Categorising Category Labels in Interview Accounts about the ‘Muslim Minority’ in Greece

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this paper we examine the construction of categorical distinctions and the negotiation of category labels in interview accounts given by a sample of the majority population (Orthodox Christians) in Thrace (Northern Greece) concerning their co-existence with the Muslim minority. Employing a rhetorical approach to categorisation, we argue that category labels constitute argumentative positions which reflect culturally specific assumptions around which Greekness and Otherness are constructed. Analysis points to the ways in which the rhetorical invocation of certain category labels may be treated by social actors as potentially open to the charge of racism. However, what counts as racism or discrimination in relation to various category labels is not unproblematic and straightforward. As the meaning attached to particular categories shifts, the meaning attached to ‘racism’ also changes.

This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit: