Summary
Multiculturalism emerged in the 1960s as a distinct area of academic debate, and
over the following decades the language of cultural diversity supplanted that of race
and religion. Given the dominance of liberalism as an ideology, much discussion in
the field of multiculturalism has revolved around the relationship between liberalism
and multiculturalism, with the two standing in a complex relationship to one
another. Multiculturalists reaffirm the values of freedom and equality but rearticulate
these as equality in difference, and freedom in context. Although there are
continuities with earlier debates over religious difference and toleration – debates
that dominated political discourse in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries –
multiculturalism cannot be understood as simply a return to these earlier disputes;
rather it is post-liberal, in the sense that it has absorbed the liberal emphasis on
human self-expression, but challenges liberals to provide a more adequate under -
standing of self-expression, one that places much greater emphasis on cultural
identity. On the radical right multiculturalism is interpreted as a strategy intended
to undermine the ‘majority’ group in society and permit minority groups to maintain
their own particularist strategies.Questions
- Does treating people equally mean treating them in the same way? Can you think
of situations in which cultural difference may be a legitimate basis for difference
in treatment? - Is it possible to pick and mix cultural traits?
- Is separatism the only way to respect cultural difference?
- Is multiculturalism bad for women?
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