Objective
It is agreed that multiculturalism (MC) has become one of the dominant discourses in Western political theory and practice concerning the needs and demands of weakened minorities, giving increasing attention to issues of identity and recognition of cultural difference. Despite nearly thirty years of political experiment and research, pressing questions concerning weakened minorities' status within Western democracies are still disputed. Principally, this research project claims that issues of intercultural (IC) interaction between different and conflicting communities have scantily been addressed by the MC paradigm. Based on empirical phenomena and philosophical perspectives, the main research object goes beyond MC assumptions and politics focusing on IC practices and their effects on the MC state of affairs. Then, the project will develop a theoretical framework for interpretation of (i) the properties of day to day social, IC practices between individuals and groups across different communities in European societies, and of (ii) the diversification of the construction of subjectivity and identity as a result of the incorporation into practices and modes of thought together with cultural others in various micro-social spheres. The research will be conducted using the philosophical tool-kit of post-structuralist critical thought in cultural studies and politics principally those of the French philosophers G. Deleuze and M. Foucault. At the practical level, the project engage with the insufficiency of present MC politics to cope with the heterogeneous state of affairs in European societies, making sense of IC practices and their effects on the changing operations of power across the socia field in specific spaces of action, both for inter-group relations and the self. Thus, the project places philosophical research at the service of political action in the public space, especially with a significant contribution in the confrontation with racism and xenophobia.
Fields of science
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2007-2-1-IEF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)Coordinator
CF24 0DE Cardiff
United Kingdom