Abstract
A politics of recognition of difference has to begin, sociologically, with the fact of negative ‘difference’: with alienness, inferiorization, stigmatization, stereotyping, exclusion, discrimination, racism, and so on; but also the senses of identity that groups so perceived have of themselves. The two together are the key datum for multiculturalism. The differences at issue are those perceived both by outsiders or group members — from the outside in and from the inside out — to constitute not just some form of distinctness but a form of alienness or inferiority that diminishes or makes difficult equal membership in the wider society or polity. There is a sense of groupness in play, a mode of being, but also subordination or marginality, a mode of oppression, and the two interact in creating an unequal ‘us–them’ relationship.2
This chapter is based on Chapter 3 of Modood (2007). I am grateful to Polity Press for the reuse of some of the chapter.
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© 2010 Michel Seymour
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Modood, T. (2010). Difference, ‘Multi’ and Equality. In: Seymour, M. (eds) The Plural States of Recognition. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230285569_9
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