Spotlight on Multiculturalism

The great power and machinery of state exercised on the basis of racial and cultural superiorty can have savage consequences: in the world this became undeniable only after the horrors of the Nazi regime (many of whose victims were Europeans) were publicised. Imperial territories, held on the basis of racial and cultural superiority, were allowed to become new, “independent” nations. Then, to meet demands for labour after the World War, European countries encouraged immigration from former colonies: the empires came home to a degree never imagined or prepared for. There was also large-scale immigration from non-colonies, like that of Turks to Germany. When it became obvious that the immigrants had settled, the discourse of multiculturalism developed in Europe as it had in North America – namely, as a well-meaning effort to ensure that minorities were treated as equal under the law and that society affirmed their human dignity as expressed in their religious, cultural and linguistic identity.

This well-meaning policy was a significant departure for the nation-states of Europe, whose formation was typically a story of repression or marginalisation of cultural and linguistic identities in favour of decisive political identification with the state and acceptance of the norms (especially language) of the dominant community. Nevertheless, through the 1970s into the 1990s multiculturalism achieved major objectives like reducing racial discrimination, improving prospects for local or devolved legislatures, etc. But the fear persisted that the loyalty to the state of “other” communities is unreliable, a potential “enemy within”. The political extreme right had always denounced multiculturalism as a betrayal or surrender of so-called “European values”. Then, through the years since 2001, when the Muslims’ image problem intensified, it became acceptable for elites in the political mainstream also to denounce multiculturalism as a failure.

Over the same period multiculturalism has engendered an academic as well as political debate. It is no longer understood just as a way to cope with socio-cultural diversity within a single political jurisdiction. The new technologies of travel and communication have meant that culturally distant communities are thrust into neighbourhood, actual and virtual. People are able to move in and out of diverse “neighbourhoods”; and for each they may nurture and deploy a different dimension of their identity. Thus, the concept of multiculturalism now embraces – beyond the issues of situating minorities politically and securing their rights – individual, personal domains of being and meaning.

The personal concerns and practical issues that multiculturalism now deals with mean that it has become a far more vigorously interdisiciplinary field. Sociology, ethnography, cultural anthropology, anthropology of law, urban geography, transnational geography, international and comparative law are some of the specialisms that are interconnecting and interacting to evolve a positive direction for multiculturalism. From a concern to correct abuses against minorities, multiculturalism may grow into a concern to enable social spaces in which cultural hybridity is positively welcomed and sustainable, where the reality of multiple identities for communities as well as for individuals can be legally and politically safeguarded.

Seref Kavak
Dialogue Society Birmingham Branch Academic Coordinator
Email: [email protected]