It offers the strongest form of group-differentiated rights—self-government rights—to indigenous peoples and national minorities for the luck egalitarian reason that their minority status is unchosen: they were coercively incorporated into the larger state.
By contrast, immigrants are viewed as voluntary migrants: by choosing to migrate, they relinquished access to their native culture. Another set of arguments for multiculturalism rests on the value of freedom. Some theorists such as Phillip Pettit and Quentin Skinner have developed the idea of freedom from domination by drawing on the civic republican tradition. Building on this line of argument to argue for recognition, Frank Lovett maintains that domination presents a serious obstacle to human flourishing.
On this view of freedom, we can be unfree even when we are not experiencing any interference as in the case of a slave of a benevolent master. We are subject to domination to the extent that we are dependent on another person or group who can arbitrarily exercise power over us Pettit , ch. Frank Lovett has explored the implications of the value of freedom from domination for questions of multicultural accommodation He begins from the premise that freedom from domination is an important human good and that we have a prima facie obligation to reduce domination.
He argues that the state should not accommodate social practices that directly involve domination. As for practices that do not involve subjecting individuals to domination, accommodation is permissible but not necessarily required. Accommodation is only required if accommodation would advance the goal of reducing domination.
He discusses one stylized example based on a familiar real-world case: the practice among Muslim women and girls of wearing headscarves. A key empirical assumption here is that combating patriarchal practices within minority communities would be easier if the burdens on more benign practices, such as wearing headscarves, are lessened.
He discusses the case of Mexican immigrant laborers with limited English language skills and limited knowledge of American laws and policies. In contrast to the communitarian or liberal egalitarian arguments considered above, the basis for the special accommodations is not a desire to protect intrinsically valuable cultures or considerations of fairness or equality but the desire to reduce domination.
Mira Bachvarova has also argued for the merits of a non-domination-based multiculturalism as compared to liberal egalitarian approaches.
Because of its focus on the arbitrary use of power and the broader structural inequalities within which groups interact, a non-domination approach may be more sensitive to power dynamics in both inter-group and intra-group relations. Other theorists sympathetic to multiculturalism look beyond liberalism and republicanism, emphasizing instead the importance of grappling with historical injustice and listening to minority groups themselves.
This is especially true of theorists writing from a postcolonial perspective. Such proponents of indigenous sovereignty emphasize the importance of understanding indigenous claims against the historical background of the denial of equal sovereign status of indigenous groups, the dispossession of their lands, and the destruction of their cultural practices Ivison , Ivison et al.
Jeff Spinner-Halev has argued that the history of state oppression of a group should be a key factor in determining not only whether group rights should be extended but also whether the state should intervene in the internal affairs of the group when it discriminates against particular members of the group.
Theorists adopting a postcolonial perspective go beyond liberal multiculturalism toward the goal of developing models of constitutional and political dialogue that recognize culturally distinct ways of speaking and acting. Multicultural societies consist of diverse religious and moral outlooks, and if liberal societies are to take such diversity seriously, they must recognize that liberalism is just one of many substantive outlooks based on a specific view of man and society.
Liberalism is not free of culture but expresses a distinctive culture of its own. This observation applies not only across territorial boundaries between liberal and nonliberal states, but also within liberal states and its relations with nonliteral minorities. Bhikhu Parekh contends that liberal theory cannot provide an impartial framework governing relations between different cultural communities More recent work has emphasized the importance of developing more contextual approaches that engage with actual political struggles for recognition and give greater voice to minority groups.
Through detailed examination of how national museums in Canada and the U. Whether it be museum officials seeking to exhibit the history and culture of minority groups or government officials deciding whether official apologies for historical injustices are in order, they should respect individual and collective self-definition, respond to demands for recognition on terms that align with the terms of those being recognized, and accommodate internal contestation of group meanings.
As Tom argues, practices of recognition guided by these principles come closer to fostering freedom and equality of minority groups than existing approaches Some critics contend that theories of multiculturalism are premised on an essentialist view of culture. Cultures are not distinct, self-contained wholes; they have long interacted and influenced one another through war, imperialism, trade, and migration. People in many parts of the world live within cultures that are already cosmopolitan, characterized by cultural hybridity.
To aim at preserving or protecting a culture runs the risk of privileging one allegedly pure version of that culture, thereby crippling its ability to adapt to changes in circumstances Waldron , ; see also Appiah , Benhabib , Scheffler Waldron also rejects the premise that the options available to an individual must come from a particular culture; meaningful options may come from a variety of cultural sources.
