Segmented Foundations and Pluralism 209culture, has underpinned an interest not only in nations and community, but also
in forms of difference, pluralism, and multiculturalism. There is, by globalization,
increasing travel, mass media, the Internet, education, and so forth, greater informa-
tion about and more awareness of the local, indigenous, and different. Diversity
has admittedly not been something that has been so evident in more homogenous
societies, such as Japan or Iceland—although these societies are not immune from
the same disturbing forces. Diversity is more closely linked to large heterogeneous
societies with sizeable immigrant populations.
Paradoxically, another underlying reason for the focus on diversity has been the
continuing popularity of the idea of the ‘nation state’. This compound invokes a
vision—in tandem with other concepts such as sovereignty, self-determination, and
citizenship—of a consensual cohesive community. However, as already noted, each
nation contains sub-ethnicities and sub-national groups. Diversity and difference are
the norm. In the same way that nationalism in political theory configures the world as
fragmented into distinct communal units, each with their own historical continuity,
language, and destiny; so each sub-nationality can claim that each nationality needs
to be further fragmented to satisfy the yearning for cultural autonomy, independence,
and self-determination. Fragmentation is written into the very fabric of nationalist
and communitarian argument. The central point is that nationalism emphasizes
the fundamental moral, political, and ontological priority of self-determination for
distinct national or ethnic groups. Yet, ‘nation states’ also contain an internal diversity
of sub-national groups. By the same ‘self-determination logic’, which nationalism
applies against other nations, so internal sub-national diversity also demands to be
heard. This is the root to most secession claims. Thus, ironically, nationalism both
undermines internal diversity through its emphasis on national consensus, and, at
the same time, ironically, facilitates this very diversity by throwing its moral and
political emphasis on the self-determining right of national groups. Therefore, one
key reason for the growing segmentation of foundations has been the internal logic of
communities and nations themselves. While nationalism flourishes, so will internal
segmentation. Once again, though, foundations are not lost, but rather diversified
more radically. The discussion briefly focuses on the concept of pluralism, then turns
to a more detailed overview of the three significant forms in which diversity has
been employed in the twentieth century—liberal pluralism, multiculturalism, and
difference theory. Each of these further segments the whole debate over foundations.
A Word about Pluralism
One common way to approach pluralism is to limit it to liberalism. Multiculturalism
and difference are then considered different categories. Although pluralism has had
close associations with liberalism, in the two decades of the twentieth century, this
is still historically fortuitous. It misses the point that pluralism is a much richer and
more varied concept in twentieth-century thought. There is thereforenonecessary
conceptual link between pluralism and liberalism, any more than there are necessary