Research
Database
 An extravagant Pakistani wedding or a moderate Muslim celebration? What is Muslim and what is Pakistani? - It wasn't long before I began to understand that that which permeates all of their discussions about identity is the search for an Islamic identity. They are very concerned with separating culture and religion, says Liv Bjørnhaug Johansen, who recently submitted her Master's thesis about "identity-work on a Norwegian-Pakistani webpage")
|
 Both researchers and Turkish authorities view them as fundamentalists. But actually they engage in totally normal religious activities. "It is important to render innocuous that which is harmless", says the anthropologist Johannes Elgvin, who in his Master's thesis takes issue with previous research on the Koran school movement.
|
Immigrant women do not leave the workforce at a higher rate than Norwegian women when they have children. The younger generation is doing better than their parents" generation. But education is not as important for obtaining a permanent job as is commonly believed. In her Master"s thesis, sociologist Ida Drange gives us new insight into immigrant women on the job market.
|
What representations of "Norwegianess" and "normality" are imparted when teachers teach about gender and sexuality in a multicultural classroom? Does the instruction build upon mainstream understandings of the difference between "us" and "them", or do the teachers challenge these types of understandings? While most studies about "the New Norway" focuses on minorities, Åse Røthing directs her focus at both the majority and the minority, the "Norwegian" and the "non-Norwegian."
|
They talk a lot about football, school and love. Whatever their topic of conversation, they almost always refer back to their status as foreigners. Linguist Inger Margrethe Hvenekilde Seim has analyzed a conversation between two youths with Kurdish and Pakistani background. The conversation was so interesting that she wrote her entire Master's thesis on it. This linguist thinks that a conversation analysis approach should be utilized more frequently. "It is important for youth to be studied on their own terms", she says.
|
Children act as interpreters for their parents, immigrants with poor language skills are not assigned an interpreter in important situations. For over 20 years, the quality of interpreting services in Norway has been criticized. "The main problem is not that there are people who are willing to serve as interpreters, yet lack the appropriate training to do so, but that we as a society have not set out minimum standards for who may perform as an interpreter", says the social anthropologist Hilde Fiva. She has recently published one of the first studies based on fieldwork among interpreters in Norway.
|
Why do sociologists claim that globalization leads to greater equality, while most people in the world are experiencing greater inequality? Why do sociologists say that we live in a post-industrial society while industry lives on in good health - in low-cost countries? In her Master's thesis, Ida Hjelde reveals sociology's eurocentric perspective on the world. - Sociology must get a grasp on how our lives are connected to the rest of the world: A science that does not see the world in all of its complexity is not a good science, she says.
|
Do honor killings and forced marriages have more to do with integration or gender equality? How diverse is Nordic feminism? Although Norwegian, Swedish and Danish policies on gender equality have had striking similarities throughout the entire 20th century, these policies have quite different approaches to multiculturalism. Trude Langvasbråten calls attention to this fact in her Master’s thesis in political science.
|
How did idea of the dangerous immigrant emerge? Migration is increasingly defined as a security problem. Military skips patrol the ocean and walls are built to shut out migrants. "We need a global perspective in criminology, or else the globally marginalized will disappear from our radar", argues the criminologist Katja Franko Aas, who is writing a book on globalization and criminality.
|
Why are certain religious communities granted government funding, even
though they treat men and women differently? Why does Norway - despite
viewing itself as the world leader in gender equality - prioritize
religious freedom higher than gender equality? – “The fact that gender
equality does not have the same status as religious freedom gives cause
to wonder,” argues political scientist Hege Skjeie, who received one of
CULCOM’s research stipends to conduct her research project, “Religious
pluralism and (state)-feminism in integration policy.”
|
Can immigrants from Punjab help us to understand the abortion of female
fetuses among Indians in Punjab? What do people who originate from this
province, but now reside in Norway, think about this problem? Religious
scholar Torkel Brekke (University of Oslo) and physician Narpinder
Singh (Rikshospitalet University Hospital) will now carry out the first
study of sex-selective abortion in a transnational context.
|
They learn Norwegian by watching the soap opera Hotel Caesar, and
carefully follow debate programs and the news. Cameroonians in Norway
consciously use the media to acquire knowledge of Norwegian society. At
the same time they feel like the Norwegian media excludes them. Also,
limited access to the Internet in Cameroon has hindered the development
of a living diaspora community. These are some of the findings in Henry
Nsaidzeka Mainsah’s Master’s thesis about media habits among
Norwegian-Cameroonians.
|
The Lonely Planet travel guide lays beside a book about gender
relations in a Turkish village. In the fall, CULCOM’s research fellow
Therese Sandrup will begin field work in the farthest southeastern
corner of Europe. - “It is important to look at the migration process
in its entirety. Certain actions and decisions are the result of a
dialogue between the past and the present, the country of origin and
the Norwegian context,” she says.
|
In the 1970s, The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO)
struggled with integrating women and new occupational groups. Margrethe
Daae-Qvale believes the same is now happening with immigrants. But this
historian also sees signs of more receptiveness among the labor
movement. In connection with her Master’s thesis, she has interviewed
immigrants who have been active in the trade union, together with
central participants within LO’s forum for ethnic equality. |
Do Christians and Muslims face common challenges, or are they so
distant from each other that communication becomes impossible? Do they
have elements of a common strategy in order to relate to their
respective holy scriptures regarding gender roles and women’s
oppression? In order to answer these questions, the theologian
Anne-Hege Grung has formed a dialogue group with Christian and Muslim
women. They are meeting to discuss texts from the Bible, the Koran and
Hadith.
