Counterreactions
The "No to EU" and the FIS in the eye of the whirlwind of global modernity
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
[Image]
1. Introduction
[Image]
Although the European Union is internally divided along
About this geographic as well as political lines, and although its
site future development is uncertain (a "Jacobinist"
centralism confronts a "Thatcherite" liberalism and a
[Image] "Catholic" or "German" federalism), the EU is without
doubt the gravitational centre of Europe -- economically,
Relational politically and strategically. The relationship to the EU
index is a crucial element in the foreign policies of its
neighbouring countries -- from Iceland to Egypt; from
[Image] Norway to Morocco. The EU also offers a wealth of
research opportunities within the field of qualitative
Thematic index globalisation--localisation studies (cf. MacDonald 1993,
Eriksen in press) as patterns of political alignments and
[Image] loyalties, consumption and lifestyle, personal
identification and genealogies are being negotiated and
Alphabetic re-negotiated during this extremely uncertain and
index ambiguous post-Cold War period. Criticism of the EU,
inside and outside the union, is often tantamount to
[Image] criticism of some aspects of globalisation, seen as the
universalisation of the capitalist system of production
Recent and distribution, the ongoing erasure of erstwhile
boundaries inhibiting cultural flow, the loss of
community and local self-reliance, and processes of
[Image] cultural homogenisation.
World This essay amounts to a description and comparison of two
powerful social and political movements on the outer
periphery of the EU, which both contain strong
anti-modernist elements; the successful "No to EU" (Nei
til EU) organisation in Norway, and the no less
successful Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) in Algeria. The
examples are deliberately chosen for their mutual
differences: if it can be shown that they have important
features in common, they might form a base for wider
comparisons of anti-globalist movements in Europe or
worldwide. Such similarities in counterreactions, if they
can be observed, would also indicate that globalisation
can fruitfully be seen as a single phenomenon even if its
expressions are manifold and local. Although I do not
explicitly engage in the liberalism--communitarianism
dispute characteristic of contemporary political theory,
the present analysis is tangential to it and, to some
extent, informed by it.
The contrasts between the two countries (and their main
localist movements) are obvious. Norway is a cold, thinly
populated Lutheran (or post-Lutheran) country, a stable
parliamentary democracy with little public violence, a
uniformly high material standard of living and a strong
welfare state. Algeria is a hot, densely populated (that
is, its inhabitable part) Muslim country, politically
unstable and economically crisis-ridden, with a
deteriorating material standard of living, currently a
very high level of public violence and serious problems
of political cohesion. Two more different countries in
the hinterland of the EU could scarcely be found. Yet,
both have in the early 1990s seen the rise of strong
popular movements aiming at mitigating or even avoiding
certain effects of economic, political and cultural
globalisation. Encapsulation, withdrawal, closure: these
are some of the terms which have been used to designate
both movements.
2. "No to EU": Europe as The Other
"I am very pleased to see that young people take part in
the No struggle. They have travelled by Interrail to EU
countries, and so they have seen what it is like there."
Anne Enger Lahnstein (prominent anti-EU politician)
Norwegian Labour governments have tried to coax their
voters into joining the European Community/Union twice.
At these junctions (25 September 1972 and 28 November
1994) referendums have been held; at both occasions, the
proposal has been turned down by a relatively narrow
popular majority (53.5 per cent in 1972, 52.3 per cent in
1994). On both occasions, public debate in Norway has
been strongly polarised (although nearly a third of the
electorate described itself as undecided as late as
summer, 1994), and although the actual rhetoric on both
sides was very varied, it could be argued that the two
sides represented different value orientations at the
level of political rhetoric. At a very general
statistical level, there was an overrepresentation of
women, farmers, fishermen and rural people among the No
voters. Northern Norway was massively against membership,
while the Oslo region was massively favourable.
The "No to EU" movement, founded before the first
referendum in 1972 (it was then "No to EEC"), which it
won, and revitalised around 1990, is a political alliance
interesting for its ideology and its following, which is
extremely heterogeneous in relation to conventional
political classification. The No to EU had members and
activists from all political parties (albeit few from the
Conservative party), and its spokespersons repeatedly
argued, explicitly and implicitly, that they had a better
understanding of "the people" (depicted as a metaphysical
entity) than the pro-EU movement. In the months leading
up to the November 1994 referendum, the "No to EU" was
the largest political organisation in the country,
boasting some 140,000 members.