What people need are cultural materials, not access to a particular cultural structure. In response, multicultural theorists agree that cultures are overlapping and interactive, but they nonetheless maintain that individuals belong to separate societal cultures.
That we learn Liberal egalitarian defenders of multiculturalism like Kymlicka maintain that special protections for minority cultural groups still hold, even after we adopt a more cosmopolitan view of cultures, because the aim of group-differentiated rights is not to freeze cultures in place but to empower members of minority groups to continue their distinctive cultural practices so long as they wish to.
A second major criticism is aimed at liberal multicultural theories of accommodation in particular and stems from the value of freedom of association and conscience. As Chandran Kukathas , argues, there are no group rights, only individual rights.
By granting cultural groups special protections and rights, the state oversteps its role, which is to secure civility, and risks undermining individual rights of association.
One limitation of such a laissez-faire approach is that groups that do not themselves value toleration and freedom of association, including the right to dissociate or exit a group, may practice internal discrimination against group members, and the state would have little authority to interfere in such associations.
A politics of indifference would permit the abuse of vulnerable members of groups discussed below in 3. To embrace such a state of affairs would be to abandon the values of autonomy and equality, values that many liberals take to be fundamental to any liberalism worth its name. Working class mobilization tilts toward the redistribution end of the spectrum, and claims for exemption from generally applicable laws and the movement for same-sex marriage are on the recognition end.
In the U. Critics in the United Kingdom and Europe have also expressed concern about the effects of multiculturalism on social trust and public support for economic redistribution Barry , Miller , van Parijs There are two distinct concerns here. The first is that the existence of racial and ethnic diversity reduces social trust and solidarity, which in turn undermines public support for policies that involve economic redistribution.
For example, Robert Putnam argues that the decline in social trust and civic participation in the U. Rodney Hero has shown that the greater the racial and ethnic heterogeneity in a state, the more restrictive state-level welfare programs are Hero , Hero and Preuhs Cross-national analyses suggest that differences in racial diversity explain a significant part of the reason why the U.
The second concern is that multiculturalism policies themselves undermine the welfare-state by heightening the salience of racial and ethnic differences among groups and undermining a sense of common national identity that is viewed as necessary for a robust welfare state Barry , Gitlin , Rorty In response, theorists of multiculturalism have called for and collaborated on more empirical research of these purported trade-offs.
With respect to the first concern about the tension between diversity and redistribution, Kymlicka and Banting question the generalizability of the empirical evidence that is largely drawn from research either on Africa, where the weakness of state institutions has meant no usable traditions or institutional capacity for dealing with diversity, or on the U.
Where many minority groups are newcomers and where state institutions are strong, the impact of increasing diversity may be quite different Kymlicka and Banting , She argues that it is not diversity itself that leads to changes in trust and civic engagement but the politics of diversity, i.
The central issue, then, is not to reduce diversity but to determine principles and procedures by which differences are renegotiated in the name of justice Arneil and MacDonald As for the second concern about the tradeoff between recognition and redistribution, the evidence upon which early redistributionist critics such as Barry and Rorty relied was speculative and conjectural.
Recent cross-national research suggests that there is no evidence of a systematic tendency for multiculturalism policies to weaken the welfare state Banting et al. Both are important dimensions in the pursuit of equality for minority groups. In practice, both redistribution and recognition—responding to material disadvantages and marginalized identities and statuses—are required to achieve greater equality across lines of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, and class, not least because many individuals stand at the intersection of these different categories and suffer multiple forms of marginalization.
A politics of recognition is important not only on account of its effects on socioeconomic status and political participation but also for the sake of full inclusion of members of marginalized groups as equal citizens. Brian Barry defends a universalist ideal of equality, in contrast to the group-differentiated ideal of equality defended by Kymlicka.
Barry argues that religious and cultural minorities should be held responsible for bearing the consequences of their own beliefs and practices, just as members of the dominant culture are held responsible for bearing the consequences of their beliefs. He does think that special accommodations are owed to people with disabilities, but he believes religious and cultural affiliations are different from physical disabilities: the former do not constrain people in the way that physical disabilities do.
Barry argues that egalitarian justice is only concerned with ensuring a reasonable range of equal opportunities, not with ensuring equal access to any particular choices or outcomes , When it comes to cultural and religious affiliations, they do not limit the range of opportunities one enjoys but rather the choices one can make within the set of opportunities available to all.
