Multiculturalism

Contemporary liberal states must provide an answer to the “question of cultural diversity”, requiring a principled way to determine which minority cultural practices a state must accommodate and support. (Liberal egalitarian) multiculturalism answers this question neatly by creating a dichotomy between national minorities and ethnic minorities (the national/ethnic “dichotomy”). Where national minorities are entitled to extensive and far-reaching cultural rights, ethnic minorities are entitled to significantly fewer cultural rights and accommodations. This dichotomy is enacted through a distributive logic that allocates (...) cultural rights to achieve equal individual autonomy. But the dichotomy is also influenced by the ways these groups were incorporated into the state. Their modes of incorporation are different and, thus, they have different requirements to achieve equally autonomous lives. Critics have challenged multiculturalism by questioning this dichotomy. They have suggested that the dichotomy does not adequately capture differences in kinds of minority groups and their entitlements. This paper defends the dichotomy by offering a supplementary principle to liberal egalitarian multiculturalism: the reparative multicultural principle. This principle allocates cultural rights as part of reparative entitlements for historical and ongoing injustices committed against minority groups. Supplementing multiculturalism in this way more accurately captures the idea of the historical mode of incorporation that inspires the dichotomy and can help resolve some the objections to multiculturalism. (shrink)

This article examines how multiculturalism has overflowed from its governmental and policy articulations into Canadian society and culture more broadly. In doing so, it brings together three fields of research that are often separated and disarticulated from each other. Firstly, it draws on oft-overlooked archival material from agencies, departments and ministries of anti-racism, heritage, human rights, immigration, labour, multiculturalism, race relations, settlement and the status of women between 1971 and 2001. Secondly, it engages with the political and academic careers of (...) “immigrant women” who navigated the credentialism, anti-intellectualism and “shy elitism” that courses through official and corporate forms of multiculturalism, and were recognized by prize-giving institutions for their contributions to Canadian society. Finally, it thinks with and through Black Atlantic intellectuals and an “anti-hierarchical tradition of thought that probably culminates in C.L.R. James’s idea that ordinary people do not need an intellectual vanguard to help them to speak or to tell them what to say”. (shrink)

Multiculturalism has become a political touchstone in many countries around the world. While many of those on the right oppose it, and many of those on the left embrace it, things are not this simple. For those who defend them, multicultural policies are generally seen as key to the fair and successful integration of minorities, many of whom are immigrants, into diverse democratic societies. For those who oppose multiculturalism, who have become part of the so-called "backlash" against multiculturalism, they are (...) charged with generating segregation rather than inclusion, undermining national cultures, reinforcing difference, and privileging minority groups. Around the world, we see failing attempts at migrant integration, persistent religious intolerance and racial and ethnic discrimination, resurgent national minorities, emboldened majorities, permanent minorities, continuing social isolation, and increasing extremism, including in the form of white nationalism. But is multiculturalism the solution to these problems or does it just make them worse? In this for-and-against book, two prominent scholars of multiculturalism put forward different answers to this important question. While Patti Tamara Lenard argues for minority rights as both the consequence of a right to culture and a way to redress the effects of nation-building, Peter Balint rejects minority rights altogether, instead arguing for a re-imagined liberal neutrality. This theoretical disagreement plays out in real-world policy disagreement. Lenard, for example, argues strongly in favor of exemptions from general rules for minority cultures including the right of Sikhs to be exempt from helmet laws, and for Jews and Muslims to be exempt from bans on male circumcision. She also defends the right of minority cultures to have government-supported separate spaces. Balint, on the other hand, argues directly against these types of exemptions and government support. He is opposed to any form of differentiation based on culture, religion, or ethnicity. The book uses a wide range of real-world examples to demonstrate their significant theoretical disagreement, and to recommend very different policy proposals. (shrink)

This book focuses on multiculturalism, racism and the interests of nonhuman animals. Each are, in their own right, rapidly growing and controversial fields of enquiry, but how do multiculturalism and racism intersect with the debate concerning animals and their interests? This a deceptively simple question but on that is becoming ever more pressing as we examine our societal practices in a pluralistic world. Collating the work of a diverse group of academics from across the world, the book includes writing on (...) a wide range of subjects and addressing contemporary issues in this critical arena. Subjects covered include multiculturalism, group rights and the limits of tolerance; ethnocentrism and animals; racism and discrimination and non-Western alternatives to animal rights and welfare. The book will be of interest to researchers, lecturers and advanced students as well as range of social justice organisations, government institutions, animal activist organisations and environmental groups. (shrink)