Not only the government and a clear parliamentary
majority, but the main newspapers and the two largest
political parties as well, were favourable to EU
membership. The situation frequently described by the "No
to EU" was one of "the people against the power" (see
illustration overleaf), an image with a considerable
impact in a country where acquired memories of Danish
colonisation (1389--1814), enforced union with Sweden
(1814--1905) and German occupation (1940--45) are being
kept alive through grand annual public rituals, school
curricula and popular books (more than half of the total
number of books published on "recent Norwegian history"
deal with the Second World War and the German
occupation). Indeed, the very word "union" was seized by
the "No" movement after the signing of the Maastricht
Treaty (1991-92) and used to equate the European Union
with the Swedish--Norwegian union, which still has strong
connotations of national humiliation.
The loosely knit "No to EU" was not the only organisation
working against Norwegian EU membership, but it formed
the ideological centre of the No movement, encompassing
all groups (farmers, urban Maoists, conservative
Christians etc.) who were opposed to joining. It cut
across established political boundaries, in the event
creating bedfellows who were more than a little strange,
and its ideology had to consist of common denominators
for groups who conventionally represented opposed
interests in society.
The kind of mass appeal of the "No to EU" is evident in
its ability to mobilise considerable numbers of activists
at short notice. Large rallies in the towns and cities
were organised regularly during the months and years
preceding the referendum; volunteers wrote and
distributed pamphlets and brochures; actually, during the
last two weeks of the campaign, a daily newsletter ("Ikke
Dytt Nytt", lit. "Don't Push News") was produced and
distributed countrywide (daily, in cold and dark November
mornings) by volunteers. Its counterpart, the Yes
movement (the European Movement of Norway) and its
associates, had a very different experience and found it
extremely difficult to mobilise volunteers. Since the two
blocs eventually turned out to be roughly equal in size,
this lends support to the common view that the No side
was strong on Gemeinschaft values and communitarianism,
while the Yes side was dominated by individualists with
tight time budgets.
Since it was committed to representing a wide variety of
groups, the ideology of the "No to EU" had to be
carefully phrased so as not to alienate any of its
supporters. It is most comprehensively expressed in the
report "Norway and the EU: Effects of Membership in The
European Union" (Nei til EU 1994a), printed on recycled
paper in 50,000 copies, but its many less ambitious
publications are no less interesting, including notably
the "No to EU Reader" (Lesebok 1994), which contained
short literary contributions from 27 of Norway's leading
writers and capsule political analyses of core issues,
published in 1.8 million copies and distributed to all
the households of the country in the spring of 1994. I
cannot undertake a complete analysis of this very diverse
material here; a few tidbits will have to do.
National sovereignty is a keyword in "No to EU" rhetoric.
The loss of national autonomy in political
decision-making was probably a decisive argument for many
of those who voted No. In the main report, a loss of
democracy (described in populist terms as "people's
government", folkestyre) is described as a necessary
consequence of membership (e.g. pp. 46, 47). The
minuscule direct influence of Norwegians on EU parliament
decisions is stressed. The argument stating that because
of internationalisation and globalisation, supranational
decision-making is necessary, is countered by claims that
the EU is inefficient in dealing with environmental
problems (which are supranational) and that international
cooperation is called for, but that it does not
necessarily entail EU membership. The "No to EU"
bi-weekly paper Standpunkt ran, as its cover story in the
last issue before the referendum (no. 19, 1994), an
article on the possibly forthcoming "European state" (the
headline read: "Strong forces in EU wish: THE EUROPEAN
STATE").
Closely connected with this is the argument regarding
property rights and the perils of uncontrolled foreign
investment. It is noted several places in the main report
(Chapters 4, 13) that Norwegian industries will no longer
be "protected" against foreign investments, and that open
competition from abroad may have adverse effects on
employment and general welfare in the country. Regarding
summer houses and mountain cottages, the report states
(p. 56) that as an EU member, Norway cannot prevent
foreigners from buying such property. Summer houses and
cottages are mentioned explicitly presumably because of
their great significance as symbols of independence and
"roots". Some people established a connection between the
current situation of possible EU membership and the
German occupation of Norway during the Second World War,
but the "No to EU" did not officially endorse this view.
