Social integration of Australian Muslims: A dramaturgical perspective

Abstract

This article presents a dramaturgical view of the social integration of minorities. Based on 30 interviews with prominent Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that they explain and approach the problem of social integration largely in presentational terms. As a corollary, their chief collective and political strategy towards social integration is to put forward alternative discourses to counter the dominant anti-Islam discourses. We use Goffman’s (1959, 1963) dramaturgical model to analyse their strategies. In a striking difference from dominant narratives that situate Islamic values and western values as incompatible, the analysis we provide shows that Muslim leaders do not see Islamic teachings or texts as a problem for social integration; rather they view the problem as negative media representations and the solution as putting forward alternative images.