Following newer research trends this chapter is underpinned by the thesis that the British Empire, by its gradual disengagement from its former dominions, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, was seen as a threat by social actors in these respective societies. Concurrently, all these societies had to deal with a (growing) variety of ethnic and social groups. With the emphasis on developments in Canada and in Australia, Sebastian Koch studies two big celebrations of nationhood to question different ways of memoria and (...) anti-memoria: the celebration of Canada’s 100 years’ anniversary of independence in 1967 and the 1967 Expo in Montreal. His analysis of memoria and anti-memoria as knowledge practices shows that indigenous knowledge was still threatened and precarious even if Canada proclaimed the idea of “unity in diversity” during its coming of age party in 1967. Nevertheless, Koch’s chapter shows that formerly marginalized groups used (their) precarious knowledge to win recognition, highlight injustices, and play their part in the development of “new” identity concepts. (shrink)

Notwithstanding its many successes, African-centred pedagogy (ACP) has been vulnerable to criticism, implicit and explicit, from several quarters. For example, ACP can be justly criticized for not recognizing the general diversity of blacks in America, a “nation” of more than 30 million spread across a tremendous variety of lifeways, locations, and historical circumstances. It also has been accused of abandoning the democratic purposes of the civil rights movement and repudiating its real successes. In addition to the ambiguities of Black identity, (...) many difficulties also attend the conceptualization and implementation of ACP. To examine the various challenges that confront ACP, our essay will be framed by the following three questions: (1) Does the historical context in which many black children live justify the existence of African-centered schools? (2) Does ACP prepare black children to participate in a democratic society? (3) Does the construction of an essentialist racial identity in ACP compromise its mission and success? In response to the first question, we will briefly review the historical conditions and circumstances of American schooling for blacks before considering both the motivations for establishing African-centered schools and the aims of ACP. Efforts to forge a parallel society and to foster Black consciousness and pride, including the establishment of separatist schools, are not new. We will limit our historical overview to the years following the 1954 Brown decision and leave to others the examination of historically unique examples of separate Black schooling that predate the rise of African-centered schools in their present incarnation. We conclude that both historical and contemporary realities do in fact justify some forms of voluntary separated schooling such as African-centered schools. (shrink)

Multiculturalism is a term used to describe a person's view of the variety of life in the world, or cultural policies that emphasize the acceptance of diversity and various kinds of cultures that exist in people's lives regarding values, systems, cultures, habits, and their politics. Before the emergence of multiculturalism, monoculturalism and assimilation that have become the norm in the nation-state paradigm since the early 19th century. Monoculturalism requires a normative cultural unity. Meanwhile, assimilation is the emergence of a desire (...) to unite between two or more different cultures by reducing differences. thus creating a new culture. Multiculturalism has become an official policy in English - speaking countries, starting in Africa in 1999. This policy was later adopted by most members of the European Union, as an official policy, and as a social consensus among elites. But in recent years, a number of European countries, especially Britain and France, have begun to change their policies towards a policy of multiculturalism. The policy change also began to be the subject of debate in the United Kingdom and Germany, and several other countriesMulticulturalism. (shrink)

India is a multinational country with many sub-nations which are proud of their own cultures. The linguistic survey of India on different occasion has soon that there are more than thousands mother tongues including various languages and dialects. These linguistic diversity has always been posing a great threat to national unity or integration which means a people living in a territorial unit having a national authority and as value consensus. National integration is a problem of many countries but in India (...) the problem is most comprehensive. One of the barriers to the achievement of national integration in India is the existence of strong hold of sub-national loyalties on account of linguistic diversities. However linguistic diversity did not pose a great problem for compromises and consensus among the people during the independence struggle.After independence politicization of language has tended to threaten our national integration on the controversies over the linguistic re-organisation of the state, the official language, etc. Yet it can be said that a single language for national identity is hardly possible in India. The solution of language problem for establishing national unity in India must be a pluralist one. (shrink)

In this short comment on Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, I concentrate on the permissible extent of interference by a liberal state in a community within that state when such interference aims to protect individuals within that community from it. He and I both value individuals and want them protected, of course. This shared value, however, leads us to different conclusions. On any liberal view, individuals must be allowed to act as they wish subject only to specific sorts of justified limitations. In (...) the mainstream approach that Cohen-Almagor accepts, these will include limitations necessary to not merely protect but also to promote autonomy. On my own view, by contrast, it is protection alone that justifies interference. I thus spell out Cohen-Almagor’s view about the need for interference with non-liberal groups within a liberal state and indicate my disagreement. (shrink)

