A Critique of Liberal Multiculturalism

Abstract

As outlined in the Introduction, my point of departure in approaching the politics of multicultural integration is Kymlicka’s theory of liberal multiculturalism (1989, 1995, 2001, 2007), which has been at the forefront of debates on multiculturalism. In critiquing the normative underpinnings of his theory, this chapter contributes to the recent ongoing critiques of essentialist notions of culture (Carens 2000; Parekh 2000; Benhabib 2002; Modood 2007; Phillips 2007; Song 2007). The recent discussions on the ‘retreat from multiculturalism’ (Joppke 2004; see Phillips 2007: 21–5), especially multiculturalism towards ethnic immigrant minorities within the Western liberal democratic states, seem to suggest, and I shall illustrate, that the underlying problem of multicultural policy arises out of this notion of cultural essentialism.¹ Benhabib warns that the essentialist notion of culture based on a ‘faulty epistemology’ of ‘reductionist sociology of culture’ has ‘grave normative political consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be redressed and how we think human diversity and pluralism should be furthered’ (2002: 4–5). In this regard, Part I of this book contributes to present a model of ‘culture’ within the paradigm of anti-essentialism that enables us to develop the normative criteria, in Part II, in addressing how we should understand social freedom and intercultural justice.