Diversity, Duality and Time

This chapter looks at how the tensions between interculturalism and multiculturalism can also run across interculturalism and multiculturalism. So while the issue of ‘ad hoc majority precedence’ is central between multiculturalism and interculturalism, at least on the Quebec model, in this chapter it runs across liberal nationalist multiculturalism and parity multiculturalism too. Sociologist Gerard Bouchard argues that interculturalism and multiculturalism are rooted in opposite paradigms. Where interculturalism turns on a ‘duality’ paradigm that endorses a foundational majority culture and ad hoc majority precedence, multiculturalism operates on a diversity paradigm that does not recognise a majority culture and instead places all constituent groups and individuals on an equal footing. The chapter suggests another possible point of differentiation between multiculturalism and Quebecan interculturalism — one that is related to the acceptability of losing the established culture over time.

Models of Diversity in the Americas: Avenues for Dialogue and Cross-Pollination

This chapter examines Latin American academic debates about multiculturalism, interculturalism, and interculturalidad, identifying patterns, similarities, and differences among them. It provides an introduction to a form of interculturalism — Latin American interculturalidad — which emerged as a response not to post-immigrant social formations but to colonial and postcolonial dynamics and relationships, including but not limited to indigenous groups. The chapter argues that across the continent, academic discussions largely prescribe and dichotomise models of diversity. In contrast, it advocates a contextual approach that opens up potential avenues for dialogue and cross-pollination, focusing especially on how Latin American scholars define interculturalidad, and especially its capacity for equitable relations among members of different cultural universes.

Defending Diversity in an Era of Populism: Multiculturalism and Interculturalism Compared

This chapter contends that interculturalists may think they are defending diversity, but their crude anti multiculturalist rhetoric may play into the hands of xenophobes who reject both multiculturalism and interculturalism. It focuses on the intercultural strategy to build a new political narrative in which interculturalism emerges from the alleged failed extremes of multiculturalism. The chapter also asks whether this new narrative can work to energize pro-diversity forces and to undercut support for populism. The answer is uncertain, for interculturalist narratives have too often left untouched exclusionary accounts of nationhood, and unintentionally legitimised populist narratives about the untrustworthy nature of mainstream elites on issues of diversity.

Interculturalism and Multiculturalism: Similarities and Differences

This chapter frames the merits of interculturalism as an explicit model for integration, in contrast to how Canadian multiculturalism is seen as being a product of nationbuilding efforts, rather than a genuine commitment to the main tenets of multiculturalism. It argues that a model of cultural pluralism along the lines of Quebec interculturalism makes a more serious effort to balance the requirements of unity with the preservation, recognition, and flourishing of minority cultures. At the same time, the chapter notes the enduring problem confronting the Quebec model, one that would have to be taken into account in any future attempts at empirical verification, namely the idea of competing interpretations of citizenship by those identified for integration in the first place.

Theorising Intercultural Citizenship

This chapter explains how the emergent controversy over multiculturalism/interculturalism resides in the logic of the necessary requirements for managing a society that recognises itself as diverse. The great multicultural debates of the late twentieth century, and even the early twenty-first century, followed a cultural rights-based approach to diversity. They were centred on questions such as the rights of cultural recognition in the public sphere and how to reassess equality and cultural rights of non-national citizens with different languages, religions, and cultural practices. This approach characterised multicultural citizenship studies until the emergence of a new paradigm that is taking shape in this second decade of the twenty-first century: intercultural citizenship.

Interculturalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship

This chapter provides an entry point in developing a discussion on the relationship between interculturalism and multiculturalism. The question it raises is to what extent the present criteria proposed by advocates of interculturalism, in positively contrasting it with multiculturalism, are persuasive. In addressing this the chapter maintains that whilst interculturalism and multiculturalism share much as approaches concerned with recognising cultural diversity, the answer to the question — is interculturalism merely an ‘updated version’ of multiculturalism? — is ‘no’. That is to say that while advocates of interculturalism wish to emphasise its positive qualities in terms of encouraging communication, recognising dynamic identities, promoting unity, and challenging illiberality, each of these qualities already features in multiculturalism.

Afterword: Multiculturalism and Interculturalism – A Critical Dialogue

This fine collection has the unique merit of bringing together and setting up a stimulating dialogue between multiculturalism and interculturalism represented by uniformly impressive essays. The editors’ excellent introduction skilfully signposts the direction of the dialogue and highlights the issues lying at its heart. In recent years multiculturalism has been subjected to considerable criticism and held responsible for all sorts of ills such as social fragmentation, ghettoisation, lack of patriotism and absurdly even terrorism. The criticism is deeply misguided. It homogenises its target and ignores its internal diversity. Secondly, it gives a misleading account of multiculturalism and virtually borders on a caricature. I shall take each in turn....

Towards an Intercultural Sense of Belonging Together: Reflections on the Theoretical and Political Level

This chapter understands interculturalism neither as an anti-multiculturalist position nor as a remedy for the alleged failures of multiculturalism, but instead as an additional strategy that might rest alongside modes of liberal nationalism and constitutional patriotism. The challenge that each sets itself is to create a sense of belonging as a necessary condition for solidarity and deliberative democracy in multicultural societies. The chapter understands this as presently expressed across three intercultural policy applications concerned with social mixing, language and civic integration programmes, and integrative religious education. In this account, while multiculturalism and interculturalism do not contradict each other on the theoretical level, there may be some tensions on the policy level.

Quebec Interculturalism and Canadian Multiculturalism

This chapter considers how pluralism provides the general background of interculturalism, which translates into respect for human rights, support for immigration, assistance to minority languages and cultures, wider practices of accommodation, and so forth. At the micro level, a second defining trait of interculturalism is its emphasis on exchange and interaction between citizens of all origins, with a view to activating diversity as a resource, fighting stereotypes, avoiding ‘groupism,’ and preventing social exclusion. This model of interculturalism further stresses integration as a two-way process but, in addition, is designed for societies where perceptions of ethnocultural realities are structured on the basis of a majority/minorities relationship. In this view the protection of minority rights must be reconciled with majority rights.

A Plural Century: Situating Interculturalism and Multiculturalism

This chapter engages with some recent authors who believe that an alternative to multiculturalism must be sought in order to understand and live with diversity. These authors are not anti-diversity but they share the view that multiculturalism is no longer a persuasive intellectual or policy approach. For example, the Council of Europe's White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (2008) included the finding that the majority of practitioners and NGOs across Europe had come to the conclusion that multiculturalism was no longer fit for purpose, and needed to be replaced by a form of interculturalism. Similar views were expressed in the UNESCO World Report Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue (2008). These statements invite the question of how interculturalism differs from multiculturalism.