In pursuit of a just political order, Will Kymlicka has defended a liberal conception of multiculturalism. The persuasive appeal of his argument, like that of secular-liberalism more generally, is due to presenting liberalism as a neutral and universal political project. Utilizing Charles Taylor’s genealogy of ‘exclusive humanism’ in A Secular Age, this thesis attempts to re-read Kymlicka in order to make certain theological commitments in his work explicit. Here I argue that Kymlicka, in order to make his conception of multiculturalism (...) plausible, relies on a theologically-thick and controversial humanism operating under secular conditions of belief. By committing himself to a particular conception of the human and specific conditions of belief, Kymlicka’s liberal multiculturalism is rendered provincially incoherent because it fails to treat in a neutral manner certain theological commitments. (shrink)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between its appeals (...) to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism. (shrink)

Multiculturalism as a public policy and philosophy has become increasingly controversial in many democracies over the last decade. While the specific issues can vary across national contexts, a common anxiety is that multiculturalism sanctions minority practices that conflict with prevailing social values or legal norms. Central to this concern is the value liberal societies place on the autonomy of the individual. Many of our most charged public controversies involve a perception that certain minority practices jeopardize the autonomy of their individual (...) members and, especially, their women and children. Just as the value of autonomy is central to these disputes, so the idea of 'authenticity' is often pivotal to the understanding of autonomy in such cases. The autonomous individual acts on reasons that are truly his or her own. But the issue of authenticity also arises in claims for cultural recognition regarding whether a particular minority practice is a genuine or authoritative expression of that minority's culture. Geoffrey Brahm Levey and his distinguished group of philosophers, political theorists, and anthropologists critically explore these twin notions of 'authenticity' – of autonomous persons and of cultures – in our multiculturalism debates. Discussing a wide range of illustrative cases and controversies drawn from Britain and continental Europe, North America, Australia, and the Middle East, they address various issues raised by the complex interactions between authenticity, autonomy, and the accommodation of minority cultural practices. Moving beyond theoretical discussion to consider the practical and policy implications, Autonomy, Authenticity and Multiculturalism challenges and complicates conventional assumptions about authenticity that inform liberal responses to minority cultural claims in Western democracies today. A helpful resource to scholars worldwide in Political and Social Theory, Political Philosophy, Legal Anthropology, Multiculturalism, and, more generally, of cultural identity and diversity in liberal democracies today. (shrink)

In children’s learning subjects, English courses has its relative particularity compared with Chinese courses and the mathematics. Children’s English teaching is often inefficient because of the lack of students’ timely consolidation after class. Given this, the present work starts with the analysis of the current situation of children’s learning, and introduces the film-assisted English teaching. In the specific teaching links, English teaching is carried out in a three-dimensional teaching mode. Before that, topics of the films are selected for the English (...) teaching, and the films are edited and processed. Initially, the present work expounds the English children’s films and their educational functions. Then, children can obtain teaching effect from the films. An English questionnaire is designed to analyze the application effect of English films in children’s English teaching. The results show that the film teaching mode improves children’s learning interest and motivation, and English film teaching can stimulate students’ learning interest. Students are also more active to participate in teaching activities, thus improving their language skills. Under the teaching in the scenes of films, students can perceive the functions of language in certain contexts. Comprehensible language input promotes students’ English listening ability and oral expression ability. The films can intuitively show the humanistic style, historical geography, cultures, and customs of English countries, and then cultivate students’ western cultural literacy. Practice has proved that the method proposed here can achieve good teaching effect, and it provides certain references for children’s English education. (shrink)

In this paper I give an overview of a perspectival realist ontology. I discuss the role of situated knowledge and multiculturalism in perspectival ontology and offer a working definition of ‘phenomena’ as the minimal unit of such ontological commitment. I clarify how the view differs from Kuhn’s view, and highlight some of its implications for how to think of scientific knowledge as a multicultural and cosmopolitan inquiry.

Contemporary views of African states paint pictures of nation-states where the right not to tolerate the intolerant is erroneously applied, with varying degrees of decrials of supposedly intolerant groups by political and religious leaders. Karl Popper advocates a notion of limited toleration, with a dictum, “Do not tolerate the intolerant”. This paper contends that such applications result in state-sanctioned suppression of alternate views, some of which are based on ideologies that require critically rational discourse. Without discounting genuine cases of intolerant (...) groups whose intolerance should not be tolerated, this paper asserts that consistent and universal applications of the right to be intolerant of intolerance should be discouraged; rather, a consistent engagement with intolerant groups should be undertaken with a view to ascertaining which among such intolerant groups are truly intolerant, and which are genuinely advocating for mutual recognition and respect. (shrink)

