TOLERANCE, MULTICULTURALISM AND INTERCULTURALISM IN THE BALKANS

Abstract

A multicultural society should possess the characteristics of a society in which different ethnic groups live together but with no interaction. The minority groups living therein are passively tolerated without being accepted by the majority group. An intercultural society should be defined as a society in which different groups live together and exchange their life experiences with mutual respect for their different styles of life and values. That is why a correct starting definition of interculturalism would be that interculturalism is a critique and an alternative to multiculturalism. It is possible for the members of different cultures to live close to each other and that is the most crucial characteristic of multicultural societies. An intercultural society represents a society in which we live and create not close to each other but with each other and for each other. Accordingly, the contemporary Balkan society is facing the process of its transition from the multicultural into the intercultural one, that is, the process of spreading and adopting the idea and practice of interculturalism in a multicultural community. More precisely, this implies the development of the concept of a cultural and educational policy that would foster appreciation of cultural diversity and lead to the creation of a society in which different cultures interpenetrate. At the end of the paper the measures of the public cultural politics of the Balkan countries aiming at improvement and advancement of the existing intercultural dialogue are summed up.