Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies at IFT

Evans, Gillian (2006) Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain Palgrave Macmillan

This book was enjoyed greatly I think by all of us in the book club, most especially for the style of its writing: engaging, funny and sad by turns, full of characters with whom we felt great sympathy, and of incident and analysis which connected with our interests and work. One of its great joys is the presence throughout the book of the author and even her family, telling us about how she came to the work, and its impact upon her during the period of her research, all written in a delightfully unpretentious, non-academic style, so that we the readers could connect too with her experiences, and make sense of the conclusions that she reaches. Several of us spoke about how suddenly we were seeing everything through its lens, how we were talking to everyone we met about it, and its one of those books I think which will shift the way we think and practice.

The community she is writing of is the community that she is living amongst, the people living on a housing estate in Bermondsey, South London and perhaps that’s what the name of the book should have ended (..in Bermondsey, rather than in Britain), because one of its conclusions (very much in keeping with Pedro’s findings described below for the Ladbroke Road/Portobello Road area) is that it is location that is crucial to how her subjects defined ourselves.  She goes and talks with her neighbours, spends time in their homes, gives their children tuition and spends time in their children’s primary school, observing lives and telling us about what she sees.  Its by turn funny, engaging and tragic, and never less than engaging. 

Her central thesis is that schools are broadly middle-class in their orientation and values and that working class children are therefore poorly prepared for the way that education is delivered there: the ‘form of participation’ that is expected there simply does not match what is expected of them at home and in their immediate surroundings.  In order for such children to participate in learning she sees that first of all they will need a ‘bodily disposition, a restraint that embodies order and readiness for concentrated application to work which demands conceptual thinking.’  What she doesn’t mention here but what this made me think about was the debate about ADHD and its prevalence in boys – and I wondered about whether there had been studies looking at its relationship to class.  I particularly enjoyed this attention to the physical – she writes very memorably too about how she found herself walking differently round the streets of South London as the study went on – ‘I feel the weight of my feet on the pavement and a very subtle change in my stance as I begin to appreciate how the most common of Bermondsey girls come to claim the pavement as their own via the cultivation of a tough, territorial disposition.’  What she saw in the school she observed was teachers devoting large amounts of energies to managing (or failing to manage!) children’s bodily comportment, and the battles between them for status in the group.  She tells horror stories reminiscent of ‘Lord of the Flies’ about the kinds of everyday cruelty between ten year old boys in classrooms that are quite outside their teacher’s (often locums) control, stories which are all about boys jostling for status and nothing at all to do with what we usually think of as education.

 

Some of the topics we discussed in the group was how particularly English the notion of class was (how ‘working class’ just didn’t translate in colonial contexts); how good the book was once again (as with other texts we have looked at together) on how race is a gendered experience; whether the author had ‘gone native’ in seeming to hold the view that to be valued in our society is to either be middle-class or to be ethnic in some way; the academic ideas that she was drawing from in her analysis (what are those Christina Toren references you promised Pedro?); the importance of knowledge and language structure as opposed to class; and finally how reading this text was affecting the way we thought about our work with families.

Several of us spoke about how for many of the families we worked with elsewhere in London the lack of a ‘predisposition’ for learning also rang true, while the pre-occupation amongst children for status amongst their peers was also all-consuming and interfering with the learning task.  We looked forward to using the lens provided by the book to help orient ourselves to interviewing children, parents and teachers in ways that would be more likely to help them to find a way forward which recognised and appreciated such pre-occupations, and their impact upon family lives and relationships.

Philip Messent

30.7.07         

      

Book Club: Cartographies of Diaspora

The Centre for Cross-cultural Studies Book Club recently met to discuss “Cartographies of Diaspora” by Avtar Brah. The general consensus was that, although a difficult read, this was a highly stimulating book, which succeeded in presenting challenging ways of thinking about ‘difference’ in its broadest sense.

This is a brief summary of some of our specific responses:

• Since our last meeting there had been an article in the Guardian Society section, 25.4.07, which mirrored some of our misgivings about our last book, “The New East End”, particularly regarding its underlying polemic (which was linked to Margaret Hodge’s recent call for privileging indigenous population housing claims). Not only did book club members seem more at ease with Avtar Brah’s politics but, moreover, we appreciated how thoroughly she placed herself at the outset in terms of her own history and politics.
• The book was informative about Asian cultures across a wide range, incorporating India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This informative approach was useful in breaking down stereotypes (e.g. that Asian women are non-militant, that Asian families experience particular inter-generational conflict).
• There was interest in one of the central themes of the book, “that racism is always a gendered and sexualised phenomenon” (p.156), including the observation that although racism is particular to local contexts, these contexts invariably “articulate with patriarchal class structures” (p. 110).
• Discussion gravitated towards ideas about locality: interest in the locality in which migrants settle as well as the locality from which they come, and how culture/identity thereby evolves; “If the circumstances of leaving are important, so, too, are those of arrival and settling down. How and in what ways do these journeys conclude, and intersect in specific places, specific spaces, and specific historical junctures?” (p. 182)
• From a clinical point of view, the importance of diaspora was described in terms of diaspora as the crucible in which identity is formed, conveyed by the phrase “diasporic imagined community”.
• The book ended with an ambitious (and, some found, over-ambitious and scattered) chapter subtitled “The politics of difference, commonality and universalism”.  This argues for a “new collective politics”, in which the idea of ‘diaspora space’ helps to take “cultural, economic, political, psychic and social intersectionality fully on board” (p. 248).