Environmental security is also an important issue in many
of the documents, and the main report contains separate
chapters on the environment/resource management and
genetic engineering, as well as mentioning environmental
issues elsewhere. Generally, the message is that
conditions are worse in the EU than in Norway; the EU
countries are more polluted, and the high priority on
economic growth has led to a deteriorating natural
environment. Their brochures state: "The EU puts the
market forces before the environment and people's
health".
At a more fundamental level, the No to EU juxtaposes
EU=culture with Norway=nature. For example, it is
stressed in the main report that Norway has a more
restrictive view on genetic engineering than the EU; that
economic growth (the explicit goal of the EU) cannot be
reconciled with environmental security; and that the
political structure of the EU "favours wealthy industrial
interests at the expense of popular environmental
organisations" (Nei til EU 1994a, p. 121). The contrast
between capitalism/industry and nature/the people is
evident here and elsewhere. In an interesting passage, it
is claimed that "history has shown that whenever man has
tampered with the building-blocks of nature; the molecule
(chemistry), the atom (nuclear physics) and the gene
(genetic technology), it has created consequences we were
unable to predict" (p. 128). What is interesting about
this statement is not so much its content, but its
location in an official report about the relationship
between Norway and the EU.
Farming and regional policies were also focused strongly
upon, and the "No to EU" were often caricatured by their
adversaries as a mix of ignorant peasants, urban
romantics and cynics whose only aim was to maintain a
high level of subsidies to the rural areas. It is
nonetheless easy to identify links between Norwegian
nationalist symbolism, the "No to EU" defence of marginal
agriculture and concepts of national identity connecting
belongingness to "roots" (a common botanical metaphor in
Norway and elsewhere these days) and to the land. Norway
is noted for its scattered population, and an
overwhelming proportion of the population agreed,
according to a poll conducted in June/July 1994 (MMI
1994), that it ought to be a major political priority to
maintain this pattern. The "No to EU" tried to show, in
their main report (Chapter 16) and elsewhere (e.g.
Mønnesland and Kann 1994), that EU membership would
devastate the countryside because of changing economic
conditions and regional policies. Most parts of the
country have distinctive dialects, and unlike in say,
France, to speak a rural dialect is generally considered
a virtue in relation to nation-building and patriotism.
The EU is depicted as inherently centralising and based
on an alienating economic rationality placing profits
before people. This alleged contrast between the EU and
Norway was a cornerstone of the "No to EU" argument
throughout the campaign. Norway was depicted as
decentralised, egalitarian and environmentally conscious;
the EU was centralised, hierarchical and ruthlessly
exploitative in its relations to nature. The vice-chair
of the "No to EU" said, at a meeting in 1992, that
"whenever I go to Brussels I feel like a peasant", and
drew a nationwide round of applause for the statement.
Again, in their most widely circulated publication, the
"No to EU" (1994b) state: "In Norway, we have made an
effort to create a healthy interrelationship between
viable local communities (...). The EU centralises the
power and moves it from elected bodies to the market."
The nationalist symbolism of Norway links its "soul" to
farming and the countryside (cf. Larsen 1984), and many
Norwegians describe their country as "a country of
farmers" despite the fact that less than five per cent of
the population is actively engaged in agriculture (cf.
Eriksen 1993 for a full analysis). The marginal farm is
metonymically linked to Norway in this imagery, and
decline in agricultural subsidies, with the accompanying
disappearance of thousands of farms, thereby symbolises a
grave threat to national integrity although it may affect
a small percentage of the population directly.
In the summer of 1994, the national farming cooperative
warned consumers against buying imported chickens from
the EU since they had been dealt with in uncleanly ways
during slaughtering and preparation for sale. Rumours
about salmonella infested food from the EU were relayed
by the mass media, and numerous campaigns from "No to EU"
and associated organisations gave the impression that
Norwegian food was cleaner and produced in more
environment-friendly ways than EU food. As the "No to EU"
brochure on food and the environment states
unequivocally: "Through EU membership, the quality of
Norwegian food will deteriorate," and it goes on to
describe the industrialised character of EU food
production, focusing on chemical fertilisers, diseases,
germs and additives. According to Standpunkt, Danish
newspapers summed up a proposed policy on additives in
baby food by stating that "EU proposal threatens babies'
health".