Uses poststructuralist theory to connect inclusion, exclusion and identity, using real-world case studies from British culture, politics and lawLasse Thomassen applies a fresh, poststructuralist approach to reconcile the theoretical and practical issues surrounding inclusion, exclusion and representation. He opens up debates and themes including Britishness, race, the nature and role of Islam in British society, homelessness and social justice. Thomassen argues that the politics of inclusion and identity should be viewed as struggles over how these identities are represented. He develops (...) this argument through careful analysis of cases from the last four decades of British multiculturalism, including public debates about the role of religion in British society, Gordon Brown and David Cameron's contrasting versions of Britishness, legal cases about religious symbols and clothing in schools, and the Nick Hornby novel How to Be Good. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that John Rawls’ later work presents one of the most fruitful liberal frameworks from which to approach global cultural diversity. In his Law of Peoples (1999), the normative architecture Rawls provides is much more open to an intercultural/religious dialogue with various non-Western communities, such as the First Nations, than are other liberal approaches. Surprisingly, this has gone unnoticed in the literature on multiculturalism. At the same time, Rawls’ framework is not problem free. Here, I am (...) concerned with Rawls’ conception of overlapping consensus as political, rather than comprehensive; or the idea that dialogue and discussion concerning issues of justice must necessarily, as a matter of principle, exclude philosophical or religious reasons. I argue that this constraint will only add to the unfair exclusion of legitimate concerns. I demonstrate this in Rawls' discussion of so-called non-public spiritual perspectives of land, non-human animals, and the environment – views strikingly similar to those held by many Indigenous and Native Americans. Rawls’ framework unjustifiably and unjustly excludes such views from participation in the public and political realm. In the context of a globally diverse world, and in light of a history of Western colonialism, oppression, and domination of Indigenous peoples, I would argue that justice and fairness require that such others at least be able to articulate their concerns in the public and political domain, according to their own self-understandings and as they see fit, even if we do not agree with these. I argue that Rawls’ proviso is insufficient as a response. (shrink)

This article examines how multiculturalism has overflowed from its governmental and policy articulations into Canadian society and culture more broadly. In doing so, it brings together three fields of research that are often separated and disarticulated from each other. Firstly, it draws on oft-overlooked archival material from agencies, departments and ministries of anti-racism, heritage, human rights, immigration, labour, multiculturalism, race relations, settlement and the status of women between 1971 and 2001. Secondly, it engages with the political and academic careers of (...) “immigrant women” who navigated the credentialism, anti-intellectualism and “shy elitism” that courses through official and corporate forms of multiculturalism, and were recognized by prize-giving institutions for their contributions to Canadian society. Finally, it thinks with and through Black Atlantic intellectuals and an “anti-hierarchical tradition of thought that probably culminates in C.L.R. James’s idea that ordinary people do not need an intellectual vanguard to help them to speak or to tell them what to say”. (shrink)

This article examines the value of Plato's Republic in the core curriculum despite its alleged issues of elitism, classism, and sexism.

Pluralism and diversity are largely bound to a humancentric conception of difference, one which fails to consider the plurality of ontologies that constitute reality. The result has been the confinement of the subject of justice to social spaces, and hence the reinforcement of the dichotomous understanding of humanity and nature. This is in part because pluralist theories are largely concerned with one single manifestation of vulnerability: the vulnerability of minority groups. This essay begins by offering a distinctive definition of vulnerability, (...) one that is broad enough to incorporate both universal and dispositional accounts, while being narrow enough to rule out both vitalist and biocentric approaches. I use the notion to examine debates on political pluralism, and I argue that, as they currently stand, pluralist approaches are ill suited for understanding the struggles of Indigenous peoples against colonialism. I defend the view that the normative case for pluralism needs to be grounded in an ecologically aware ethics that can respond to the vulnerability of animate beings who sustain life. (shrink)

Resumen: En este ensayo desarrollo una crítica al modelo de justicia multicultural de Will Kymlicka, con el propósito de establecer las bases para el desarrollo de un multiculturalismo crítico. El argumento se ordena de la siguiente forma. En la primera sección analizo la teoría de los derechos especiales de Kymlicka e identifico el valor liberal central al que estos responden, la autonomía individual. En la segunda sección examino el fundamento igualitarista de la suerte de su teoría de los derechos especiales. (...) En la tercera sección elaboro una crítica general a la justicia multicultural liberal desarrollando un argumento para politizar los reclamos de los pueblos indígenas para el acceso a su cultura. Argumento que el trato justo de las minorías indígenas requiere reconocer su autodeterminación política.: In this essay I develop a critique of Will Kymlicka’s model of multicultural justice, with the purpose of laying down the foundations for a critical multiculturalism. The argument is ordered in the following way. In the first section I analyse Kymlicka’s theory of special rights and identify the central liberal value to which they respond: individual autonomy. In the second section I examine the luck egalitarian foundations of Kymlicka’s theory of special rights. In the third section, I elaborate a general critique to liberal multicultural justice, developing an argument to politicize the claims of indigenous peoples to access to their culture. Basically I argue that the just treatment of indigenous minorities requires recognizing their political self-determination. (shrink)

