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Negotiating pluralism and tribalism in liberal democratic societies
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Negotiating pluralism and tribalism in liberal democratic societies
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Content
NEGOTIATING PLURALISM AND TRIBALISM IN LIBERAL
DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
by
Shoba Sadagopan
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(PHILOSOPHY)
December 2008
Copyright 2008 Shoba Sadagopan
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract iii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Endnotes 19
Chapter 2: Pluralism, Monism and Difference 20
Chapter 2 Endnotes 65
Chapter 3: Interdependence: Between Cultural Difference and
Homogenization 66
Chapter 3 Endnotes 96
Chapter 4: The Internet and the Limits of Tribalism 98
Chapter 4 Endnotes 126
Chapter 5: Beyond Homogenization: Protecting Difference and Social
Cohesion 129
Chapter 5 Endnotes 156
Chapter 6: Conclusion 157
Bibliography 160
iii
ABSTRACT
My aim in this dissertation is to enquire whether toleration as a practice is
achievable. It is prior to the question of how it can be grounded as a virtue. I argue
that in liberal democratic societies where there are struggles for recognition on the
part of ethnocultural groups, it is possible to negotiate pluralism and tribalism in a
way that a stable pluralist society can be maintained. My core thesis rests on a
theory of interdependence based both on a theory of human nature and on the
material fact of globalization. Insofar as we affirm our nature as human beings
engaged in productive activity with other human beings, insofar as we value a
world that facilitates that activity, toleration is desirable. It is achievable because
with globalization there is a tendency towards homogenization that erodes cultural
differences. There is less reason for conflict because what we have in common, our
interdependence, goes far deeper than culture. A further sufficient condition may be
found in well thought-out policies that are executed through education and
dialogue.
1
Chapter 1: Introduction
The late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have witnessed
a rise in ethnocultural conflict and a phenomenon known today as “tribalism.” This
term, though widely used, is not always clearly defined. It has been variously used
to denote exclusionary affiliations based on race, ethnicity, language, religion and
ideology or any combination of these. Historically, nation-states have been formed
based on these criteria. Membership of a nation and membership of a state were
seen as co-terminous and unproblematic. Yet the term ‘tribalism,’ with its negative
connotations, was never used to describe classical nationalism. The term was
coined in the late nineteenth century to characterize Celtic nationalism as opposed
to nationalism, which in turn meant being “British.”
1
The implication of this usage
was that loyalty to a nation based on ethnicity was in conflict with loyalty to the
British state, in this case the Crown. And yet, being English was never seen as
being in conflict with being British.
Contemporary use of the term tends to be metaphorical. Nonetheless,
whether in the Celtic case, or in today’s conflicts, what is at stake is social identity.
There is little doubt that the phenomenon in question is widespread. In liberal
democratic societies, it has taken the form of increased struggles for recognition on
the part of ethnocultural groups. In the countries of the former Soviet Union and the
East Bloc, there has been a rise of ethnonationalism with demands for secession
and statehood, in the power vacuum created by the end of the Cold War. Both
2
developments have taken place in the context of the spread of the market economy,
the process known as globalization. At first glance, there should be no apparent
connection between a cultural phenomenon and an economic one. Yet, as more
than one theorist has pointed out, globalization has induced new insecurities and
the rise of tribalism may be linked with the spread of the market economy.
(Kymlicka, 2001b; DeVeaux, 2000; Alibhai-Brown, 2005)
What is certain though is that the end of the Cold War and the spread of the
market economy have resulted in increased population migrations, with new
ethnocultural groups coming into contact with each other. Prior to the advent of
globalization, patterns of migration were generally a one-way flow toward the more
affluent countries of the West, in particular toward North America and the former
colonial powers such as the U.K. and France in Europe. Now the phenomenon is
more diffused worldwide. The world has simply become a smaller place.
In itself, population migration should not cause conflict. Historically,
different communities have often co-existed in peace, apparently instantiating the
model that Michael Walzer has described as the “multinational empire” in On
Toleration. (Walzer, 1997) There have also been power-sharing arrangements
(consociations) in countries such as Switzerland where different ethno-linguistic
groups have co-existed in relative tolerance towards one another. Today, however,
there is a rise in ethnic conflict. In Europe, increasingly, nation states are beginning
to turn into immigrant societies with ethnocultural diversity. Ethnocultural groups
now claim equal rights and the host community feels threatened. At the same time,
3
there are group rights claims from minorities. The substantive issue is one of social
as against national identity and what it means to be a citizen of what was hitherto
perceived as a homogenous nation-state with a clearly defined identity.
In this thesis, I discuss issues of pluralism and tribalism in liberal
democratic societies. How are the competing claims for recognition of
minority rights to be reconciled with the idea of citizenship? If citizenship
alone were to constitute national identity, as in the case of France, why is
there a conflict with social identity? Social identity is usually based on
ethnocultural or religious beliefs and practices. In societies that are
increasingly pluralist, it should not be difficult to negotiate what is known
variously as “multiculturalism,” “cultural pluralism,” and “liberal
pluralism.” The difficulty lies partly in the fact that in societies that were
until recently relatively homogenous, social and national identity were
conflated. To be French was to be ‘citoyen’ but also to speak French and be
proud of a French national culture. As such societies become increasingly
immigrant societies and therefore pluralist, social and national identity fall
apart. The presence of other ethnocultural groups, many of them born in the
country of immigration, hence ‘citoyens,’ but not culturally ‘French,’
undermines the social identity of the host community. Although the host
community is in a majority, that host community must see itself as another
ethnocultural group in the matter of social identity if pluralism is to be
4
recognized de facto. On the single criterion of unitary citizenship, pluralism
cannot even exist.
2
Can peaceful coexistence be negotiated among ethnocultural groups
or will the differences prove to be intractable? Intractability occurs at two
levels. One is on the ground where different group rights claims, values and
beliefs come into conflict in everyday life. There is also the possibility that
when one set of rights are granted, other groups will demand similar rights,
as in the case of Canada. Demands for independence for Quebec have led to
the Inouit asking for statehood, thereby bringing into question the viability
of the political system. In the United States, increased immigration from
Mexico and Central America has led to private militias patrolling the
border. The signing of the North American Free Trade Zone treaty has left
many Americans feeling uneasy about sovereignty.
There is, however, a deeper intractability in the philosophical
discussion of pluralism. In Chapter 1, I focus on the sources of the
intractability. What began as the communitarian-liberal debate in the 1990s
has now become an argument about the politics of identity, pitting the
notion of diverse collective identities against the idea of the autonomous
individual. Charles Taylor, in Multiculturalism and the “Politics of
Recognition” (1992) set in motion a debate that has continued over the last
two decades. On the one hand there are demands for recognition by
“subaltern” groups such as feminists, African-Americans and indigenous
5
peoples who claim that social identity is determined and shaped to a large
extent by race, gender and culture. Liberal democratic societies cannot and
should not ignore these sources of the self. The individual self does not
exist independently of the subaltern group. Merely granting individual
rights does not compensate for the disadvantage that such groups have
suffered historically. On the other hand, liberals who draw inspiration from
Enlightenment ideals believe that universal difference-blind principles can
best guarantee equality. Taylor has characterized this latter position as the
politics of equal respect. Proponents of the former view who are today
broadly classed as “multiculturalists” believe that liberal universalism is
itself ethnocentric. More recent debate has become more nuanced, with
liberals such as Will Kymlicka and the neo-Kantian philosopher Jürgen
Habermas recognizing the importance of minority rights. The philosophical
issue however is not one that only concerns the granting of rights by the
state. The focus of interest is now on pluralism versus monism, cultural
“embeddedness” versus egalitarianism. (Parekh, 2006; Barry, 2001) The
result is that there has been a polarization with multiculturalists and liberals
holding intractable views.
I argue that the intractability arises because the debate takes place
within the paradigm of modernity and that the language of Enlightenment
and counter-Enlightenment can no longer sustain the discussion on
toleration and pluralism. A shift in the paradigm is necessary because today,
6
the problems associated with pluralism occur in the context of the
phenomenon known as globalization. In this chapter, I begin by laying out
the broad philosophical positions on the question of pluralism. There has
been a convergence between the discussion within ethical theory on value
pluralism as defined by Isaiah Berlin and the debate on multiculturalism
generated by Charles Taylor in the 1990s.
In his seminal work, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (1958), Berlin puts
forward the idea that there is positive liberty and negative liberty. The
former arises in answer to the question “Who is master?” and is associated
with moral monism, in which all human goals and values are reducible to a
single principle. That principle lies in the faith in a single criterion and the
assumption that all values can be graded on one scale. Monism is the view
that only one set of values is true and all others are false. The ideals of the
French Revolution, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and those of the Russian
Revolution , the ideal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the belief that
the Soviet state enshrined this ideal, led to the slaughter and deportation of
thousands. Pluralism, on the other hand, entails negative liberty, which
answers the question “over what am I master?” It is a recognition of “the
fact that human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in
perpetual rivalry with one other.” The latter view is not to be confused with
moral relativism and in his last essay, written shortly before his death in
1997, Berlin spells this out clearly:
7
If pluralism is a valid view, and respect between systems of values
which are not necessarily hostile to each other is possible, then
toleration and liberal consequences follow, as they do not either
from monism (only one set of values is true, all the others are false)
or from relativism (my values are mine, yours are yours, and if we
clash, too bad, neither of us can claim to be right). (Berlin, 1997)
I discuss the concept of value pluralism as put forward by Isaiah Berlin and
then take up the implications for the debate on toleration and pluralism. I
point to the significance of the fact that Berlin, who is considered to be the
foremost defender of liberalism, is actually a source of inspiration for
multiculturalists such as Bhiku Parekh. Parekh, in Rethinking
Multiculturalism (2006) explicitly acknowledges his debt to Berlin.
Parekh’s critique of liberalism is on the grounds that the Enlightenment
model of liberalism is a monist view of human goals and values. I present
the views of Charles Taylor and Bhiku Parekh on the subject of
multiculturalism. I then take up Brian Barry's procrustean defense of the
Enlightenment ideal in Culture and Equality (2001). On Barry’s view,
multiculturalism is merely a “benign” version of nationalism and
particularism, which, in their more extreme forms lead to ethnic cleansing
and the like. Barry does not conflate multiculturalism with the latter, but
argues that the group rights model of democracy denies individual freedom
and is profoundly inegalitarian. He believes that unitary citizenship is the
only guarantee of equality.
8
I then turn to Will Kymlicka's attempt to reconcile the two positions
with his model of liberal pluralism and its subsequent rejection by
multiculturalists and liberals alike. In Multicultural Citizenship (1995,
2001a) Kymlicka, a liberal theorist, tries to address the problems posed by
cultural diversity in a world where ethnocultural conflicts are the primary
source of political conflict. On Kymlicka’s view, the Western political
tradition has had very little to say on the matter. He makes a distinction
between “classical liberalism” and his own. Classical liberalism has tended
to use the ancient Greek polis, the city-state, as the model of a
homogeneous political community where citizens share a common language
and culture. His own liberalism recognizes the fact that the events of the last
fifty years have shown that minority rights cannot be subsumed under
human rights. Human rights based on individual rights have failed to deal
with such problems. The problem with traditional human rights doctrines is
not that they give us “the wrong answer to these questions. It is rather that
they often give no answer at all.” (Kymlicka, 2001a, 5) Kymlicka believes
that these traditional rights must be supplemented with a theory of minority
rights, that is, group-differentiated rights.
An important feature of Kymlicka’s theory is the distinction he
makes between the two meanings of “collective rights”. One sense in which
a group could claim special rights is the right to limit the liberty of its
members in order to preserve its cultural purity. He calls this “internal
9
restrictions”. The other is the right to limit the economic or political power
exercised by the larger society over the group, or “external protections.” A
liberal theory of minority rights would accept external protections for ethnic
groups and national minorities but would be “skeptical” of the former.
(Kymlicka, 27)
Kymlicka also makes a distinction between the demands for
different kinds of rights: 1) Self-government rights (leading to some kind of
federalism); 2) Polyethnic rights (requiring financial and legal protection)
and 3) special representation rights (in various institutions). All three
categories fall under what is loosely termed “collective rights.” It is a
mistake, says Kymlicka, to conflate group-differentiated rights with
collective rights. He believes that it is natural to assume that collective
rights stand in opposition to individual rights, but this is not the case for
group-differentiated rights where matters are more subtle and complex.
Kymlicka points to an in important distinction that needs to be made
between two kinds of claims that an ethnocultural or national minority
might make. These claims correspond to the distinction referred to above
between “internal restrictions” and “external protections”:
The first kind is intended to protect the group from the destabilizing impact
of internal dissent. . . . whereas the second is intended to protect the group
from the impact of external decisions (e.g. the economic or political
decisions of the larger society. (Kymlicka, 35)
It is Kymlicka’s view that liberals can and should endorse certain external
protections where they promote fairness between groups, but should reject internal
10
restrictions that limit the right of group members to question traditional practices or
refuse to conform to them.
Despite such a major attempt to reconcile the basic principles of
Enlightenment liberalism with minority rights, both Brian Barry and Bhiku
Parekh reject Kymlicka’s theory of liberal pluralism. The former believes
that Kymlicka is in fact “illiberal” while the latter accuses him of “liberal
absolutism.” I argue that the intractability arises because the polemic takes
place within the paradigm of modernity. I conclude the chapter with an
overview of Michael Walzer’s views articulated in On Toleration (1997), in
particular his discussion of “post-modern toleration.” In this model, peculiar
to immigrant societies, cultural differences are dispersed and are
encountered everywhere. Individuals are set free of their “parochial
entanglements” but do not assimilate to a common identity. I argue that this
phenomenon is not a ‘project’ as Walzer has defined it, but a trend that is
emerging with the process known as globalization. There is a tendency
towards homogenization that accompanies the spread of the market
economy. It is in this phenomenon that one may find sources for a new
paradigm for a discussion of toleration.
In Chapter 2, I construct a new paradigm. I argue for a theory of
interdependence that rests on two facts. One is a fact about human nature
and the other a material fact of our interdependence in the economic sphere.
I advance a theory of human nature where I draw attention to our essentially
11
social nature. This is a function of our nature as a species-being. In
presenting this theory of human nature, I draw on the writings of Mary
Midgely, the British philosopher of evolutionary ethics, and her precursor,
the nineteenth century Russian thinker, Peter Kropotkin. The latter, in
Mutual Aid which first appeared as a series of articles between 1890 and
1896, argues, in response to the “struggle for life” social-Darwinist theory
put forward by T.N. Huxley, that “sociability” is in fact what guarantees our
survival. He points to evidence, both in Darwin’s work and in the
ethnological literature that the human and other animal species have always
lived and survived in groups.
Kropotkin, however, tends to conflate “sociability” with altruism, a
concept that is opposed to egoism in evolutionary biology. I argue that this
not the case. Sociability is sui generis. It is a trait we share with all other
species and proceeds from instinct. I redefine sociability as interdependence
that is both biological and economic. The individual is the social being, as
Marx has put it. Human survival and productive activity are possible
because of this trait. As more complex forms of social organization develop,
there is greater interdependence.
