Talk:Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Undue weight to Breivik case

The recently inserted material about the role of Hylland-Eriksen's quote in the Breivik case gives undue weight to an issue of marginal relevance to his career and scholarship and makes the article unbalanced and causes it to suffer from recentism. A line at most is justified about this largely irrelevant misreading of Hyllan Eriksen's scholarship.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 15:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I can appreciate that you are coming from the position of anthropology which seems to be your particular field of interest judging from your user page. I can only surmise that this is what makes you unable to see that Eriksen's involvement in the Breivik case, on a number of levels is an important part which it is fully justified to cover in his Wikipedia biography, as well as in other articles related to the 2011 Norway attacks. __meco (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I will refrain from speculating on your background and what it makes you unable to see. I maintain that in an article related to Hylland Eriksen and not to Breivik, the Breivik case and the use of one quote to constitute at this point more than half the article is hugely undue weight and furthermore a clear example of recentism. If Hylland Eriksen plays an important role in the Breivik case then it should be covered there and mentioned/linked here - but not have full coverage in both places.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:27, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with the opinion presented by you and Curb Chain below. Considering this article was a stub before I reassessed it I think it is not very constructive to require any expansion of the article to be "balanced". Had it previously been a comprehensive article WP:UNDUE would have been a reasonable contention, but that was not the case. I think it is deplorable that readers are now unable to use Wikipedia to appraise themselves of what this matter all hinged upon. Obviously that full discussion cannot take place in either the article on Breivik himself or the article on the attacks (which both contain a discussion on the manifesto) nor would such a discussion be possible in the article on the trial. The present article is the only suitable venue for a detailed discussion that would probably have laid the issue to rest for most inquirers. Now we're left with a situation where only Norwegian-speaking readers who go and read the referenced Bergens Tidende article will be able to make heads and tails of this matter. For the sake of enlightening the discussion I quote the text that I want to have included in the article below:

Eriksen and Anders Behring Breivik

One quote from Eriksen made in the context of his CULCOM involvement has become a focal point in the 1,500-page manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, as well as in Breivik's defence speech during his 2012 trial:

Our most important task ahead is to deconstruct the majority, and we must deconstruct them so thoroughly that they will never be able to call themselves the majority again.

— 

Breivik appears to have based his continued focus on this quote on a 2008 article by the Norwegian anti-Islamic blogger Fjordman in the anti-Islamic blog The Brussels Journal. Following the terror attacks the quote has been repeated oft by right-wing extremists all across Europe. Following Breivik's highlighting of the quote on the second day of his trial, when reading from a script for 70 minutes, Eriksen was interviewed about the quote by the regional Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende. There he admitted that taken out of context the quote did look scary. In the interview Eriksen said that Breivik is "an uneducated man so there's much he doesn't know", however he also characterized Breivik as a "genuine ideological adversary". He went on to explain that the background that must be realized is that there's a lack of research done on the diversity of the Norwegian majority population, and that deconstruction is a term which is used among scientists. Eriksen gave the example of an effort to deconstruct minorities in Norway which uncovered the diversity among the Norwegians with Pakistani background.

Thomas Hylland Eriksen has also been a frequently interviewed commentator of the trial of Anders Behring Breivik, where he has also been called as a defence witness.

References

I would like the discussion to continue, though I'm not going to revert Maunus' edit removing and condensing the above text radically. I also wonder why the last paragraph was removed in its entirety. __meco (talk) 19:51, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind inserting the last paragraph of your version. I do object to the long quote and exegesis.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 22:22, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

And I've readded that last paragraph. As for settling on a better compromise with regards to the rest of this text I hope more voices can help bring in a better perspective and a new consensus. __meco (talk) 08:10, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

3rd Opinion

I doubt Thomas Hylland Eriksen is notable for his quote on the Anders Brevick trial. If the article is generally filled with material concerning the Anders Brevick trail, it would be undue and off topic even. This 3rd Opinion cannot be dismmissed and must be considered towards the consenus decision making on making articles on Wikipedia.Curb Chain (talk) 08:33, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

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