Our presentation

I thought our presentation went okay. There were, of course a few hiccups along the way and this reflected in our final project, but overall I thought our whole approach and preparation was a complete success. We divided the different sections of the presentation between us equally and researched them seperately as this enabled us to collect a wide variety of notes and intersting information on the subject. Throughout the weeks leading up to our main, and final presentation we decided to meet up and discuss our findings. Therefore, we were electing one person to teach the rest of the group about a topic that they had recently researched and understood to be important and relevent to the main body of the essay. When the day of the presentation came we met up before hand and ran through our speaking parts and made sure everyone was comfortable with their role. Finally we all proof read the information one more time and mutually agreed that it was correct.
Incase nobody asked us reletive questions at the end of our presentation we decided that we would prepare some in advance. Both, Sophie and I prepared a question each which solemnly related to our section of the text. Both of which were answered. Orinally we were going to include a drama type sock puppet display highlighting some of the main features of our presentation, but eventually due to the lack of time within the presentation and time we had to prepare; we had to scrap that idea in order to put across facts and information.
Overall I think that we all worked well within the group and we all prepared equal parts to the presentaion, our delivery was good and we all became confident speakers. I personally, learnt alot from this excercise as well.

Ruth 0806900

After performing the presentation, it can be concluded that multiculturalism does more harm than good. In the United Kingdom, supporters of the current Labour government's approach have described it as having defended the rights of minorities to preserve their culture, while also seeking to ensure they become fully particpatory citizens that is, integrating without assimilating. Critics say the policy fails on all accounts: If social conditions and racism become barriers to the integration of minorities, then multiculturalism does not properly function. There is now a lively debate in the UK over multiculturalism versus "social cohesion and inclusion."


Bibliography

no name. (no date). Multiculturalism. Available: http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/multi_culture2.html#Criticisms_of_multiculturalism_in. Last accessed 01 December 2009.

Lovepreet kaur
0814904

In my view it sort of is. Racism is a term that 'scares' people and is not politically correct. Whereas multiculturalism does not sound threatening or offensive. We will never be a fully integrated society as we always form our own cliques. People who are against multiculturalism could be deemed racist because they are saying they do not want foreigners in their country. There is not really such thing as an American for instance as America is made up of imigrants from every country in the world. I don't see how you can avoid not having a multicutural society are we all supposed to stay in our own countries and never leave them? If we did that then we would never be introduced to other countries culture and foods. Multiculturalism i think makes the world more interesting and diverse. Countries such as Holland are scared of been taken over by immigrants and losing their identity but i dont think this could ever happen. I agree there should be tighter laws on immigration but everyone is supposed to be equal arent they? Sophie Kuzyk

Multiculturalism

We decided to do our presentation on multiculturalism.Multiculturalism is a public policy approach for managing cultural diversity in a multiethnic society, officially stressing mutual respect and tolerance for cultural differences within a country's borders. As a policy, multiculturalism emphasizes the unique characteristics of different cultures, especially as they relate to one another in receiving nations. The word was first used in 1957 to describe Switzerland, but came into common currency in Canada in the late 1960s. It quickly spread to other English-speaking countries. There are many criticisms of multiculturalism, one of the most forceful critics of multiculturalism was Ayn Rand, who feared the world-wide ethnic revival of the late 1960s would lead to an ethnic Balkanization destructive to modern industrial societies. Her philosophy considered multiculturalism and monoculturalism to be culturally determinist collectivism (i.e., that individual human beings have no free choice in how they act and are conditioned irreversibly by society). Philosophically, Rand rejected this form of collectivism on the grounds that: 1) it undermines the concept of free will, and 2) the human mind (according to her philosophy) is a tabula rasa at birth. But it is also true that the human mind is born without any culture, and that in nearly all societies attempt to condition their citizens culturally. What is distinct about multiculturalism is the assertion of an identity, aside from the nationally imposed identity, allowing for individuals within minority cultures to exercise more free choice than they otherwise would in a universalist society.

Lovepreet Kaur
0814904

Baudrillard - Violence with a Multicultural Society

For the presentation, we decided to go along the lines of a simple presentation with the injection of a couple of video and relevant images and examples.
Since my last post, I have been very busy renting books from the library and doing Internet research on Baudrillard and his views on multiculturalism. Eventually I came to the conclusion that Baudrillard's whole thought revolved around the theory of 'Radical Otherness' and 'The Code'. He explains how society such reject identity, as it is not 'real'. Through rejecting the ideas of identity and what we have that makes us individual, we put an end to the growing hate which is inevitable in society. This is the hate that would eventually lead to violence within the world and smaller communities.
Multicultural societies are more prone to violence and hatred, because the differences are more than obvious to the naked eye. eg. Black/White, Christian/Muslim, British/German.
It is important to understand these sort of differences are those that influence violence because these are the most obvious.
The most common form of violence and hatred that we experience within the world is 'Racism' - race is not only a physical difference but it also holds a belief difference.
Violence and Hatred that comes from racism creates social harm - and transmits negative vibe into the whole society. Race, for example also carries a stereotype (some of these stereotypes are seen as negative) - and therefore it becomes another reason behind violence. The conclusion to this statement would be: Race / Stereotype = Violence and Hatred.

We have decided to do our presentation about Multiculturalism and that it does more harm than good. There are three of us in the group and one of my tasks is to find a video to put into our presentation. We are including Baudrillard's view on multiculturalism and he states that it keeps people apart and it produces particular hatred of indifferent. He also talks about code, you can do what you want but you have to be within the code. I have found one video by the Dutch politician Wilders, who has been banned from Britain because of his extremist views on Muslims. Muslims in Britain have even protested for his murder!

Sophie Kuzyk

Terrorism and Baurdrillard

On the 19^th November, I had a lecture on terrorism. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear. In the lecture, we discussed about the 9/11, when suicide bombers hijacked United States airliners and used then as bombers on 11^th September 2001. According to Baurdrillard the event 9/11 went far beyond a real attack, he believes it was an attack of mythic, symbolic and utterly humiliating proportions. Not a real event, but a symbolic “absolute event”. Baurdrillard believes that the terrorists destroyed the notion of a global world order based on universal, consensual, democratic values. Exploring these symbolic resonance, baurdrillard argues that the widespread moral condemnation following the attacks spring from a collective effort to mask our “prodigious jubilation at seeing this global superpower destroyed…they did it, but we wished for it” (lecture notes).

Lovepreet Kaur

0814904