A chapter in the main report deals with "intoxicating
substances". Norway has more restrictive policies
relating to drugs and alcohol than the EU countries, and
the chapter notes that in this regard, "the decision of
the EU to remove border controls may lead to considerable
problems for Norway if it were to become a member" (p.
255). This fear of loss of clear boundaries is the main
ideological point in the chapter, which also notes that
drug policies in several EU countries have moved in a
liberal and experimental direction.
Many issues dealt with by the "No to EU" have been
ignored in this context, but these should be sufficient,
at least provisionally, for an assessment of its
underlying world view and ideological relationship to
global modernity.
Was the "No to EU" nationalist in character? The answer
is obviously yes to the extent that it championed the
right to self-determination of nations. Its relationship
to ethnic nationalism was, however, more ambiguous. On
the one hand, the symbolic emphasis on positive isolation
and on "Norwegian tradition" suggests a hostile attitude
to immigration and poly-ethnicity. On the other hand, the
No to EU occasionally criticised EU refugee policies for
being too strict (although Norwegian policies were
stricter) and aid policies for being to closely linked to
vested interests in the donor countries.
Ethnic nationalism in Norway, unlike in many other
European countries, cuts across the otherwise still well
established left--right divide. In 1975, Maoists dressed
in folk costumes (bunad) organised their own rally on
Constitution Day, and the Maoist party was opposed to
Third World immigration for years during the same period.
Interestingly, even May Day rallies, traditionally
internationalist and socialist, took on a strong
folkloristic, nationalist, anti-European character in the
two or three years leading up to the referendum.
The "No to EU" emphasis on the integrity of place and
"Norwegian tradition" (invoked not only in discussions of
language and customs, but also when dealing with politics
and the economy) highlights the uniqueness and moral
superiority of Norway. A sentence present on all
brochures distributed by the "No to EU" reads: "The
common foreign policy of the EU would prevent Norway from
building bridges between poor and rich parts of the
world".
To be pro-membership was considered un-Norwegian by the
"No to EU". Ethnic nationalism, while never promoted
explicitly (unlike in the 1972 campaign, when the best
known slogan was Nei til salg av Norge, "No to the sale
of Norway"), was an unquestioned premise for the campaign
since it did not only demand the continued political
sovereignty of the territory of Norway, but also drew on
notions of "Norwegian values" in its dichotomisation with
the EU. In its discussions of the potential role of
Norwegians in central decision-making in the EU, it is
taken for granted (i.e. not discussed) that Norwegian
delegates would vote in their capacity as Norwegians and
not according to political views.
Cleanness in both a strict and a metaphorical sense is a
common denominator for many "No to EU" arguments. The
need to protect oneself against European filth is clearly
articulated in several of the documents. The EU is
irresponsibly polluting the environment; EU food is full
of dangerous germs, artificial colouring ("food makeup",
as the Danes call it) and laboratory genes; the animals
are mistreated and fed with nasty substances, and the
perfect shape and colouring of EU tomatoes is an effect
of genetic manipulation and excessive use of chemical
fertiliser. (Der Mensch ist was er i▀t, as the German
saying goes.) The EU is throroughly industrialised and
alienated from nature; Norway is faithful to traditional
values and close to nature.
In this perspective, the "No to EU" appears as a classic
puritanist, Protestant movement trying to keep the
inherent creolisation, bastardisation, ambivalence,
alienation and complexity of modernity at bay, opting
instead for a simple way of life in tightly integrated
communities with profound respect of nature, morality and
the legacy of a mythical past. It was also a nationalist
movement arguing the virtues of political
self-determination and cultural self-sufficiency. The
main contrasts created in their propaganda material,
then, were the following (listed in a random order).
Norway EU
Egalitarian Hierarchical
Nature Culture
Authentic Alienated
Rural Urban
Clean Filthy
Considerate Ruthless
Decentralised Centralised
Democratic Non-democratic
Small-scale Large-scale
Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft
Traditional Modern
Innocent Guilty
Solidarity Egotism
Although some of these dichotomies may be contested (e.g.
by social scientists who were active in the "No to EU"),
they can easily be justified by referring to official "No
to EU" publications, as I have shown tentatively above.