|
 In
studying media habits among Norwegian-Iranian people, sociologist
Sharam Alghasi wants to comment on the relationship between Norwegians
and Iranians. “You cannot consider yourself to be Norwegian if you feel
you are excluded from Norwegian society through the media. I am trying
to understand how certain power mechanisms in the relationship between
Iranians and the media leads Iranians to believe that they occupy a
certain place in Norwegian society,” he says.
|
 Anthropologist
Cicilie Fagerlid had actually intended to study peaceful cosmopolitan
existence in Paris. But a month after she had relocated there, on the
day she completed her French language course, riots broke out in the
suburbs. “There is loads of cosmopolitanism here, but when people
around you are angry, it is bit inappropriate not to take their anger
seriously, and just see the things that are going well,” she says. This
research fellow now wants to find out why France ended up in this
situation - in large part by studying the poetry slam scene.
|
Previously Unni Wikan has been interested in immigrant women and
children. She now wants us to be more concerned with the men. Better
insights into the mens’ situations could prevent conflicts, says the
anthropologist, who is working on the analysis of two court cases to do
with honour killing and forced marriage. – I am sitting on top of a
goldmine of ethnographic material that illustrates cultural complexity
in a whole new way, she says.
|
 Do
not underestimate free will and do not trivialize coercion! This is the
conclusion in Anja Bredal’s doctoral thesis on arranged marriage. After
ten years of research, one doctorate and several journal and newspaper
articles this sociologist is still interested in the topic. She wonders
about one thing in particular: How is it possible to maintain a nuanced
moderate position and yet still be interesting?
|
 By
studying tombstones Alexa Døving has gained new knowledge about
Norwegians and Pakistanis. The researcher of religion will now use this
new knowledge to write a textbook that will bring nuance to disputed
questions on culture, integration and multiculturalism. - We don’t have
books that discuss these issues by using actual examples from daily
life, she says.
|
 -
I want to investigate the space in between. The space between
Christians and Muslims. I wonder whether there is an open landscape
which we share and which nobody has control over. Theologian Oddbjørn
Leirvik likes metaphors and pictures. He uses them a lot in
conversation. Leirvik has published a new book about Christian-Muslim
dialogue - a topic that is also central to his contribution to the
research program Cultural Complexity.
|
 Special
needs educationalist Ivar Morken wishes to study the relationship
Pakistani parents have to Norwegian schools: What are their
expectations? How good are schools at in involving the parents? For
Ivar Morken cultural complexity is just as much about class differences
in Gudbrandsdalen as it is about immigration from distant lands.
|
 Norway
has always been a land of immigration. In the three volume “Norsk
innvandringshistorie” ( A History of Immigration in Norway) the
historian Knut Kjedstadli, in collaboration with other historians and
social scientists, showed that it is wrong to believe that Norway was a
homogeneous society before the arrival of Pakistanis and Somalis. In
the Cultural Complexity research programme Kjeldstadli hopes to widen
this perspective: He will collect life histories - immigrants’ stories
of migration to Norway and their encounter with Norwegian society.
|
 What
is the relationship between ethnic Norwegian and non-ethnic Norwegian
feminists or immigrant women? This is one of the big questions that
Beatrice Halsaa, leader of the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender
Research (SKK) is interested in. She has been one of three coordinators
for an international network of researchers, Women's Movement and
Internationalization and one of the editors of the book "Crossing
Borders" which explores the diversity of the global women's movement.
|
 How
does multicultural society challenge the Norwegian legal system and our
interpretation of the law? What happens when different conceptions of
the law meet? Should all people be treated alike - regardless of
background? Or should groups be given special treatment based on
religion and/or ethnicity? Jurists too are trying to come to grips with
multicultural questions. Anne Hellum is one of a group of researchers
taking part in the research programme Cultural Complexity and one of
the few jurists in Norway who combine law and anthropology.
|
 -
There are many different views on the relationship Islam has to human
rights. But no one has investigated processes based on the believer’s
needs, considers the historian of religion Lena Larsen, who has
recently been allocated funding from the research project Cultural
Complexity in the new Norway. She will be investigating fatwas’ -
Muslim legal decrees - interpretations of Sharia legal principles.
|
The
Master’s degree students are not just researching immigrants’ lives in
Norway. They are investigating too how Norwegians and immigrants
influence one another. Several projects cast a critical eye over
Norwegians’ handling of cultural diversity.
|
 Immigrants
have a tough time in the labour market. In Canada, the USA and Northern
Ireland employers are obliged to prevent discrimination by analyzing
their own company: Are ethnic minorities under-represented in the
workforce? - In Norway we don’t have such an arrangement. Therefore I
thought it would be interesting to see whether it was possible to do
something like that here too, says Ronald Craig. The jurist has
obtained funding to find an answer within six months.
|
Do the Sami’s claims for self-determination loosen their bonds to the
Norwegian political system? Has their allegiance been weakened or
strengthened after the establishment of the Sami Parliament? Political
scientist Anne Julie Semb has been allocated a research grant to carry
out a comprehensive questionnaire survey. - It has always fascinated me
how Norwegian Sami experience being Norwegian citizens, yet at the same
time have their own institutions, says the political scientist.
|
A recording studio where young artists create rap music is as
culturally complex as possible. This is the opinion of musicologists
Jan Sverre Knudsen and Stan Hawkins who are studying a hip-hop group in
Oslo: How does music create bonds? How does it create boundaries? And
how does immigration influence the development of music genres?
|
more interviews and texts will be translated into English continuously.
|
|
How does music create community?