1. What is Postwar Multiculturalism in Theory and Practice?

Choice Reviews Online, 2008

Over the past twenty years, debate surrounding cultural diversity has become one of the most active areas of contemporary political theory and philosophy. The impact of taking cultural diversity seriously in modern political societies has led to challenges to the dominance of liberal theory and to a more serious engagement of political theory with actual political struggles. This volume of essays by leading political theorists reviews the development of multiculturalism, surveys the major approaches, addresses the critical questions posed, and highlights new directions in research. Multiculturalism and Political Theory provides a ''state of the art'' overview for both students and researchers.

Ethnicities

The article introduces a special issue on “Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies.” The contributions presented in this special issue were discussed during the conference « Multicultural Citizenship 25 Years Later », held in Paris in November 2021. Their aim is to take stock of the legacy of Kymlicka’s contribution and to highlight new developments in theories of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights. The contributions do not purport to challenge the legitimacy of theories of multiculturalism and minority rights, they rather aim at deepening our understanding of the foundations of liberal multiculturalism and of its practical implementation, sensitive to social scientific dynamics of diverse societies. Without abandoning the general idea that cultural minorities should be granted special minority rights, the essays presented raise new questions about three dimensions central to liberal multiculturalism: its normative foundations, its practical categories of minorities or groups, and its fact-sensitive methodology. Taken together they shed light on the renewed variety of theories of liberal multiculturalism highlighting their complexity and internal disagreements. To introduce these articles, the article first draws a brief historical overview of the debates on multiculturalism since the 1990s (section 1). It then highlights the distinctive aspects of Kymlicka’s contribution (section 2) and identifies recent research trends (section 3). Doing so, it explains how the articles gathered here both expand on those distinctive aspects and explore those new research avenues. The section 4 summarizes the contributions.

2012

Federalism and the Welfare State in a Multicultural World, 2019

Not least among Keith Banting's many significant contributions to the study of public policy has been his analysis of the nature and functions of multiculturalism. Alongside, and often in collaboration with, Will Kymlicka, he has championed the Canadian version of liberal multiculturalism, and sought to explain to its many critics, in Europe especially, why celebrations of its death are not only exaggerated but misguided. In particular, he has defended, persuasively, and with appeal to solid evidence, the following three propositions:

As a result of international migration, multiculturalism has become the dominant theory in the last 20-30 years in some countries of Western civilization. It was generally accepted that due to the practice of multiculturalism the different cultures can live peacefully side by side. The theory has become widely spread in the 1970s, but nowadays it is increasingly criticized; many question its ability to solve cultural problems. In this short paper I attempt to unfold the precise meaning of the term due to a lot of uncertainty in this area. The question is especially relevant as there is a lot of discussion about the failure of multiculturalism and as it is blamed for being responsible for causing social conflicts. Being examined as a political theory, we see that the concept can be interpreted in different ways and its boundaries are often blurred when trying to distinguish it from globalism or liberalism. In everyday language, multiculturalism is often regarded as identical to efforts to promote the integration of immigrants as well. The most widely accepted definition is generally negative: it determines what is not multiculturalism, or what can be contrasted with it. In fact, multiculturalism is a political philosophy and a social doctrine, which takes into account diversity and cultural differences, and defines itself as an alternative to assimilation. It is important to clarify that the model can only be applied in states where there are many strong communities that are able to survive and even seek it. However, it is not applicable if there are many immigrants from different cultures, but only a few from each culture or they do not wish to keep their identity (Joseph Raz).

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2012

Multiculturalism: The Political Theory of Diversity Today, 2022

This is the introduction to Shorten, Andrew (2022) Multiculturalism: The Political Theory of Diversity Today (Polity). Available from Polity, the book surveys the leading theories of multiculturalism, the critiques that have been levelled against the idea, and the debates surrounding cohesion, integration and diversity. It then goes on to demonstrate how multicultural political theory can be renewed, arguing that a single, monolithic vision of multiculturalism must be replaced by a multiculturalism made up of different strands, responding to distinctive but interrelated issues, and inspired by real-world policy debates about how political communities should respond to differences of religion, language and nationality. After tracing the influence of earlier multicultural ideas on these debates, the book reveals some new and surprising possibilities for mutual learning.

Culture and Religion, 2007

Although the term multiculturalism is often understood on the public level as an ideology or as a social programme (to be ‘for’ or ‘against’), I argue in this paper that the term should also be understood to refer to the complex range of issues associated with cultural and religious diversity in society, and the social management of the challenges and opportunities such diversity offers. Understood in this sense, multiculturalism is not an optional extra, it is not something that a society can choose to have or avoid. For any country without closed borders then multiculturalism is a fact of today—it is present within the society. What is important are the social and political responses to the cultural and religious diversity that results from transnational flows and settlement of people. This introduction to the collection of papers highlights the need to understand multiculturalism as a process which is always contextual, and the role that state management of difference in the successful development of diversity plays.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2012

Meer and Modood have written an admirably lucid exposition of the politicalÁ philosophical case in defence of multiculturalism. Their critical evaluation of interculturalism, a latecomer to the Anglo-American scholarly discourse on relations among cultures in modern states, is convincing: interculturalism is not really a political theory but refers to a mode of communication across ethnic or religious divisions. A further theory not mentioned by the authors, but also invoked as an alternative to the supposed multicultural tendency to essentialise or over-privilege cultural boundaries and cultural closure, is cosmopolitanism. Hollinger, for example, has argued that cosmopolitanism is neither universalist nor multiculturalist, but espouses a 'soft' multiculturalism that is responsive to diversity, particularity, history, the realities of power and the need for politically viable solidarities (2002: 228). Such situated or grounded cosmopolitanism nevertheless recognises, Hollinger argues, that cultures and groups change and evolve; they are not fixed and immutable forever (2002: 228). My own critical evaluation of Meer and Modood's exposition starts from the theoretical position that multiculturalism must be grasped as a discourse in which scholars participate along with cultural actors, politicians and the media. Multiculturalism is, in other words, always positioned, invoked in defence of rights (cultural, human) or in defence of communal solidarity, including that of the nationstate. It is a discourse characterised by constant seepage across academia, the media, politicians and ethnic-cum-religious public actors on whether multiculturalism is 'good' or 'bad', whether it has created 'bridges' (more solidarity) or 'failed' (and is thus divisive). Multiculturalism is in this sense often a performative utterance, played out in front of an audience hostile to immigrants, Islam or the West, or alternatively, 'liberal' or 'cosmopolitan', enjoying and embracing diversity. If we accept my argument that multiculturalism is a discourse as well as a political theory, we need to examine its affinities and differences from religious discourse.