3. The FIS and modernity
Although the Norwegian EU controversy was a heated and
bitter one, it led to no casualties. This cannot be said
of the Algerian situation, where an estimated 40,000 have
been killed since the invalidation of the election
results of December 1991. Even the most cursory look at
very recent Algerian history gives the impression of a
country torn by violence, ridden by fear, threatening to
implode.
Algeria is a country divided along several axes: The
Berbers, a sizeable minority concentrated in the western
part of the inhabitable north, have periodically voiced
demands for autonomy and linguistic recognition. The
relationship with the former colonial power France (whose
effective colonisation began as early as in 1830) is
ambivalent and complex; this is also true of the French
language, which is widely used in Algeria and which until
recently enjoyed a privileged position in the public
sphere along with Arabic. Since French is associated with
Westernisation and secularism, it became an early target
of Islamic revivalists, whose battle against what they
see as a corrupted modern morality is focused upon here.
Although the ruling FLN (Front de LibΘration Nationale)
party officially acknowledges Islam as the legitimate
religion of the country (unlike socialist parties
elsewhere) and has always paid lip service to
"traditional Arab culture", it is widely perceived,
locally and internationally, as a modernising agent.
During the first decades of independence (achieved in
1963), industrialisation and economic modernisation were
the primary aims of the FLN. Education of the European
type was boosted, and women were encouraged to take
employment. Despite the avowed socialist stance of the
FLN, there was a movement towards not only secularism but
also individualism. The ruling party of Algeria since
independence, the FLN moved towards liberalisation in the
late 1980s, legalising a number of rival parties and
promising local as well as general elections.
A further element of the context for the rise of
politicised Islam was the economic crisis and the general
deterioration in living conditions in Algeria during the
1980s. Citizens complained of a bloated and inefficient
bureaucracy, growing class differences, scarcity of
necessary commodities, loss of career opportunities,
inflation and a number of other problems. The time was,
in other words, ripe for an alternative to the FLN; what
surprised many foreign observers as well as many
Algerians, was the fact that the only alternative which
proved popular among Algerians, was a militant Islamic
movement, the FIS.
A long and complex history of confrontations and attempts
at Islamic revival preceded the formation of the Front
Islamique de Salut (usually translated as the Islamic
Salvation Front) in the summer of 1989. As early as 1976,
Islamist students gained control of the faculties of
humanities and social sciences at the university of
Constantine, and immediately introduced new rules: male
and female students should no longer engage in shared
social activities, and women should wear "Islamic dress".
A few years later, in 1982, a student explicitly
supporting a secular state was killed by other students
in Alger. The current polarisation (some would say
schismogenesis -- Bateson's, 1972, term) between
Islamists and secularists is, in other words, not
entirely new although it has only recently come to
permeate the entire social fabric of Algeria.
The FIS, legalised a few months after its foundation,
rapidly became a major political force in Algeria,
winning the municipal elections in June 1990. In December
1991, it won a devastating victory in the first round of
the general elections. As a result, the second round was
called off, and a state of emergency was declared by the
FLN. Since then, Algeria has been a tormented country,
with frequent outbursts of lethal violence and an ever
deepening polarisation between the state and the FIS.
Much has already been written about the FIS. I shall
concentrate on its ideology, seeing it in relation to
globalisation and modernisation. Unlike the "No to EU",
the FIS has no official programme. When asked about the
ideological objectives of the Islamic movement, one of
its self-appointed portes-parole, Abbas Madani, described
his programme as "broad". Asked about the practical steps
which needed to be taken, he added, "Our practical
programme is also broad" (Esposito 1993). Spokespersons
for the FIS often differ in their expressed views on
democracy and human rights issues, but unfailingly refer
to divine law and the Qu'ran when discussing the future
of their country. The FIS, in other words, calls for a
"return" to the faith in what is arguably the most
secularised of the North African countries. In the early
1990s, the FIS accordingly set up its own mosques,
denounced as "anarchist mosques" by the government, all
over the country, thereby distancing itself from the
"tepid" and "bureaucratic" official Islam represented by
the state. In addition to scorning the state for
corrupting Islam through aligning it with the socialist
policies of the FLN, the preachers in the "free" mosques
attack alleged tendencies towards "Western decadence";
alcoholism, drug addiction, prostitution, emulation of
Western forms of conduct, loss of shame among women etc.