In reply, one might agree that opportunities are not objective in the strong physicalist sense suggested by Barry. But the opportunity to do X is not just having the possibility to do X without facing physical encumbrances; it is also the possibility of doing X without incurring excessive costs or the risk of such costs Miller , State law and cultural commitments can conflict in ways such that the costs for cultural minorities of taking advantage of the opportunity are prohibitively high.
In contrast to Barry, liberal multiculturalists argue that many cases where a law or policy disparately impacts a religious or cultural practice constitute injustice. For instance, Kymlicka points to the Goldman case discussed above and other religion cases, as well as to claims for language rights, as examples in which group-differentiated rights are required in light of the differential impact of state action , — His argument is that since the state cannot achieve complete disestablishment of culture or be neutral with respect to culture, it must somehow make it up to citizens who are bearers of minority religious beliefs and native speakers of other languages.
Because complete state disestablishment of culture is not possible, one way to ensure fair background conditions is to provide roughly comparable forms of assistance or recognition to each of the various languages and religions of citizens. To do nothing would be to permit injustice.
Some postcolonial theorists are critical of multiculturalism and the contemporary politics of recognition for reinforcing, rather than transforming, structures of colonial domination in relations between settler states and indigenous communities. First, he argues that the politics of recognition, through its focus on reformist state redistributionist schemes like granting cultural rights and concessions to aboriginal communities, affirms rather than challenges the political economy of colonialism.
Taylor, Kymlicka, and other proponents of the contemporary politics of recognition might agree with Coulthard that self-affirmation by oppressed groups is critical for true self-determination and freedom of indigenous communities, but such self-affirmation need not be viewed as mutually exclusive from state efforts to extend institutional accommodations.
State recognition of self-government rights and other forms of accommodation are important steps toward rectifying historical injustices and transforming structural inequalities between the state and indigenous communities.
Multicultural theorists have tended to focus on inequalities between groups in arguing for special protections for minority groups, but group-based protections can exacerbate inequalities within minority groups. This is because some ways of protecting minority groups from oppression by the majority may make it more likely that more powerful members of those groups are able to undermine the basic liberties and opportunities of vulnerable members.
Vulnerable subgroups within minority groups include religious dissenters, sexual minorities, women, and children. Some of the most oppressive group norms and practices revolve around issues of gender and sexuality, and it is feminist critics who first called attention to potential tensions between multiculturalism and feminism Coleman , Okin , Shachar These tensions constitute a genuine dilemma if one accepts both that group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups are justifiable, as multicultural theorists do, and that gender equality is an important value, as feminists have emphasized.
Extending special protections and accommodations to minority groups engaged in patriarchal practices may help reinforce gender inequality within these communities. These feminist objections are especially troublesome for liberal egalitarian defenders of multiculturalism who wish to promote not only inter-group equality but also intra-group equality, including gender equality.
In response, Kymlicka has emphasized the similarities between multiculturalism and feminism: both aim at a more inclusive conception of justice, and both challenge the traditional liberal assumption that equality requires identical treatment. He argues that a liberal theory of minority group rights defends external protections while rejecting internal restrictions , 35—44;, But many feminist critics have emphasized, granting external protections to minority groups may sometimes come at the price of internal restrictions.
They may be different sides of the same coin: for example, respecting the self-government rights of Native communities may entail permitting sexually discriminatory membership rules enacted by the leaders of those communities.
Whether multiculturalism and feminism can be reconciled within liberal theory depends in part on the empirical premise that groups that seek group-differentiated rights do not support patriarchal norms and practices. If they do, liberal multiculturalists would in principle have to argue against extending the group right or extending it with certain qualifications, such as conditioning the extension of self-government rights to Native peoples on the acceptance of a constitutional bill of rights.
There has been a wave of feminist responses to the problem of vulnerable internal minorities that is sympathetic to both multiculturalism and feminism see, e. Some feminists have emphasized the importance of moving away from essentialist notions of culture and reductive views of members of minority groups as incapable of meaningful agency Phillips , Volpp Other feminists have sought to shift the emphasis from liberal rights towards more democratic approaches.
