Geoffrey Brahm Levey

Interculturalism vs. Multiculturalism: A Distinction without a Difference?

The terms ‘interculturalism’ and ‘multiculturalism’ have occupied the same discursive space for a few decades now, especially in Continental Europe and in Quebec. Where they have engaged, it has typically been interculturalists seeking to nudge multiculturalism out of the way or into a specific corner. Nasar Meer and Tariq Modood do both sides and indeed, all of us a service by scrutinising the alleged differences between the two approaches to the negotiation of cultural difference by and within liberal democracies. They find the standard suggestions for interculturalism’s distinctiveness and superiority over multiculturalism to be unconvincing. I agree with the general thrust of their argument. The two terms are so discursively fluid and the respective self-identifying camps seem so multifarious as to frustrate any clear or stable demarcation between the two. Moreover, this is true even after restricting the comparison, as Meer and Modood carefully do, to the strand of policy-related multiculturalism that preoccupies liberal political theory. For all that, I demur on some of the details of their case. I will conclude by suggesting that there is, perhaps, something narrowly political at stake in the interculturalists’ campaign to supplant multiculturalism. Compounding the inherent fuzziness of the two rubrics is the range in the possible points of reference. Does one, for example, take the measure of multiculturalism and interculturalism to be their institutionalisation and policy formats or their philosophical elaboration and statement of principles? And if the latter, which elaboration should be deemed authoritative? Geographical and historical variations are also in play. As Meer and Modood note, ‘multiculturalism’ means different things in different places; it has different connotations and institutional ramifications, for example, as one crosses the USA/Canada border. The meaning of ‘interculturalism’ also varies contextually. A decade or so ago, interculturalism as used in Continental

Review Article: What is living and what is dead in multiculturalism

Multiculturalism as a public policy was born fewer than 40 years ago, yet everywhere today it is on the nose. Inaugurated in Canada by the Trudeau government in 1971, and adopted in a modified form by Australia a few years later, the 1980s and early 1990s saw multicultural policies introduced in many countries, including Britain, the Netherlands and Germany. As in Britain, such policies did not always issue from a state commitment to multiculturalism. In the US, where it is not official government policy at any level, multiculturalism arose as a protest movement from ‘below’ among African Americans and other assorted identity groups who felt that the ‘difference-blind’ policies flowing from the 1964 Civil Rights Act were not working for them, and that henceforth their difference should be a matter of emphasis and pride. Whose cultures and ‘narratives’ are taught in college curricula thus became a key multicultural issue there (Glazer, 1993). Even France, arguably the most resistant democracy to the recognition and R E V I E W A R T I C L E

Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State

Dying in the state′s behalf, and at its request, is a matter that one might expect to be of obvious concern to the Jews throughout their history. Twice in bygone eras (roughly, 1000–586 B.C.E. and 140–63 B.C.E.) they have been ensconced in their own sovereign land faced with preserving that sovereignty against hostile neighbors and ambitious empires. Elsewhere, in the diaspora, they have been forced to define their relations and responsibilities to the host powers under whose authority they have variously been classed as aliens, residents, and citizens. And now, again, they are reestablished in their own sovereign state of Israel, in whose short history the call to arms has been unfortunately all too frequent. Yet the obligation to die for the state is not a question which enjoys especial treatment or ready resolution in Jewish sources.In part, this is because the Jewish tradition is not in nature a philosophical tradition, given to abstract systematic treatises in the manner of the ancient Greeks, to whom Western thought has ever since been indebted. It is, rather, a legal tradition, given over to the interpretation and application of legal minutiae in keeping with divine edict. Still, it would be wrong to conclude that Judaism and the Jewish tradition lack a coherent position on there being (or not being) an obligation to die for the state. Such, anyway, is what I wish to argue in this essay.

Liberal nationalism and the Australian citizenship tests

Scholars have debated whether citizenship regimes in Western democracies are tracking a liberal universalistic path or continue to follow distinctive national traditions. This essay argues that the Australian case does both through a distinctive liberal nationalist architecture. Increasingly since the 1970s, Australian citizenship acquisition and status have largely followed a civic nationalist or liberal universalist formulation. However, this has been executed within a broader liberal nationalist approach to national identity and culture that accommodates these aspects of national life. The essay discusses the idea of liberal nationalism as a political architecture of differentiated domains, Australias construction of this architecture, and how Australias two recent citizenship tests illustrate this framework in action. It concludes with some thoughts on the symbolic significance of citizenship tests for liberal legitimacy and the future of the liberal nationalist project.

The Muhammad cartoons and multicultural democracies

The Danish cartoon affair presents a vehicle for rethinking some of our longstanding assumptions about liberal democracy and its capacity to accommodate cultural difference. The public and academic debates have tended to frame the affair as either a clash between liberal-democratic and illiberal religious values or as a question of whose position is most consistent with liberal-democratic values. We begin, instead, from the assumption that liberal-democratic values conflict, not only between liberalism and democracy, but also within liberalism and democracy. We argue that cases such as the Muhammad cartoons controversy present liberal democracies with choices about which liberal-democratic principles and conceptions of these principles they emphasize and when. Guiding these choices should also be the pragmatic question of how best to make multicultural democracies work. We suggest that the Muhammad cartoons encompass not one, but three distinct problem areas: the violation of a religious norm in the representation of Muhammad, attacks on Islam as a religion, and attacks on Muslims as a group. We examine how liberal democratic values and multicultural citizenship relate to each of these cases, and argue that attacks on Muslims as a group are a form of racism.

