The impact of media representations on Somali youth's experiences in educational spaces
In this article, I examine how the politics of representation following September 11, 2001 attacks on the US impact the experiences of Somali youth in educational spaces in North America. This research draws from a discourse analysis of representations of Somalis and Somalia in North American newspaper articles (n=82) between August and October 2011 and 51 interviews with Somali youth between the ages of 14 and 30. It also draws from ethnographic fieldwork for 16 months ( July 2010−October 2011) in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, Canada and Minneapolis-St. Paul, USA. This includes participant-observation at Somali youth events, organizations, centres, homework programs, mosques and after-school and weekend Islamic schools that provide spaces of learning for Somali youth outside of public/private schools. In this article, I argue that the representations of Somalis in the media as either perpetrators or victims of violence are gendered and have variously politicized Somali men and women within the current ‘War on Terror.’ As a result, Somali youth are targets of routine forms of structural violence, expressed in discrimination and marginalization as well as interpersonal forms of violence, including bullying. I examine how these forms of violence are both carried out and resisted in educational spaces and how they variously affect Somali youth’s experiences in school. The article shows how Somali community educational spaces provide spaces of belonging and a space to learn the skills needed to challenge representations of Somalis and Somalia in the media. Somali youths’ experiences of violence and within educational spaces reshape their identities.
Contesting the Politics of Culture, Rewriting the Boundaries of Inclusion: Working for Social Justice with Muslim and Arab Communities
This article calls on anthropologists of education to assert a more public voice attacking the ideological purposes to which the concept of "culture" has been deployedfollowing the September 11 attacks. We must support schools, communities, and the media to address the power and politics of race and religion in contemporary social and political contexts, rather than focus primarily on multicultural education about Islamic and Arab "culture." Finally, this article urges us to expand our knowledge of the processes of social incorporation for Muslim and Arab immigrant youth to include a deeper understanding of how global politics contribute to young people's sense of emerging identities. Language is woefully inadequate for representing the enormity of impact wrought by the September 11 attacks, first and foremost on those who lost their lives or loved ones, but also on human consciousness worldwide. I am, however, wary of language that casts September 11 primarily in terms of rupture, for it risks turning attention away from the continuities of vast social, economic, and political injustices that cut across national boundaries. My commitment to working for social justice was born long before September 11, but that day and all that have followed have challenged me to wrestle anew with the nature of how I engage with this work professionally.1 In these past months perhaps no question has troubled me more than how my work as an educational anthropologist can contribute fruitfully and with some immediacy to a social justice agenda demanded by the changing contemporary political contexts. I have listened across various social spheres-schools, communities, and the media-for how people are struggling to make sense of September 11 and to address the ensuing shifts in local and global political landscapes. In doing so, I have become convinced that by bringing to bear our insights and knowledge about culture, ideology, and global politics, anthropologists of education have a vital role to play in these conversations. In this article, I take up three issues that educational anthropologists are well suited to address. First, I explore how the concept of culture is currently being employed in dominant discourse about September 11 and its aftermath and suggest that we must have a more public voice attacking the ideological purposes to which "culture" is being put. Secondly, I
Same Same But Different - also in Europe! A New Methodological Approach in Cross-Country Analysis of Communication Structuresapplied to five EU member states
The EU still lacks a truly European public sphere. On this level, there is still a clear lack of integration between individual member states. This means that national public spheres and cultures are still of great importance for European communication and media professionals. Comparative research into the similarities and differences between different nations is therefore valuable for cross-border PR communication activities. This paper lays out the methodological foundation for such research, discussing possible approaches and difficulties associated with comparative research. The author then introduces a potential heuristic framework for comparative analysis: the International Corporate Communication Compass. This framework is applied to five case-study EU countries (Denmark, Germany, France, Poland and the UK), showing the differences and similarities in a range of different contexts that affect public communication in all its forms. The conclusion examines how the results of such studies could be used in order to compare communication identities of different countries. This can potentially help in the development of a European public identity on the long run and in a first step can led towards a better, more adapted communication structure about European citizenship. Ultimately, communication structures within the EU might become more Europeanized than they