The leader of Algeria's only fully secularist party, Sa∩d
Sadi, is condemned as a "local Salman Rushdie"; a filthy
and shameful unbeliever.
As is well known through international news media,
liberal artists, politicians, intellectuals and writers
have been assassinated. Bombs killing bystanders have
exploded in the very heart of the former colonial power,
and the GIA, the militant wing of the FIS, have assumed
responsibility for several of them. Unveiled women in
Algiers have been disfigured by sprays of acid. The
houses of professional women living alone have been burnt
down. In retaliation, the government has slaughtered
thousands of armed militants as well as suspected FIS
supporters.
Being a loose movement rather than a party, the FIS
represents a remarkable breadth in political methods.
Acts of violence carried out by militants do not
necessarily represent the views of a majority of those
who voted for the FIS. On the other hand, the very
considerable following of the FIS reveals a profound and
widespread discontent with the modernisation strategies
and practices represented by the FLN. Studies of the FIS
(and of similar movements in North Africa and the Middle
East) have emphasised the combined ideological ambiguity
and traditionalistic self-confidence as its recipe for
procuring mass support. Ernest Gellner (1992) regards
"fundamentalism" primarily as a closed cognitive system
which removes the ambiguity inherent in the (post-)
modern world and provides a cosmology composed of simple
questions and simple answers.
In an essay on the FIS, the late novelist Rachid Mimouni
(1993) points out a number of immediate practical
problems associated with the integrism (Fr. intΘgrisme:
ideology aiming to integrate religion, politics and the
economy) of the FIS; from the impracticalities of the
Muslim lunar year (which is about ten days shorter than
the solar year) to the catastrophic academic consequences
of the "Islamification" of university curricula and the
absurdities of a "Muslim economy", where one is
theoretically not allowed to take interest for loans. A
fact which is relevant here is that most of the
specialists discussing the issue, including Gellner,
Mimouni, Bryan Turner (1994), Albert Hourani (1991) and
Olivier Roy (1992), account for North African integrism
by connecting it with failed modernisation. Gellner
(1992, p. 22) indeed sees it as an alternative
modernisation strategy blending local and global elements
in order to achieve a locally "rooted" modernity, while
Turner regards fundamentalism as "the cultural defence of
modernity against postmodernity", since it joined forces
with the rationalising agents of the state in attacking
"magical beliefs, local culture, traditionalism and
hedonism" (Turner 1994, p. 78).
The long and, especially towards the end, brutal French
colonisation has, as Stora (1994) emphasises, had
profound consequences for the Algerians' relationship to
Europe. After the long and painful war of liberation, any
European-inspired modernisation strategy would have to be
disguised as "Mahgrebin socialism" -- or as "Islamic
modernity" -- to gain support. Is this the hidden agenda
of the FIS?
This may be the case; a more interesting issue in this
context concerns its dichotomisation with "the West" and
with the FLN, which is considered a puppet of France and
"the West" -- although the FLN itself draws heavily on
anti-colonial rhetoric. The FIS, explicitly politicising
religion (and thereby, in the eyes of Mimouni and others,
removing its truly religious aspect), wishes to reinstate
shari'a, Islamic law, and to enforce the detailed rules
for everyday conduct prescribed in the Qu'ran. This
includes, notably, elaborate rules for female seclusion,
modesty and "purity". Indeed, Mimouni (1993, p. 29)
compares the Islamist misogynist "fixation on women" with
Hitler's fixation on Jews. Male ambivalence and hostility
towards the Western "liberated" woman is evident not only
in violent acts towards "Westernised" Algerian women and
public statements by FIS leaders, but also in numerous
articles and works of fiction written by Algerians.
However, the demand for purity does not only concern
women. Just as the hidjab (authorised female gown which
conceals the body completely) indicates unfailing faith
for a woman, the beard signifies male submission to the
cause. "Modern neofundamentalism," Roy (1992) states, "is
a reaction ... against adaptation to an alien culture.
This culture is nevertheless already there, and the Islam
one counters it with is a reinvention, a mimetic
performance".
Some simplistic dichotomies may sum up the cosmology
represented by the FIS, which hinges almost entirely on
dichotomisation with "Westernisation".
