Cultural Values from the Subaltern Perspective: A Phenomenology of Refugees' Experience of British Cultural Values

该项目旨在了解位于一系列艺术/文化活动的难民，一组新的英国文化生活谁往往是边缘化的“主流”文化活动，但谁同时预计将通过一个霸权的民族身份的英国和从今以后拥护英国的文化价值观的价值。难民是一个通常经历过被迫移徙的群体，通常与他们自己的文化活动和价值观有关-往往受到激烈的捍卫。这本移民传记对我们如何思考当今英国的艺术和文化价值以及文化表达做出了复杂而丰富的贡献。我们将从他们的“局外人”视角出发，调查难民对英国文化价值观的立场。英国的文化价值观不是单一的，也不是可以精确定义的，它们是通过参与和参与而形成和完善的。我们将寻求确定文化价值的组成部分嵌入在一组典型的英国艺术和文化追求，总部设在布莱顿市及其周边地区。我们将使用一系列方法来分解要识别的组件，这些方法专注于离散的感觉，以及这些活动所声称的特定形式的体现。我们希望仔细研究参与艺术和文化领域的经验是什么，因此我们也将收集与这些经验有关的认知和情感的信息。难民是一个独特的案例：移民非常关注英国价值观的文化适应。这种关注可以是一种保护机制，一种哲学选择，一种试图摆脱创伤的过去或起源文化的尝试，一套强加的规范，或者一种使他们被迫错位的方式可以理解。法律要求难民学习英国的文化价值观，以便通过内政部的工具“授予”公民身份，即“英国生活”测试（将在小组讨论中进行询问）。不管是什么原因，难民对“是什么让我们成为英国人”有着敏锐的敏感性和先见之明。然而，由于经济障碍等显性因素，以及某些艺术/文化追求的“白色”等隐性因素，他们进入文化产业的机会往往受到严重限制。该项目将采取为期16周的课程形式，名为"什么是英国文化"，向12名女难民提供。通过一系列的艺术和文化活动，我们将评估难民的参与和反思的具体经验，通过创造性的表达收集感官信息。为了收集可靠的数据，这门课程相当长，要求也很高;然而，我们在之前的项目中发现，难民参与者欣赏这样的承诺，因为它们能够形成一个强大的群体身份，在计划的会议结束后，这种身份可以非正式地继续下去，提供可持续的资源。作为研究人员，我们有自己的文化价值观：我们的模型来自女权主义实践。女权主义认识论关注的是"性别确实而且应该影响我们的知识概念、认知主体以及探究和辩护的实践"（安德森，2004年）。女性主义认识论的核心是情境知识者的概念，情境知识者产生情境知识。Donna Haraway（1998）认为，大多数知识，特别是学术知识，总是“由在各种地点工作的定位行为者产生的”。合作学习、尊重社会差异、营造相互支持的环境、倾听他人、为他人着想，这些特点都是女性主义课堂的标志，也是我们希望在研究过程中效仿的文化价值。

This project seeks to understand the value located in a range of arts/cultural activities to refugees, a group new to British cultural life who are often marginalised from 'mainstream' cultural activities, but who are simultaneously expected to adopt a hegemonic national identity of Britishness and henceforward espouse British cultural values. Refugees are a group who typically have experienced forced migration, oftentimes related specifically to their own - often fiercely defended - cultural activities and values in their country of origin. This migratory biography makes for a complex, rich contribution to how we think about the value of arts and culture, and cultural expression, in the UK today.We will investigate the standpoint of refugees on British cultural values, benefitting from their 'outsider within' perspective. British cultural values are not unitary, nor are they precisely definable, they are shaped and refined by participation and engagement. We will seek to identify the components of cultural value embedded in a set of typically British arts and cultural pursuits, based in and around the city of Brighton. We will break down the components to be identified using a range of methods that focus on the discrete senses, and on the particular forms of embodiment that such activities claim. We want to examine carefully what constitutes the experience of involvement in the arts and cultural sphere, so we will also be collecting information on the cognitions and emotions that are attached to such experiences. Refugees constitute a unique case: migrants pay acute attention to the acculturation of British values. This attention can be a protective mechanism, a philosophical choice, an attempt to move away from a traumatized past or culture of origin, an imposed set of norms, or a way of making their enforced dislocation intelligible. Refugees are legally required to learn British cultural values in order to be 'awarded' citizenship, via the Home Office instrument, the 'Life in the UK' Test (which will be interrogated in group discussion). Whatever the reason, refugees have an acute sensitivity and prescient awareness of 'what makes us British'. Yet, often their access to the cultural industries can be severely restricted, due to explicit factors such as economic barriers, and due to implicit factors such as the perceived 'Whiteness' of some art/cultural pursuits (eg. premier league football, and the opera - two performances that will form part of our programme).This project will take the form of a 16 week course, called 'What is British Culture', offered to 12 women refugees. Through a range of arts and cultural activities, we will assess refugee's embodied experience of participation and reflection, gathering sensory information through creative expression. In order to gather robust data, the course is quite long and demanding; however we have found in previous projects that refugee participants appreciate such commitments as they enable a strong group identity to form, which can continue informally after the planned meetings finish, providing a sustainable resource.As researchers we have our own cultural values: our model is taken from feminist praxis. Feminist epistemologies focus on the way "in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification" (Anderson 2004). At the core of feminist epistemology is the concept of the situated knower, who produces situated knowledge. Donna Haraway (1998) famously argued that most knowledge, in particular academic knowledge is always "produced by positioned actors working in/between all kinds of locations". Collaborative learning, respect for social difference, creating an environment of mutual support, listening and consideration for others, these characteristics are all markers of the feminist classroom, cultural values which we hope to emulate in the process of the research.