However, such summarizing can do justice neither to the richness of detail or breadth of such a book; so there’s no getting away from it: it’s definitely worth reading yourself.

Text by Robin Ewart-Biggs

An Introductory Course: Cross-Cultural and Therapeutic Work with Refugee Families (London)

Children and adults within refugee families can present with emotional or mental health needs and difficulties, which may leave the worker feeling 'stuck' or not quite sure what to do. In this introductory course, we will explore together some of the dilemmas that we face in our work with refugee families.

This course is open to all professionals working with refugees and asylum seekers - including health and social services professionals, advocates, community workers, mental health workers and interpreters.

This 8 day course will run in London between September and October 2007 on the following dates:

• September: 6th, 7th, 14th and 28th.
• October: 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th.

There are only 15 places available. The deadline for applications is the 9th August 2007.

Please find attached more information about the course as well as an application form.

For further information please contact Ingrid Mayegibo on 020 7391 9150 or send an email to [email protected].

Download Course Description: Download course_description.doc

Download Application Form: Download application_form.doc

On mixed race identity and levels of analysis

Mental health is for clinical psychology what western society is for anthropology: a negative construct. More often the case, we define ourselves against both notions by leaving either undefined. With Melanesia in mind, the anthropologist Marylyn Strathern emphasises that it is in the western way of explaining things and events to divide in levels of analysis. Better to say – and this one is meant specifically for anthropologists, and within them, to some anthropologists – it is in a western imagination of what Melanesian imagination could conceive western thinking to be (if only Melanesian imagination could), that to explain, one must level-divide. Complex as it may be, there is indeed a value in trying to imagine what the other could imagine us to be if only are categories were a bit closer. Systemic practitioners do it all the time. They call it circular thinking.

Of all branches of psychology, systemic psychology is the one where dividing into levels has assumed greater popularity. There is a problem, there is a family. There is a human need for a systemic formulation, even as a provisory guide. There is the occasional impasse in interpretation for facts do not seem to conform, relations do not seem to fit in our logical schemes as nicely as one would like. There is the last (often comfortable) resource of sending the problem, the family, ourselves, our formulation, to a different level of analysis…and backwards…and forwards…yet how useful are levels of analysis in the human sciences or systemic thinking?

My position on this matter is disappointingly simple: levels are but a direct expression of the amount of information the mind can take in at a time. As systemic practitioners, anthropologists, human scientists, people dealing with mind at one level or the other it is a matter of discipline to learn to take more, and to learn to take more ‘at a time’. I take ‘mixed race’ as an example of what the mind does when we dare not to imagine beyond levels.

In the social sciences, much has been written on the notion of mixed-race. Mixed race is often taken as epitome of mixed identity: capacity to synthesise Englishness and non-Englishness in one single body (Englishness, regardless to say, being the negative construct in this case). Mixed race as an epitome of mixed identity feels to me a strange contradiction. It is example of how a social logic (identity), allegedly conjured up to go beyond biological determinism (race) eventually comes to reproduce biological determinism and ultimately shot itself in the foot (a similar case can be argued for current uses of ‘gender’). Why - let’s say as mere example - do second generations of Eastern European or Portuguese immigrants epitomise less a cross between Englishness and one Other (identity) than the alleged mixed race person? Is crossed biology a necessary condition for crossed identity? Or is the mixed-race/mixed-identity a remnant of an old habit of thought that tells us to divide into levels, starting with basic biology and moving up to people’s social bits?

By this I do not mean to minimize the eventual difficulties that mixed race individuals and families go through in their everyday sociability. I am a clinician as much as a human scientist, even if a clinician currently out of practice, due to circumstances beyond my control. Feelings of the kind should not be silenced in a session. I mean to suggest, nevertheless, that as human thinkers who provide to larger audiences the categories which often become part of popular discourse, if we are to take identity seriously, we should probably be working to show that race, or particular mixtures of biology, are no more a condition for mixed identity than any of the non-mixed race people who, second generations as they are, come to combine the values of a particular Nation State with their particular forms of otherness, whatever their biology is.

Mixed-race as mixed-identity is, to me, a clear example of what divides real researchers from practitioners of research (or even, if you don’t mind me saying, real clinicians from practitioners of clinical psychology): the former start with ideas; the latter can only start with people.

Living in a Multicultural Society: To veil or not to veil?

