Critical Multiculturalism

Abstract

Long recognized as an important ethos in educational philosophy and policy, multiculturalism did not finally emerge as a central idea in social theory until the 1990s. In the wider public sphere, only by that time had it become clear that multiculturalism posed fundamental issues about the institutional and moral fabric of liberal-democratic nation states. Within academia, the cultural turn that had taken place around that time validated the ‘culturalism’ half of the label, whilst a prevailing intellectual pluralism affirmed the ‘multi’ part. One of the major attractions in multiculturalism is its positive, normative quality: it gives us something to be for and not just something to be against. It compares favourably in that regard with negatively phrased causes such as ‘anti-Eurocentrism’, which looks over-intellectualized, and ‘anti-racism’, which has come to be regarded as insufficiently culturalist. An added bonus is that multiculturalism seems to be eminently progressive, whilst lacking any taint of political impossibilism.