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Journal of American Folklore 117.464 (2004) 219-220



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Generous Betrayal: Politics of Culture in the New Europe. By Unni Wikan. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xv + 293, notes, bibliography, index.)

In light of the conscious manipulation of culture in the creation of European identities over the past 250 years, one might be forgiven for thinking, after reading the title, that Wikan's most recent work chronicles current aspects of that phenomenon in the changing and expanding European Union. In the "New Europe," the politics of culture are deep and multifaceted, as culture not only becomes objectified but also a strategy for social and economic regeneration. The issues of culture raised in Unni Wikan's book are set against these processes yet rarely refer to them explicitly. In fact, many of the theories underlying the cultural politics of the emerging European Union are predicated upon identifying and maintaining cultural distinctiveness in the face of a growing superstate, which create the difficulties Wikan describes. The central story of Generous Betrayal is that of immigration in the New Europe and the ways in which hybrid European identities (such as Pakistani-Norwegian) are often invalidated by current policies based on multiculturalism.

Generous Betrayal primarily chronicles the difficulties of young, mostly (although not exclusively) Muslim girls whose parents immigrated to Norway from Africa, the Middle East, and Pakistan. Wikan describes a number of heartrending situations involving girls who were born to immigrant parents in Norway, or occasionally other Scandinavian countries, yet are denied the protection of the Norwegian state despite their Norwegian citizenship. The central story is that of Aisha, whose tale mirrors the majority of those which Wikan relates. Aisha was born in Norway and is thus a full citizen of that country. As a child and teen, she was subjected to abuse and harsh treatment at the hands of her father, who is an immigrant from a predominantly Muslim country. Although the authorities placed her temporarily in a foster home, she was returned to her parents because the officials believed that was the culturally appropriate thing to do, despite the fact that Aisha identifies herself as Norwegian. When Aisha was threatened with being sent to her parents' country of origin (which Wikan does not reveal) for an arranged marriage, the child welfare authorities refused to intervene. As a result, Aisha was kidnapped, sent away for four years, married, raped, and subjected to further abuse, until she was able to escape and return to Norway. Wikan's central argument is that the policies informed by multiculturalism, which under the best case implementation should promote tolerance of cultural difference, are working against Norwegian citizens by overlooking abuses that are wrongly interpreted as cultural practice. Wikan maintains that the fear of being labeled racist is thus keeping Norwegian officials from protecting their own citizens.

Wikan knows that her book will be controversial and misunderstood and implies that Americans may be the most offended. This is, simply put, a critique of the sentiment underlying multicultural policies. While recognizing distinctiveness is generally applauded, the downside is that strictly delineating cultures may have the effect of wrongly boxing people in. Most important, Wikan calls for more courage in exposing abuses, particularly against women and children, perpetrated in the name of maintaining or supporting a distinctive cultural identity. Some readers may strongly disagree with Wikan's critiques, particularly of generous European welfare policies which, she maintains, strip immigrants of their dignity by not encouraging them to contribute to society. Wikan claims that she has been accused of promoting [End Page 219] an essentialist Norwegian position, yet it is quite clear that she advocates no such position. Ultimately, she calls for integration, not assimilation.

Chapter 3, "The Politics of Culture," may be of most theoretical use to folklorists. Most folklorists tend to work primarily with what we see as neatly defined products of "a culture," which for semantic purposes, and certainly in applied work, has tidy boundaries. Yet Wikan argues that "culture is not a thing, a material object; it is just a concept, an abstraction...

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