B5: Multiethnizität

New experience of increased levels of immigration by black immigrants challenged Britain's social order in the aftermath of the Second World War. The 1958 race riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham illustrate the degree of conflict implicit in this challenge and form the starting-point for this project.

Knowledge and carnival

The sub-project has two points of departure. It examines how the existence of various ethnic groups was perceived and scientifically interpreted and investigates the models of interpretation which were transferred from other societies to British systems of representation. In the assessment timeframe the social sciences played a key role in the generation and presentation of societies' self knowledge.

But the increasing frequency of "others" as self-conscious subjects caused these scientifically based forms of representation to lose their legitimacy from the 1970s onwards. Accordingly, representational forms of ethnic groups and the process by which they established their identity will also be examined. Characteristics enabling a distinction between identity and alterity are not only outwardly assigned to social groups, group members themselves perceive and/or construct one another's common features.

The perspective of "race relations" research

The first study shows that the new immigration caused social scientists to invent stereotypes of an "alien" and an "own" British identity which were founded on the essentialist assumption of cultural difference between the coloured and white populations. The ethnic groups' self-conceptions were disregarded. The British social sciences followed US research which had worked on "race relations" since the 1920s. In consequence, US researchers' interpretive models were incorporated into British research and became representations of British society.

The perspective of the Afro-Caribbeans

The second study examines the Notting Hill Carnival. "It's our carnival", London's Afro-Caribbean community postulated in the 1970s. This demand had not been there from the outset: Notting Hill Carnival was not always a Caribbean festival – and above all it was first necessary to establish what "we" meant in differentiation from the "others". For in coming to  Britain most Afro-Caribbeans considered that they were returning to their mother country.

Only gradually did London's Afro-Caribbean community develop an identity of its own through the Notting Hill Carnival. Over time this was oriented in line with various concepts (Trinidad and its carnival, Jamaica and Rastafarianism and reggae, Africa). These different orientations were reflected in the festival and thus also in the Afro-Caribbeans' self-understanding, giving rise to a (sometimes conflict-ridden) renegotiation of self and other.

Material and method

Representations are understood to mean a perception of social conditions, their assimilation as a guide to action, the organisation of knowledge and practices for the construction and expression of an individual reality. Transfer research and post-colonial studies are used as methods. Documents of foundations funding the social sciences, local newspapers and statements by the Afro-Caribbeans provide the sources.

Publications by members of this sub-project

• Jörg Feuchter, Regina Finsterhölzl, Andrea Fischer-Tahir, Friedhelm Hoffmann, Johan Grußendorf, Simone Holzwarth, Maren Klotz, Michi Knecht, Veronica Oelsner, Nurhak Polat, Reet Tamme, Stefan Beck, Christiane Reinecke: Wissen und soziale Ordnung. Eine Kritik der Wissensgesellschaft. Mit einem Kommentar von Stefan Beck. SFB 640, Berlin 2010.  (mehr)