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each culture can learn from other cultures, and because of the prospects for personal self- development that are offered by a world of wider cultural opportunities and options. This results in what has been called a ‘pick-and-mix’ multiculturalism, in which interculturalism and cultural mixing are positively encouraged. People, for instance, may eat Italian food, practise yoga, enjoy African music and develop an interest in world religions.
KEY FIGURE
JEREMY WALDRON (BORN 1953) A New Zealand legal and political theorist, Waldron has developed a ‘cosmopolitan’ understanding of multiculturalism that stresses the rise of ‘hybridity’. Waldron’s emphasis on the fluid, multifarious and often fractured nature of the human self provided the basis for the development of cosmopolitanism as a normative philosophy that challenges both liberalism and communitarianism. It rejects the ‘rigid’ liberal perception of what it means to lead an autonomous life, as well as the tendency within communitarianism to confine people within a single ‘authentic’ culture.
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Culture, from this perspective, is fluid and responsive to changing social circumstances and personal needs; it is not fixed and historically embedded, as pluralist or particularist multiculturalists would argue. A multicultural society is thus a ‘melting pot’ of different ideas, values and traditions, rather than a ‘cultural mosaic’ of separate ethnic and religious groups. In particular, the cosmopolitan stance positively embraces hybridity . This recognizes that, in the modern world, individual identity cannot be explained in terms of a single cultural structure, but rather exists, in Waldron’s (1995) words, as a ‘melange’ of commitments, affiliations and roles. Indeed, for Waldron, immersion in the traditions of a particular culture is like living in Disneyland and thinking that one’s surroundings epitomize what it is for a culture to exist. If we are all now, to some degree, cultural ‘mongrels’, multiculturalism is as much an ‘inner’ condition as it is a
feature of modern society. The benefit of this form of multiculturalism is that it broadens moral and political sensibilities, ultimately leading to the emergence of a ‘one world’ perspective. However, multiculturalists from rival traditions criticize the cosmopolitan stance for stressing togetherness
Hybridity: A condition of social and cultural mixing in which people develop multiple identities.
Liberal multiculturalism
Pluralist multiculturalism
• Cosmopolitanism • Cultural mixing • Hybridity Cosmopolitan multiculturalism
• Communitarianism • Minority rights • Diversity strengthens toleration and personal autonomy Cultural diversity within a liberal-democratic frame- work
• Identity politics • Cultural embeddedness • Diversity counters group
Key themes
Core goal
‘Strong’ diversity, recognizing legitimacy of non-liberal and liberal values
Fluid and multiple identi- ties provide the basis for global citizenship
Figure 11.3 Types of multiculturalism
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