Symbolic recognition, multicultural citizens, and acknowledgement: Negotiating the Christmas Wars

In recent times, December has come to mark a new tradition—an annual public debate over the degree to which Christmas should be publicly recognised and celebrated in a multicultural society. Curiously, political theorists of multiculturalism have had little to say on this controversy. In this article, I argue that there is a genuine issue at stake in the so-called ‘December dilemma’, but that the public debate—which construes the matter in terms of offending non-Christians—fails to identify and address it. Differentiating three distinct areas of contention (public holiday, public square, and state schools), I suggest that the core issue is one of ‘acknowledging a “generalised other”’, and sketch what this might mean for each of these public aspects of Christmas celebration.In recent times, December has come to mark a new tradition—an annual public debate over the degree to which Christmas should be publicly recognised and celebrated in a multicultural society. Curiously, political theorists of multiculturalism have had little to say on this controversy. In this article, I argue that there is a genuine issue at stake in the so-called ‘December dilemma’, but that the public debate—which construes the matter in terms of offending non-Christians—fails to identify and address it. Differentiating three distinct areas of contention (public holiday, public square, and state schools), I suggest that the core issue is one of ‘acknowledging a “generalised other”’, and sketch what this might mean for each of these public aspects of Christmas celebration.

Liberal Nationalism and Cultural Rights

Liberal nationalists such as Yael Tamir and Will Kymlicka have argued for an extravagant range of cultural rights based on respect for individual autonomy. I present an alternative account of the moral import of liberal autonomy for the status of cultural minorities. The article examines three pivotal aspects of Tamirs argument for cultural rights and argues that, in each case, Tamirs position fails to honour the value of individual autonomy, and in ways parallel to Kymlickas argument. These shared difficulties point to some basic ontological and moral properties of a genuine autonomy-based defence of cultural rights.

Inclusion: A Missing Principle in Australian Multiculturalism

Over the past 40 years Australia has built a generally successful multicultural democracy. The transformation of Australian society from one based on racial and ethnic exclusion to its present-day rich and vibrant cultural diversity and generally harmonious social relations is, by any standard, remarkable. In 1947, the Australian population stood at 7.6 million. This included some 87,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with the rest mostly the descendants of people from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Almost 10 per cent of the total population was born overseas, with three-quarters of these coming from the British Isles. As of the 2011 Census, the Australian population had grown to 21.5 million. More than one-quarter (26 per cent) of the resident Australian population was born overseas and another 20 per cent had at least one parent born overseas. The United Kingdom now accounts for little more than one-fifth of the overseas born (although it remains the largest single source of our migrants), while another fifth comes from five Asian countries: China, India, Vietnam, Philippines and Malaysia (ABS, 2012). Indeed, for many years now Australia has been even more immigrant-rich than the other major ‘immigrant democracies’ of the United States (12.7 per cent foreign born circa 2009), Canada (19.6 per cent) and New Zealand (22.7 per cent).

Cultural Diversity and its Recognition in Public Universities: Fairness, Utility and Inclusion

The university has received scant attention in discussions of multicultural theory and practice. The notable exception is in the United States, where much of the debate over multiculturalism has focused on which groups’ histories and cultures are taught on campus (D’Souza, 1991; Glazer, 1997; Nussbaum, 1998). However, in the United States multiculturalism has been a critical protest movement from ‘below’ rather than official government policy. In places such as Australia, Canada, and Britain, where multiculturalism has been official government policy designed to manage a culturally diverse society, universities largely have been ignored in multicultural discourse. This is surprising, since, in key respects, universities tend to be ‘heightened’ microcosms of the societies they serve. For one thing, their staff and students typically are much more culturally diverse than the wider society. For another, as bastions of Enlightenment values, they tend to be far clearer about, and more resolute in upholding, certain ideals of individual character and behaviour. Universities thus sharply bring together the two animating dimensions of liberal multiculturalism – cultural diversity, on the one hand, and enabling but also limiting liberal values, on the other. In this chapter, I want to consider one facet of multiculturalism on campus, namely, the question of institutional adjustment to cater for minority students. My frame of reference will be specifically Australian public universities and the requests for cultural consideration and adjustment now being voiced by Muslim students. Universities in other parts of the world are, however, facing similar issues. The concerns of Muslim students may be grouped into three categories. First, there may be need-based interests for new campus facilities. These include the provision

Thinking about infant male circumcision after the Cologne court decision

The Cologne regional court’s decision of 26 June 2012 criminalizing circumcisions performed on boys for non-therapeutic reasons sparked extraordinary public controversy in Germany and around the world. Though the German parliament recently responded to that decision by passing a law allowing infant male circumcision for religious reasons when performed by a trained practitioner, the Cologne court decision is instructive for thinking about the issue. First, the Cologne court correctly identified the core liberal concern about the practice: it irrevocably alters an individual’s body without his consent. Second, in unilaterally criminalizing a long-standing practice commonly accepted by liberal democracies and endorsed by the World Health Organisation, the Cologne court nevertheless showed how liberal institutions should not respond to such practices. Finally, the Cologne court decision raises broader questions about how we think – and should think – about the scope of liberal autonomy in liberal democracies.