration in local communities in Finnmark and Russia. She is interested in how work migration both influences the communities people move in and out, with her current findings showing that migration involves strong transnational connections.

Anne Britt is working on a project involving Norwegian men who marry Russian women. Her interest is how the men negotiate ethnicity/nationality in their constructions of gender and relationships. How is ethnicity/nationality made relevant and which concepts are useful in order to understand the complexities of these cross-cultural/transnational marriages?

Percy Oware and Marianne Brekke are concerned with encounters between non-Western immigrants and ethnic Norwegians. Tromsø is the initial focus of this study but it could be extended to other areas in northern Norway.

Marianne intends to study encounters between immigrants and Norwegians, with emphasis on the youth. Which contexts do youth with different cultural attributes meet? What are the patterns and relational outcomes of such encounters? This study involves all faces of encounters, viz. interaction and avoidances. How youth is making use of mobile phones and Internet are also interesting in studying encounters in this project. The proposed social arenas for the study are the places youth 'hang out' such as youth clubs and cafés.

Percy also proposes a study of immigrant food shops in Tromsø, which are patronised by both ethnic Norwegians and immigrants. The food items in these shops represent an aspect of the global flow of objects from non-Western countries to the West, making 'exotic' food a platform for engagement. But, what are the implied encounters? Current global processes are arguably dominated by Western ideas and premises, which reduce the essences of other cultures to vehicles of instrumental utility (leisure, entertainment, decorative edifices etc.) or de-politicised issues such as exotic foods, exotic dances, exotic design motifs and exotic music. When the core of a culture is marginalised to such de-politicised issues, the standards are thus set for the legitimacy of flows from it in the global calculus. Consequently, while Asian spices, African art forms, Latin American dances and Caribbean reggae music are daily consumables in Western homes and public places, the person (immigrant) from these global peripheries is an interloper: an unwanted employee, an unwanted neighbour in housing estates and an unwanted asylum seeker who should return home. A globalisation that allows varieties of far-off foods to pass effortlessly through borders to stock welcoming kitchen shelves consigns the immigrant to a cold reception. This represents a form of avoidance in encounters; a ring in the increasing paradoxes of globalisation. What are the driving forces of such avoidances in global flows or encounters? Why are the food and the immigrant from the same culture treated differently? What spaces are occupied by the food and person?

The first assignment for the group is to read and discuss texts that cover our research interests on encounters. Perspectives on transnational relations/transnationalism will be discussed. By reading and discussing some articles related to our research projects, we might end up joint writings.