Islam The West/Westernised
Algerians
Clean Dirty
Consistent Inconsistent
Modest Overconfident (hubris)
Logical Confused
Predictability Uncertainty
Moral Immoral
Collectivism Individualism
Rules Choice
Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft
Security Freedom
4. Parallels
Both the FIS and the "No to EU" are loosely integrated
organisations led by non-politicians, drawing their
legitimacy from an alleged popular discontent with the
countries' leadership, which is in both cases castigated
as immoral, inauthentic, ruthlessly modernising,
alienating and unfaithful to local traditions. Neither
has a detailed political programme. Both must be seen as
immediate reactions to perceived consequences of global
modernity.
Notions of purity and purification are extremely central
to both FIS and "No to EU" rhetoric. In the case of the
former, the most important threats to purity are "dirty"
beliefs (failure to follow the straight path of Islam)
and practices (most easily identified in independent
women). As mentioned above, purity is important to the
"No to EU" in the perhaps more literal sense of
environmental preservation, but it is also invoked
metaphorically in juxtapositions between the "simple,
transparent" Norwegian political system and the
complexities and secrecies of Brussels.
About a year before the 1994 referendum, the term "The
Different Country" (Annerledeslandet), originally coined
by poet Rolf Jacobsen, was adopted by a Norwegian
politician and critic of the government's membership
plans. The term, quickly taken up (often mockingly) by
other debaters and by the mass media, depicted Norway as
a unique country which ought not to be contaminated by
the standardisation resulting from EU membership. In the
rhetoric surrounding the term, the wholesomeness and
cleanness of the Norwegian countryside and vast
uninhabited areas were emphasised, as well as the
continued viability of small local communities scattered
around the country. Although few, if any, of the "No to
EU" spokespersons envisioned complete political, economic
and cultural isolation of Norway, the symbolism
associated with positive insulation was powerful and
justified with a string of arguments ranging from
principles of territorial sovereignty to food quality and
the perceived threat of German takeover bids.
The FIS is probably no more insular than the "No to EU"
in the economic field (although its programme is
unclear), but it is unanimous on issues of media
censorship, where it seeks to limit uncontrolled foreign
influence.
Both movements can further be described as traditionalist
and communitarianist: they reject contemporary
international trends (the post-traditional order;
disembedding and deterritorialisation) and praise virtues
of a distant or recent past. It should nevertheless be
noted that neither is wholly anti-modern; both seem to
accept modernity but to reject the breakdown of
boundaries entailed by contemporary globalisation. They
aim at developing locally fashioned
modernities/traditions.
Interestingly, both the FIS and the "No to EU" draw their
support from groups which are sociologically very
different. Their ideological leaders and spokespersons
tend to be highly educated (often at Western
universities) members of the urban middle class, while
their rhetoric is chiefly aimed -- with considerable
success -- at peripheral and marginal groups; the poor
and illiterate in the FIS' case, rurals in the case of
the "No to EU". This link between middle-class
entrepreneurs and marginal groups is typical of populist
movements in general, and of anti-globalist movements
specifically.
Both movements contribute to a digitalisation of
difference, a polarisation according to which logic one
cannot be a political hybrid; where grey zones and
ambiguities are washed away, where only pure stances
matter and where the two positions are perceived as each
other's opposites. The ensuing process is a
schismogenetic one where the opposing positions mutually
strengthen each other and the in-betweens are
marginalised.
Finally, the respective criticisms of global processes
are similar in the two movements, even if there are
substantial differences. Both warn against the
institutionalised immorality they see as inevitable
results of certain forms of globalisation ("No to EU":
loss of political accountability and democracy, profit
before people, centralisation; FIS: loss of only true
faith, compromise, individualism). Both accuse their
leaders of maintaining unhealthy links with foreigners
and "selling out" to international capitalism. And both
lament the loss of purity and simplicity entailed by
global disembedding and the rapid, boundless flows and
intermingling of symbols, persons, values, commodities
and decisions in a deterritorialised world.
5. Conclusion
In an autobiographical essay completed years before the
fatwa, Salman Rushdie describes his "polyglot family
tree", the phenomenon of "cross-pollination" and the
fertile outcome of "cultural transplantation" (Rushdie
1991). He warns against the "ghetto mentality", arguing
that to forget "that there is a world beyond the
community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within
narrowly defined cultural frontiers, would be, I believe,
to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which
in South Africa is called 'the homeland'" (ibid., p. 19).