Liberal theorists have tended to start from the question of whether and how minority cultural practices should be tolerated or accommodated in accordance with liberal principles, whereas democratic theorists foreground the role of democratic deliberation and ask how affected parties understand the contested practice. By drawing on the voices of affected parties and giving special weight to the voice of women at the center of gendered cultural conflicts, deliberation can clarify the interests at stake and enhance the legitimacy of responses to cultural conflicts Benhabib , Deveaux , Song Deliberation also provides opportunities for minority group members to expose instances of cross-cultural hypocrisy and to consider whether and how the norms and institutions of the larger society, whose own struggles for gender equality are incomplete and ongoing, may reinforce rather than challenge sexist practices within minority groups Song There is contestation over what constitutes subordination and how best to address it, and intervention into minority cultural groups without the participation of minority women themselves fails to respect their freedom and is not likely to serve their interests.
The biggest challenge to multiculturalism today may not be philosophical but political: a political retreat or backlash against immigrant multiculturalism in particular. But other scholars argue there is lack of evidence of any such retreat. Based on their analysis of British policies, Varun Uberoi and Tariq Modood find that legal exemptions for minority religious practices, anti-discrimination measures, and multicultural education policies remain in place, and there is no country-wide evidence suggesting that public services are no longer delivered in different languages , Further research is needed on whether and why there has been a retreat from multiculturalism policies.
According to Cameron, multiculturalism stands for separation and division, not integration and unity. But the survey of different theories of multiculturalism above demonstrates that most theories of immigrant multiculturalism do not aim at separation but rather devising fairer terms of inclusion for religious and cultural minorities into mainstream society Kymlicka Going forward, public debate about immigrant multiculturalism should be pursued in a broader context that considers the politics of immigration, race, religion, and national security.
Multiculturalism may become an easy rhetorical scapegoat for public fear and anxiety whenever national security is seen to be threatened and when economic conditions are bad.
In Europe, concerns about the radicalization of Muslim minorities have become central to public debates about immigration and multiculturalism.
This was especially true in the face of the European migration crisis as over a million people fleeing war and violence in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere made perilous journeys by sea and land into Europe. This crisis tapped into fears about terrorism and security, especially after the November Paris and July Nice attacks; it also renewed concerns about the limits of past efforts to integrate newcomers and their descendants.
Evidence from across Europe suggests that Muslims are struggling to succeed in education and the labor market in comparison to other religious and cultural minorities Givens Integration is a two-way street: not only must immigrants work to integrate themselves, but the state itself must make accommodations to facilitate integration, as many multicultural theorists have emphasized.
The challenge of integrating immigrants has been heightened by increasing public acceptability of expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment. The challenges posed by integrating Muslims are thought to be more complex than the challenges of integrating earlier waves of immigrants, but as Patti Lenard argues, this alleged complexity derives from the simplistic and unfair elision between Islamic fundamentalism and the vast majority of Muslim minorities in Europe who desire integration on fairer terms of the sort that multiculturalists defend Lenard , In light of these concerns with immigrant multiculturalism, multicultural theorists need to continue to make the case that the ideal of multicultural citizenship stands for fairer terms of integration, not separation and division, and offer answers to questions such as: Why is multicultural citizenship more desirable than the traditional liberal ideal of common citizenship based on a uniform set of rights and opportunities for everyone?
Are multiculturalism policies actually fostering greater integration of immigrants and their descendants? How should we think about the relationship between multiculturalism and struggles to address inequalities based on race, indigeneity, class, gender, sexuality, and disability?
It is also important to study the development of multiculturalism beyond the West, including whether and how Western theories and practices of multiculturalism have traveled and been incorporated. For example, what lessons have states that only recently opened up to significant immigration, such as South Korea, drawn from the experiences of other states, and what sorts of multiculturalism policies have they adopted and why? Lie The claims of multiculturalism 2.
Justifications for multiculturalism 2. Critique of multiculturalism 3. Political retreat from multiculturalism? Bibliography Alesina, A. Glaeser, , Fighting Poverty in the U. Anderson, E. Appiah, A. Arneil, B. Arneil, R. Dhamoon, A. Eisenberg, and M. Deveaux eds. Ivison ed. Bachvarova, M. Banting, K. Johnston, W. Kymlicka, and S. Banting and W. Kymlicka eds. Barry, B. Benhabib, S. Bloemraad, I. Blum, L. Bowen, J. Cameron, D. Carens, J. Chambers, C. That might be the best reason to listen to voices there and reflect over their anger, emotions and experience, of which we have but little so far.
