Cultural Diversity and The Empowerment of Minorities

by Al Haj, Majid; Mielke, Rosemarie; Du Bois, Inke (CON); Smidt, Nina (CON); Shohat, Sivan Spitzer (CON)

• ISBN13: 9781845451950
• ISBN10: 1845451953
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-02
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

Conflicts between different racial, ethnic, national and other social groups are becoming more and more salient. One of the main sources of these internal conflicts is social and economic inequality, in particular the increasing disparities between majority and minority groups. Even societies that had been successful in dealing with external conflicts and making the transition from war to peace have realized that this does not automatically resolve internal conflicts. On the contrary, the resolution of external conflicts may even sharpen the internal ones. This volume, a joint publication of the University of Haifa and the International Center for Graduate Studies (ICGS) at the University of Hamburg, addresses questions of how to deal with internal issues of social inequality and cultural diversity and, at the same time, how to build a shared civility among their different national, ethnic, religious and social groups.

Author Biography

Majid Al-Haj is Head of the Center for Multiculturalism and Educational Research at the University of Haifa and lectures at the Department of Sociology at the University of Haifa. He has published extensively on the social and political structure of the Palestinians in Israel, Palestinian refugees, Russian immigrants in Israel, and freedom of expression. His books include Social Arab Local Government in Israel, co-authored with Henry Rosenfeld (Westview Press, 1990); Education, Empowerment and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel (SUNY Press, 1995), Sociology of War and Peace in Israel in a Changing Era (co-editor with Uri Ben Elezer- Haifa University Press , 2003) and Immigration and Ethnic Formation in a Deeply Divided Society: The Case of the 1990s Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel ( Brill, 2004).

Rosemarie Mielke is Professor for Educational Psychology at the University of Hamburg. She has published books on attitude and behavior and self related concepts like control, self-monitoring, self-efficacy and social identity. Her present research projects deal with strategies to cope with "negative" social identity, the influence of (minority/majority) group membership on self-evaluation and achievement behavior and the relationship between self-concept, values and the ethics of biogenetics.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Education, Multiculturalism, and Empowerment of Minorities - An Overview	p. 1
General Overview
Stories of Struggle: Transnational Advocacy and Democracy Education	p. 11
What's Going on between Members of Majorities and Minorities? Contributions from Social Psychology	p. 25
Talking at Cross-purposes: Misunderstanding in Intercultural Communication	p. 41
The Israeli Case
A Curriculum between Conflict and Peace: The Teaching of History in Jewish and Arab Schools in Israel	p. 61
The Evolving Arab Reception of the Holocaust and Palestinian Textbooks: A Contribution to Democracy and Peace Education?	p. 77
Police-minority Relations in a Multicultural Society: The Israeli Case	p. 87
On the Central Role of "Threat Perception" in Mediating the Influence of Socioeconomic Factors on Xenophobic Attitudes	p. 121
A Multimedia Lexicon as a Tool for Increasing Societal Tolerance	p. 139
When Gender Differences Surpass Cultural Differences in Personal Satisfaction with Body Shape in Israeli College Students	p. 157
Postcolonial Feminism, the Politics of Identification, and the Liberal Bargain	p. 173
The German Case
Acculturation Attitudes and Bilingual Classrooms in Germany. The Portuguese-German Example	p. 197
"Not Always Proud to be American": The Reconstruction of National Identity by Americans Residing in Germany	p. 207
Oral Mistake Corrections in Second-language Classrooms	p. 227
Intercultural Competence in Management Consultancies in Germany: Does It Exist?	p. 237
Notes on Contributors	p. 265
Index of Names	p. 271
Index of Subjects	p. 281
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