This world, closely paralleled by the seamless world of
creative exile and aesthetic bastardisation invoked by
intellectuals like Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, and by
the world of endless unbounded flow described by
academics like Giddens, Hannerz and Bauman, is exactly
the world the FIS and the "No to EU" are reacting
against. The main programmatic aims of the
post-Maastricht EU (that is, free flow of capital,
labour, commodities and services), the infrastructural
counterpart to Rushdie's vision of unbounded cultural
intermingling and bastardisation, were often singled out
by the "No to EU" as the very symbol of the forces
threatening the continued viability of local Norwegian
communities and humane values. Similarly, the complexity
and ambivalence inherent in modernity, and its morality
founded in individual responsibility and choice, is
unacceptable to the FIS. Both movements try to reinstate
predictable, self-sustaining Gemeinschaften liberated
from the uncertainties, compromises, flux and filth of
global modernity. They are both favourable to relative
isolation, purification, "authenticity" and small scale
social organisation, and dichotomise against a world
order perceived as anarchic and immoral. This is
essentially what makes them comparable.
As some will have noted, I have avoided using the label
"fundamentalism", although many would not hesitate to
describe the two movements as fundamentalist. The concept
of fundamentalism, which sometimes refers to a closed
cognitive system where unambiguous answers prevent
fundamental criticism (fundamentalists have all the
answers, but refuse to ask many of the questions seen as
relevant by others), may be convenient in everyday
language and in polemics, but it is extremely problematic
as a comparative concept since fundamentalism is a
relative phenomenon: all cognitive systems, including
science (cf. Gellner 1992 for a different view), are to
varying degrees based on unquestioned premises. It
nevertheless seems, at a first glance, as though both
movements are fundamentalist in Giddens' (1994, p. 6, 48)
sense, through defending tradition (Islam, Norwegian
uniqueness) by "asserting its ritual truth ... its
separateness and specialness (...) but in response to
novel circumstances of global communication" (ibid.). On
the other hand, the refusal of fundamentalists to engage
in dialogue -- a defining criterion for Giddens as well
as for Gellner -- would partly disqualify both movements,
at least the "No to EU". Besides, it could also be said
of their adversaries that they refuse to engage in
dialogue with the FIS and the "No to EU" and that they
defend their traditions uncritically (Algerian socialism
and international capitalism), and so the issue of
fundamentalism remains a tricky one, even if if may serve
as a regulative idea in the Kantian sense. Actually, the
word "counterreaction" seems much more apposite as a
descriptive term.
Scholars writing on globalisation have repeatedly
stressed that globalisation does not lead to uniformity
but to ever new patterns of variation and to the
proliferation of localising strategies. (Roland Robertson
coined the term glocalisation a few years ago to
emphasise this duality of global process.) However,
globalisation imposes a certain uniformity of form
because of the impact of capitalism and the individual
labour contract, globalised political discourses about
human rights and democracy, and equally globalised
discourses about local openness and closure; about
"tradition and modernity". It could be said in this
regard that the syntax is global, while the vocabulary is
local.
The examples discussed above have indicated that
variation can mean conflict, and also that such conflicts
and tendencies of schismogenesis (escalating
polarisation), between "traditionalists" and
"modernists", can fruitfully be compared at a formal
level. The parallels between the "No to EU" and the FIS I
have indicated suggests that since the globalisation of
politics, economy and culture is a global, disembedded
phenomenon, local counterreactions may be expected to
take on many of the same characteristics in very
different settings. One important such characteristic is
the tendency to appear as a movement representing a
radical break with global modernity, while the actual
practice is much less radical and relates more to the
politics of identity than to economic policy. Another
lesson to be learnt from these popular movements is that
although Bobbio (1994) may be correct in that the
left--right divide is still relevant in political
thought, there are crucial cleavages in contemporary
societies -- Northern as well as Southern -- which cannot
be understood in such terms, nor as "ethnic" or regional
cleavages. The contradiction between global modernity and
local self-determination is inherent in virtually every
society, and it may well prove to be the main political
contradiction of the twenty-first century.
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⌐Thomas Hylland Eriksen 1996
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