Lia Figgou

Prejudice is understood as the human individuals’ psychological tendency to make unfavorable evaluations about members of other social groups. Ibanez et al. (2009, p. 81) It blunts the thinking to speak of the participants in the social scene as ‘individuals’. Asch (1952, p. 180) The vagueness of prejudice As Pawlik and d’Ydewalle (2006) have noted, psychologists generally tend to refer to their research objects in common-language terminology. Consequently, authors of academic texts often start out by providing formal definitions of any key terms in order to establish a clear boundary between their own scientific understanding and the imprecise, inaccurate, forms of conceptualization typical of ‘mere’ common sense (cf. Billig, 1990; Shapin, 2001). Social psychological work on prejudice is, of course, no exception, and most authors offer their readers a definition of the term ‘prejudice’, which they typically distinguish from purportedly less accurate or precise everyday uses of the word.

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 paper explores how the constructs of ‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’ were used and understood by respondents in an interview study concerning the settlement of Albanian refugees in Greece. Analysis indicated the existence of multiple, potentially contradictory, common sense understandings of prejudice and racism, analogous to some accounts of the prejudice construct in academic social psychology. However, notwithstanding the fact that respondents displayed multiple understandings of racism or prejudice in theory, these abstract formulations were rarely employed to account for actual instances of discrimination. Specific discriminatory acts against Albanian people were framed instead as matters of fear and risk. By virtue of being cast within a problematic of in/security rather than within the discursive frame of prejudice, particular hostile actions against the Albanian refugees could be glossed as reasonable and understandable.