Preliminary Programme

Do similarities exist among stereotypical portrayals of minority groups, regardless of social and historical context? Can some of the mechanisms that underlay the stereotypical portrayals of ‘the collective Jew’ at the beginning of the 20th century be found in the stereotyping of ‘the Muslim’ today? These questions make up part of a comparative analysis of anti-Semitic texts from the beginning of the 20th century and anti-Islamic debates going on in Norway today.
The Norwegian debate on integration and immigration is characterised by a values-oriented polarisation. Whereas the debates of the 1970s and 1980s were dominated by the view of immigration as a resource and with ‘the multicultural society’ as a goal, those of the end of the 1990s up to the present day have been marked by a problem-oriented debate on immigration; the focus on values in the public debate is primarily expressed by way of metaphors of threat in which ‘democratic values’ are pitted against ‘Muslim values’.
The notion of a values-based polarisation hangs together with an intensification of identity politics. This article looks at the use of stereotyped representations of a minority group within the context of identity politics. One of the most obvious consequences of identity politics is the collectivization of the individual. This article will therefore begin by looking at which mechanisms come into play when individuals are referred to as though they were representatives of a group, and what happens when groups are perceived as a threat. The paper demonstrates similarities in both content and structure to which groups associated with societal change and fear are subjected. (Show less)

In the early 1950`s police inspector Knut Rød was free of all charges after a judicial process that had lasted for more than five years. Knut Rød was in charge of what is known as “Jødeaksjonen” in Oslo, October and November 1942 where 532 Norwegian Jews were arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
Nobody questioned what Knut Rød had done. In post-war Norway it was focused on the fact that he had helped the national resistance during the war, and the courts considered this help to be much more important than the lives of 532 fellow Norwegians of Jewish origins.
This paper will claim that Rød got acquitted because post-war Norway regarded the Jews as not a part of the collective “we” and national community.

A part of dr. Claudia Lenz proposal for a panel at the ESSHC 2008/ Theory and Historiography Network

Title:
“Ways of constructing the other in Norway – past and present” (Show less)

The paper will discuss how the Norwegian Jews identified themselves during the last World War – how did their situation affect their their national identity? Most of them spoke fluently Norwegian and had Norwegian citizenship.
The policy of prosecution was based on a denial of the Jews belonging to a
national community. In the concentration camps this policy was exeedingly acute by dehumanizing actions. For instance; their names were taken away from them and instead they got a number tatooed on the arm. The paper will explore how these (Show less)