Search results
Introduction 1 Multiculturalism can be acknowledged, championed, challenged or rejected, but it cannot be ignored because it describes a central feature of the world in which we live. Oddly, however, for many years it was ignored, despite decades of struggle by black Americans for full political inclusion, the confederalism adopted by several European states to accommodate linguistic and religious
From high above the Spaghetti Junction, to the caves beneath Nottingham castle, The Multicultural Midlands offers a fresh perspective on this overlooked region’s vibrant culture. Whether emanating from the Afrocentric streets of Steel Pulse’s Handsworth Revolution, the working men’s clubs where a young Lenny Henry cut his teeth, or the recesses of Adrian Mole’s teenage bedroom, the Midlands’ creativity thrives in unexpected places. Decades of misrepresentation have framed the Midlands as a cultural wasteland. This bold critical study, however, covers new ground. Using a wealth of archival sources and original interviews, the book maps the histories of twentieth-century migration onto the major cities of the Midlands – Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Wolverhampton and the surrounding Black Country – exploring how diverse communities have made their mark. The book offers detailed analysis of works by Benjamin Zephaniah, Alan Sillitoe, Meera Syal and Catherine O’Flynn, among many others. In doing so, it advances debates about multiculturalism, arts funding and devolution. Within a post-Brexit, post-COVID framework, working collaboratively across cultures will be crucial to the survival of the creative industries, and Tom Kew signposts some tentative routes forward. The Multicultural Midlands provides sustained analysis and critical insight, to demonstrate how a consideration of the Midlands’ multicultural creative output requires us to think again about received ideas. Approaching multifarious texts using an even-handed analytical framework facilitates the discovery of numerous, overlapping networks of influence and impact. These networks reveal how multiple mass migrations have shaped the region which is the beating heart of multicultural Britain.
8 Multicultualism in Ireland Introduction This chapter examines efforts to contest racism and discrimination faced by minorities in Ireland as expressions of multiculturalism. These include those by the state to oppose racism and discrimination, those which have emerged ‘bottom up’ at the instigation of activists from minority communities, notably from Travellers, and responses by the state to these. Current state practices, legislation and voluntary initiatives are described as amounting to a ‘weak’ multiculturalism. This multiculturalism is characterised by a
Literary Visions of Multicultural Ireland is the first full-length monograph in the market to address the impact that Celtic-Tiger immigration has exerted on the poetry, drama and fiction of contemporary Irish writers. The book opens with a lively, challenging preface by Prof. Declan Kiberd and is followed by 18 essays by leading and prestigious scholars in the field of Irish studies from both sides of the Atlantic who address, in pioneering, differing and thus enriching ways, the emerging multiethnic character of Irish literature. Key areas of discussion are: What does it mean to be ‘multicultural,’ and what are the implications of this condition for contemporary Irish writers? How has literature in Ireland responded to inward migration? Have Irish writers reflected in their work (either explicitly or implicitly) the existence of migrant communities in Ireland? If so, are elements of Irish traditional culture and community maintained or transformed? What is the social and political efficacy of these intercultural artistic visions? While these issues have received sustained academic attention in literary contexts with longer traditions of migration, they have yet to be extensively addressed in Ireland today. The collection will thus be of interest to students and academics of contemporary literature as well as the general reader willing to learn more about Ireland and Irish culture. Overall, this book will become most useful to scholars working in Irish studies, contemporary Irish literature, multiculturalism, migration, globalisation and transculturality. Writers discussed include Hugo Hamilton, Roddy Doyle, Colum McCann, Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, Dermot Bolger, Chris Binchy, Michael O'Loughlin, Emer Martin, and Kate O'Riordan, amongst others.
15 Peace, multiculturalism and development Professor Kader Asmal Introduction Professor Kader Asmal spoke on the 4 February 2008 about the preoccupation of a lifetime of academic study, activism, work on constitutional ideals and public service – which was a passion for and commitment to human rights, equality, justice and development. He spoke from his own experience of life in a system that had lacked basic justice and equality: apartheid South Africa; he spoke as one who had been obliged to leave in order to find opportunity and where he worked diligently to
Multiculturalism is widely considered to be a defining feature of Britain’s response to post-war immigration and remains the most important – if contested – idea underpinning the British approach to integration. This chapter explores the origins of the concept of multiculturalism by comparing official rhetoric about ‘new’ Commonwealth immigration during the 1950s and 1960s
12 Irish multicultural epiphanies: modernity and the recuperation of migrant memory in the writing of Hugo Hamilton Jason King At the height of the Irish economic boom on St. Patrick’s Day 2007, the Irish Times editorialised that ‘we are all the speckled people today. Confident, wealthy, forward-looking, internationalist, we can afford to define our identity in terms that celebrate our overlapping multiplicity of allegiances and diversity’ (Anon., 2007). In its allusion to Hugo Hamilton’s memoir The Speckled People (2003), the newspaper envisioned the author as
6 From civil rights to multiculturalism We humans, uniquely among the animal kingdom, have the ability to step outside our immediate experiences and imagine a different world. We have the capacity to look at the world from a different perspective, whether the perspective of other people, or of a future society that does not yet exist. Not only can we imagine a world that does not yet exist, we can also act to try to bring the world of our imaginations into being in the real world. Bees can build beehives, large complex structures, but they only build beehives
origin of the Cypriot Orthodox. When it became official policy in the 1920s to discourage Hellenism, the metropolitan and local governments used archaeology to invent the ‘Eteo-Cypriots’. 73 Before the First World War it was the Hellenic motif that dominated and this had a profound effect on the inhabitants of the island. Hellenism changed Cyprus from a multicultural to a multinational place. Inclusions