In this paper, T. M. Murray defends a vision of liberal tolerance as grounding the common good. She critiques the discourse that Western liberalism amounts to ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘cultural imperialism’. She argues that liberal academics, in maintaining these narratives, contradict their own vaunted values and tacitly collude with religious hypocrisy and intolerance. She argues for a universal vision of the common good broadly grounded in human flourishing and human nature and linked to the philosophies of Aristotle and J. S. Mill.

In 2015 over one million people applied for asylum in Europe and pushed it into political turmoil because no common answer could be found to the “European migrant crisis.” Germany was heavily criti...

Toleration is typically defined as follows: an agent (A), for some reason, objects to certain actions or practices of someone else (B), but has outweighing other reasons to accept these actions or practices nonetheless and, thus, refrains from interfering with or preventing B from acting accordingly, although A has the power to interfere. So understood, (mutual) toleration is taken to allow for peaceful coexistence and ideally even cooperation amongst people who disagree with each other on crucial questions on how to (...) live and what to value, which is why it has traditionally been regarded as an important part of political liberalism. An explicitly value-neutral liberal state then avoids taking sides when it comes to different and competing ways of life. However, following this idea of liberal neutrality, it has been questioned whether a value-neutral liberal state still needs toleration or is even compatible with it, for apparently neutrality leaves no more room for the objection component of toleration to take hold. In this paper, I take up this question and argue that there is, indeed, conceptual and practical room left for a value-neutral liberal state to be tolerant. Drawing on the interplay between four kinds of reasons (pragmatic, ethical, moral, and political), pragmatic and political reasons may still provide the needed evaluative and normative ground upon which the combination of objection and outweighing acceptance can be made sense of. However, the possible scope of toleration for a value-neutral liberal state is considerably limited. (shrink)

In recent years, several theorists have defended a form of neutrality that seeks to equalise the benefits that state policies bestow upon citizens’ conceptions of the good life. For example, when state policies confer special benefits upon a conception that revolves around a particular culture, religion or type of sports, other cultures, religions or types of sports might be due compensation. This article argues that this kind of neutrality – which I refer to as ‘hands-on neutrality’ – cannot be vindicated, (...) whether it takes a resourcist form or welfarist form. After explaining why states cannot simply avoid bestowing unequal advantages upon citizens’ conceptions of the good life, I identify several versions of hands-on neutrality and show that all of them fail to respect the moral equality of citizens. (In so doing, however, I do find that a different form of neutrality is appropriately applied under a more limited set of conditions, which is lottery-based.) I conclude by showing that in cases where theories of hands-on neutrality have intuitive force, more plausible rival principles can account for our intuitions. (shrink)

Political theorists have developed and refined the concept of culture through much critical discussion with anthropology. This article will deepen this engagement by claiming that political theory...

In a world no longer centered on the West, what should political theory become? Although Western intellectual traditions continue to dominate academic journals and course syllabi in political theory, up-and-coming contributions of “comparative political theory” are rapidly transforming the field. Deparochializing Political Theory creates a space for conversation among leading scholars who differ widely in their approaches to political theory. These scholars converge on the belief that we bear a collective responsibility to engage and support the transformation of political theory. (...) In these exchanges, “deparochializing” political theory emerges as an intellectual, educational, and political practice that cuts across methodological approaches. Because it is also an intergenerational project, this book presses us to reimagine our teaching and curriculum design. Bearing the marks of its beginnings in East Asia, Deparochializing Political Theory seeks to decenter Western thought and explore the evolving tasks of political theory in an age of global modernity. (shrink)

On Exit provides fresh, new perspectiveson the debates on the rights of individuals against their own cultural or religious groups. It brings together scholars from different disciplines to discuss some of thekey questions concerning the relations of cultural and religious groups, group members, citizens, and the state within Western liberal democracies. The volume revisits some of the theoretical controversiesrevolving aroundthe right of exit, and provides insights into the more practical problems of cultural accommodation.