  The first time I remember seeing a 'burkha' clad,fully veiled Muslim woman was when I was nine, and lived in India. I was with my mother, who gestured towards the woman's voluminous clothes and whispered 'bundh gobi' (Hindi for cabbage). I was filled with a horrified fascination, fuelled by my Hindu mother's feelings towards Muslim 'others'. My fantasies were many. If I was naughty, would i be captured by the 'bundh gobi', bundled up in her skirts, and taken away to a distant land of the faceless?

I learned, subliminally, that these were women who were oppressed and fundamentalist. My mother spoke-without speaking- of other symbols of oppression and fundamentalism.  I heard, yet again, of how my father had been disowned and disinherited from his Sikh family for cutting his hair.

In post-colonial, independent India, my parents and their circle of friends prided themselves on their liberalism and a part of the espoused liberalism was to oppose fundamentalist religious practices. However, in the context of  'multicultural' U.K, the issue  of removing the veil acquires a completely different meaning. Paradoxically, it demonstrates a lack of tolerance that could have the effect of hindering, rather than fostering community relations.

Many have objected to the veil on feminist grounds, on grounds that 'it takes power away from women' (Rushdie). To my mind, this is an inherently dangerous position. It reminds me of the impassioned social worker who urges the Asian woman to leave her oppressive marriage, cut off relations with her extended family and live in a refuge, while she gets her life together. Who are we to judge whether a particular woman is oppressed or not?  Surely, within certain families and communities, the veil could add power to a woman's role?  Even if we are dealing with an oppressed woman who would like to remove her veil, it may take a long time for her, her family and wider community to accept her wish to do so.

If we are to live harmoniously in a multicultural society, we have to be prepared to tolerate, if not accept difference. We have to allow people to exercise agency and make their own choices about religious and cultural practices.

Reenee Singh

Director, Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Institute of Family Therapy.

Cultural Aversion

Daniel Deronda sent me the following:

What does 'cultural aversion' mean?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5312094.stm

 

I guess at a time when India is coming up as an economic power, it pays to put aside the 'cultural aversion' and develop cordial relations.

As I read the story about the U.K. promoting ties with India, I wondered why there should be 'cultural aversion' towards a country that the British colonised for so long, or indeed, what it means. 

Any ideas would be welcome.

   

Multiculturalism and its Discontents

How lucky we are to live in a "truly" multicultural society, where the national dish is chicken tikka masala and where you can hear more a host of different languages, almost drowning out the English, on any bus in Central London.

Those from minority ethnic groups are expected to "integrate" or "assimilate" and for their lives to be coherent, but what about the "gaps between"? What about some refugees whose expreriences of displacement, torture and trauma will never translate into a coherent narrative? What about the two British Asian men who were forced off a plane by other passengers on grounds of their appearance and their apparent use of Arabic? What about those who are valued in their communities for practising their religion, but viewed with suspicion by the outside world, for that very practice?

In planning a topic for next year's confence, offered by the Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies at the Institute of Family Therapy these are some of the issues I would like us to grapple with. I have some possible titles in mind - "Multiculturalism and its Discontents" is one, another is "The Meaning of the Multiculturalism: Integration, Cohesion and the Gaps Between" and another is, more simply- "The Dilemmas of Multicultural Living".

On reflection, I like the last title the best, as "dilemmas" is a word we often use as systemic practitioners. And for the family therapist, there are indeed, many dilemmas when working, both inter-culturally and cross-culturally, in our multicultural society. I guess the most important is how we position ourselves. How do we work within the contexts of discrimination, disadvantage and powerlessness that constitute the worlds inhabited by our clients? How do we understand the role of religion and values in our clients' belief systems, especially if they are very different from our own? What are our own experiences of migration and integration and how do they affect our work with clients from similar and dissimilar background? Do we believe in culturally/ethnically matched services? How do we collaborate with interpreters and bi-cultural workers when working with families whose first language is not English? In which instances do we think that cultural sensitivity is the most important consideration, and when do we privilege the safety of the child or family as the highest context marker?

So, these are some questions that we will address at the conference. Pleaset let us have your views and what you would like included and I will write more as planning for the conference, scheduled for the 2nd of November 2007, develops.

Reenee Singh

Director, Centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Institue of Family Therapy.

   

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Article for "Context" by Wilma C. Mangabeira

The Launch of the Centre for Cross Cultural Studies: Some reflections about understanding "the Other"

Wilma C. Mangabeira is a Family Therapist Trainee, Tavistock Clinic and Senior Lecturer, School of Health and Social Science, Middlesex University.

Download ArticleforContext.doc

An Interview with Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD by Randall C. Wyatt, PhD and Victor Yalom, PhD

Couples therapy and Conflict Resolution

Monica McGoldrick L.C.S.W. is a well know teacher, author and family therapist. She is the Director of the Multicultural Family Institute in Highland Park, New Jersey and the author of several seminals in the field, including Ethnicity and Family Therapy (3rd Ed.), Genograms in Family Assessment and Revisioning the Family.

Click this link for a full transcript of the interview.