Equality works: how one race equality centre conceptualises, articulates and performs the idea of equality in Scotland
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Date
04/07/2011Author
Dennell, Brandi Lee
Metadata
Abstract
This thesis focuses on the Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland
(CERES), based in Edinburgh, which was funded by the Scottish Executive and
Scottish Government to develop several programmes to promote equality in
education. Drawing together the disparate approaches to anthropology of
organisations, the methodology has included both a focus on a small core group of
workers as well as the flow of the materials produced throughout a larger network.
Rather than conduct fieldwork at various locations as network or policy studies
emphasise, I chose to work for two years with CERES due to their geographic and
creational centrality to the ‘mainstreaming equality’ initiative.
Beginning at a time when questions of identity in Scotland flourished as a result of
devolution, increased immigration and the UK publication of the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act 2000, the mainstreaming equality projects signify the Scottish
Executive’s attempt to uphold its duty of promoting race equality. CERES managed
three of the seven funded mainstreaming equality projects.
The production of these resources contributes to a campaign through which the
Scottish Government has worked to reformulate understandings of what it means to
be Scottish. This is achieved by drawing upon the myths of a new and egalitarian
Scotland in order to displace the myth that there is no racism in Scotland. Within this
context, the research’s central questions revolve around this creation in the stages
undertaken at CERES. Examining the Centre’s daily tasks, this research
demonstrates that although commissioned to contribute to the same overall initiative,
the way in which CERES depicts equality is ultimately very different than the
approaches developed within the government. The materials created by CERES,
which unlike One Scotland, do not include national symbols, have engaged with the
complexities of equality and discrimination more than the media campaigns yet have
had a smaller audience.
Once the idea is developed it encounters further manipulation, both physical in the
case of teaching tools and ideological in working to make the identities included
reflect Scotland through statistics and discussions of subjects already embedded in
the national curriculum. From the vantage point of the creation process, this
ethnography contributes to the anthropology of organisations and highlights the legal
and policy negotiations undertaken across various levels of governance.