Isabel Awad

Critical Multiculturalism and Deliberative Democracy

Abstract The discredit of multiculturalism in contemporary discussions about cultural diversity and democracy is problematic since allegations of multiculturalism’s failure and undemocratic consequences are used to justify a (re)turn to assimilation throughout Western societies. Rejecting assimilationism as either desirable or inevitable, this article challenges the alleged incompatibility between multiculturalism and democracy. It makes the case for a (re)conceptualisation of both multiculturalism and democracy in ways that can provide the foundations for inclusive communication. To this end, the article endorses, first, a specific kind of multiculturalism, namely, critical multiculturalism. Critical multiculturalism defines culture in structural and relational terms, underscoring the superficiality with which multiculturalism has been deployed in Western societies. Secondly, the article examines the constraints that liberal and republican models of democracy impose on a fair politics of cultural diversity. It argues that, largely due to its communication emphasis, Habermas’s deliberative democracy is particularly receptive to the demands of critical multiculturalism.

From minority to cross-cultural programmes: Dutch media policy and the politics of integration

Dutch media policy on cultural diversity has undergone an important transformation in the last decades. Support for minority media has been replaced by a focus on cross-cultural media targeted at multiple (and in many cases, all) social groups. Although the shift is related to changes in the economics of the media industry and in the composition of Dutch society, it can only be fully understood in relation to the changing politics on immigration and integration in the Netherlands. By underscoring the connection between recent changes in media policy and the broader political context, this article aims at re-politicizing discussions about the media in culturally diverse societies and about the role of the state in supporting minorities’ effective participation in democracy.

Desperately constructing ethnic audiences: Anti-immigration discourses and minority audience research in the Netherlands

This article examines how minority ethnic audiences are measured, and thus constructed, in the Netherlands today. The analysis shows that this process is tightly woven into the dominant assimilationist and neoliberal discourse. This discourse portrays specific minority groups as deviant in relation to an essentialized notion of Dutchness. Furthermore, it presents social inclusion as an opportunity that is limited to well-adjusted, profitable consumers. Different attempts to represent minority audiences – including efforts to promote a more just minority representation in Dutch media – are compelled to accommodate to this dominant discourse. The article underscores the limited scope for contesting current hegemonic representations of minority groups and national belonging in the Netherlands.

Latinas/os and the mainstream press: The exclusions of professional diversity

This study assesses mainstream journalism’s diversity measures from the perspective of minority audiences. Specifically, it focuses on Latinas/os’ perceptions of the San José Mercury News, a paper highly regarded for its professional standards and its commitment to cultural diversity. Based on a multi-methodological approach, the study shows Latinas/os’ persistent distrust of the Mercury News and how that distrust is grounded in a problem of representation. This problem of representation cannot be equated — as it is commonly done in journalism — with a mismatch between the paper’s portrayal of Latinas/os and an objective reality. Latinas/os feel excluded from the Mercury News not because reporters fail to cover the community objectively. Rather, a strict compliance with professional standards of objectivity constrain the newspaper’s capacity to represent, and thus to adequately serve, minority audiences. The paper concludes that journalism needs to move away from objectivist notions of representation and of cultural difference.

Securitizing cultural diversity: Dutch public broadcasting in post-multicultural and de-pillarized times

This article reconstructs the post-2008 response of the Dutch public service broadcaster, Nederlandse Publieke Omroep (NPO), to political pressures to reconsider its remit vis-à-vis diversity. It focuses on NPO’s reliance on pluriformity – a trope that describes hegemonic categories of cultural belonging in the Netherlands – to define which ideological differences deserve support. Pluriformity works because it incorporates and accommodates attacks on the value and remit of public service broadcasting. However, this achievement comes at a price. Through the way in which NPO strategically imagines its public remit, segments its audiences and produces diversity programming, the broadcaster reinforces a hierarchy of cultural difference. In this hierarchy, only those groups in society whose differences can be reduced to non-structural and hegemonic convictions are entitled to representation and recognition by the public broadcaster. As a result, cultural diversity is being securitized in and through the very institution that should protect minority representation.