The historical backgrounds of multiculturalism have much too rarely been charted. A major strand of the development of multiculturalism stems from the anthropological concept of culture and its dissemination as a political concept among Western middle classes, and, more specifically, in the United Nations.
The anthropological concept of culture is the root of culturalism. In order to understand the intricacies of multiculturalism, it is important to appreciate that this theory of culture was originally conceived to be progressive. Early anthropology resolutely acted against racist assumptions in the social sciences, the idea that culturally specific features of different groups had a biological origin.
This is why culturalist theory is immediately coupled with a doctrine of anthropological incomparability: it is deemed impossible to pass judgment on the practices of other cultures, and their institutions, practices, and conceptions may differ in any conceivable manner.
The upshot of such a culturalism, however, would seem to be the immediate incompatibility, enmity, hostility and war between cultures. This is why it is strange but understandable that anthropological culturalism hastens to add the conclusion that all cultures possess equal dignity and thus merit the same degree of tolerance and respect.
The noble intention in this idea is clear: to break with earlier theories of evolutionary scale of different human races. Fair as it may seem, however, this culturalist doctrine entails some often overlooked dark sides.
Thus, many of the tensions in actual multiculturalism originate in anthropological culturalism. This tension appeared in an important and prophetic clash in between the American anthropologists and the UN committee writing the UN Human Rights declaration, led by Eleanor Roosevelt. Already, the incompatibility between culturalism and individual rights had begun to appear.
Some theories of multiculturalism eventually end up willing to sell out important democratic principles in order to compromise with culturalism. A concrete example of such compromises can be seen in the famous case of the Danish cartoons of Muhammad. An analysis of the central drawing of Muhammad with a bomb in his turban points out that it is normal, in everyday international caricature, to portray the originator of a doctrine as a symbol of that doctrine.
Thus, the famous Muhammad caricature addresses the doctrine of Islam rather than targeting Muslims as worshippers of the doctrine. In the same vein, equipping politicians or thinkers with bombs, grenades or other weapons to convey their violent intent is just as common a device in caricature drawing. Despite the normalcy of such drawings, many of the arguments against them in Muslim countries as in the West rest on a multiculturalist assumption that certain groups are entitled not to be offended, to have religious belief protected, to attack people taken to offend them, etc.
The Cartoon Crisis thus offers a conspicuous example of the clash between basic, universal human rights claimed for all individuals, such as free speech, and the group rights claims of hard multiculturalism. Our empirical examples, seen in the light of our theoretical approach, open up to a number of political discussions. Malaysia, with its legal pluralism and government-sponsored discrimination, and the Cartoon Crisis exposing the general and unreflective acceptance of the anthropological concept of culture — these case studies are conceived within the framework of the historical and theoretical charting of multiculturalism and leads to a criticism of multicultural discourse.
Islamophobia, Respect and Tolerance, Asian values, etc. The bottom line of the investigation is the importance of embracing the basic principles of liberal democracy. To give in on issues like group rights, split legislation, legal pluralism, protection against defamation, differentiated rights according to gender, religion, ethnicity, culture, etc. Celebrating difference and group rights identities will inevitably lead us to place religious and ethnic authorities at a higher level than universal values.
Against the inherent conservatism of all culturalisms, the basis of democracy is individual freedom granted by human rights. Jens-Martin Eriksen is a Danish writer based in Geneva who has won several literary awards including the lifelong Grant of Honor from the Danish Endowment for the Arts. Frederik Stjernfelt is a professor in cognitive semiotics and cultural studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Before you download your free e-book, please consider donating to support open access publishing.
E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Your donations allow us to invest in new open access titles and pay our bandwidth bills to ensure we keep our existing titles free to view. Any amount, in any currency, is appreciated. Many thanks! Donations are voluntary and not required to download the e-book - your link to download is below. A historical imperative Although multiculturalism has become a familiar concept in newspaper debates, political discussions, sociology, political science and other public and academic discourses, the term multiculturalism is often confusing and imprecise.
Culturalism — left and right Despite the fact that the question of culture was introduced into political vocabulary just after World War II, with the opposition to the universality of human rights by American anthropologists, there have not been many principled discussions dealing with the conflict between cultural dogmas and universal ideas about individual freedom.
The anthropological concept of culture The historical backgrounds of multiculturalism have much too rarely been charted. Political Conclusion Our empirical examples, seen in the light of our theoretical approach, open up to a number of political discussions.
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