Us and Them, at home and away. Representations of the other, symbolic power and cultural hegemonies

Arrangementet er et symposium til minne om Marianne Gullestad. Symposiet arrangeres av CULCOM - kulturell kompleksitet i Norge - og støttes av Videnskaps-Akademiet. De av Akademiets medlemmer som ønsker å delta, kan melde seg på ved å sende en e-post til: m.k.stenberg@sai.uio.no. For mer informasjon se vedlagte program og kort sammendrag på engelsk.

Brief summary

Marianne Gullestad left behind a legacy of unfinished intellectual business. She opened up, and began to investigate, a range of problems essential for an understanding of contemporary North Atlantic societies.

After her early interest in material culture and the domestic sphere, she spent years unpacking central categories of Norwegian culture, before moving to the study of the self/other relationship. Her four books – two in English, another two in Norwegian – on this cluster of issues, published between 2002 and 2007, represent a challenging and sophisticated analytical firmly grounded in empirical work. (The books are Det norske sett med nye øyne (2002) Plausible prejudice (2006), Misjonsbilder (2007) and Picturing Pity (2007).)

 Marianne Gullestad's work will continue to inspire scholars and students for many years to come. We nevertheless wish to honour her memory by pursuing, in the spirit of critical dialogue of which she was so fond, some of the explorations and discussions begun in her late work. This is the background for this symposium about representations of the other, taking its cues from Gullestad's work on prejudice and xenophobia in Norway and on Norwegian images of Africans.