Strategies of descent, tactics of inclusion : kinship and the negotiation of race, nation and belonging along the margins of working-class Oslo

Abstract

The location chosen for this study, the neighborhood of Grenda, has since Norway s industrial revolution been home to Oslo s working class population. Historically marginalized, these voices are today located in a site of great social and economic change, resulting from the dual processes of gentrification and immigration, in the face of economic globalization and increased privatization. The following paper explores the ways in which these people shape a meaningful existence along the margins of one of the world s wealthiest nations. While building on Gullestad s observation that Norwegians view sameness as a reflection of equality and thus avoid contexts which highlight difference, the following paper argues that it is precisely the need to affirm one s individual difference in order to build one s reputation that communities of equals are sought out. In locating Norway within the scope of post colonial subjectivity I utilize the framework developed by Wilson in his discussion of marginalized identities, particularly the concepts of reputation and respectability, in order to shed light on the specifics of Norwegian negotiations of identity. Ultimately I will show how race and nation have become extensions of the way in which subjects talk kinship to borrow from Bouquet, ultimately mobilizing these discourses as a means of re-membering the Norwegian site. Through a sense of marginalization brought on by a disjuncture between my informants experience of self in light of dominant, respectable middle-class values, the negotiation of kinship can be seen as a tactic employed by individuals a vehicle of affirming what Rosaldo refers to as cultural citizenship, by re-membering the framework of Norway as nation, and thus themselves within in it.