Deconstructing Religious Identity, Difference, and Belonging: Implications for Anti-Racist Pedagogy

Increasing numbers of Australians identify with a multiplicity of religion groups or have no religious affiliation. Despite this, the representation of religious groups other than Christian--and the implications of this for anti-racist pedagogy in Australian schools--is seldom explored. This article interrogates the ways in which the most prominent of these minority religious groups (Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish) were spoken about in two Melbourne newspapers and considers the implications of this interrogation for multicultural pedagogy in globally integrated local school contexts, such as those in Australia. Methodologies of social cultural theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) are used to investigate newspaper discussions from the different viewpoints of their experiential, systemic, and normative focus. I find that notions of religious identity described in the media are stylized in form and an almost-silent normative self-identity is defined against clichéd typologies made within a crucible of race, identity, and belonging.