The interdependence in the economic sphere today has a two-fold
aspect. One is structural, that is to say, there is economic interdependence in
the work-place regardless of the economic architecture. The other is
contingent upon the phenomenon known as globalization. With
12
globalization there is a transnational integration of economies. The two
facts together constitute a necessary condition for a stable pluralist society.
They do not constitute a sufficient condition. That sufficient condition is to
be found in the tendency towards homogenization that accompanies
globalization. This homogenization translates from the economic to the
cultural sphere and the result is that cultural differences are eroded, thereby
easing the strains of pluralism. I instantiate this point with examples drawn
from the U.S. experience.
In Chapter 3, I study the Internet as a new kind of public sphere.
Having argued that globalization leads to greater interdependence, and
therefore, the possibility of greater toleration, I then consider whether the
opposite phenomenon may not occur. Could the communications revolution
that has accompanied economic integration facilitate increased tribalism? Is
cyberspace a new kind of expanded public space or does it merely mirror
existing tendencies? I examine the dialectic between the tendency towards
homogenization on the one hand and the rise of tribalism on the other, as a
consequence of globalization. Does the Internet facilitate a return to
atavistic ways of thinking? Can Holocaust-deniers find in the Internet an
easy forum to disseminate anti-Semitism? Or does increased access to
information erode prejudice?
I begin by discussing the concept of the public sphere put forward
by Jurgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
13
(1989). I then take up more recent theories in particular the one articulated
by James Bohman in “Expanding Dialogue.” Bohman is of the view that the
Internet constitutes a public sphere not because it has any intrinsic features,
but because of what democratic agents put into it. I argue the contrary. The
question whether the Internet facilitates tribalism arises precisely because it
offers a public space that both types of agents, democratic and
undemocratic, can avail of. It is my contention that the Internet constitutes a
new kind of public sphere because of its intrinsic features. It is not just a
piece of electronic plumbing. It is not just the "public of publics," it is also
the "public of the private." I consider two kinds of tribalism, one that fosters
hate and increased bigotry, and uses the Internet to diffuse such views and
expand membership. In particular I consider the Ku Klux Klan’s use of the
Internet. The other kind seeks isolation from the larger society and wishes
to maintain a distinct identity. The North American Amish belong to the
latter category. I discuss their use of the Internet in a separate section.
Lastly, I consider websites that promote dialogue and understanding.
I argue that the Internet has certain intrinsic features that neutralize
tribalism and bigotry. I cite cases where attempts to use the Internet for such
purposes have failed because of the nature of the technology. The Internet is
the Internet and therefore requires reciprocity and transparency. Intolerance
excludes both of these. Any initial gains in publicity made by neo-Nazi
groups are neutralized by the transparency of the medium. I discuss cases
14
where neo-Nazi propaganda has been taken off the Net because of certain
built-in features of the Internet.
In Chapter 4, I extend the argument beyond homogenization. I
undertake a case study of the United Kingdom to examine recent efforts at
promoting pluralism. These efforts constitute another sufficient condition
for toleration as a practice. In many ways, the situation in the U.K.
instantiates the issues and paradoxes that I have raised in previous chapters.
The U.K. experience presents an interesting case because it raises a number
of issues that intersect with the issues I have raised in previous chapters.
The first of these is that a separation of religion and state is not a
requirement for toleration, but recognition of pluralism is a necessary
condition for it. Among the liberal democracies, the U.K. does not have an
official separation of religion and state. And yet very early on there was the
recognition that it was a multicultural society. The second issue is that ill-
conceived efforts at promoting multiculturalism can produce the opposite
effect. The aggressive policies to promote racial equality in the eighties led
to further racism and segregation. The third issue is that secularism and
liberalism can be in conflict if there is a monist perception of what it means
to be secular. This issue intersects with two issues I have discussed in
Chapter 1. One is Charles Taylor’s claim that the very term ‘secular’ has
Christian origins. The Archbishop of Canterbury makes a similar claim. The
second issue is Brian Barry’s procrustean defense of Enlightenment values
15
as being exclusively liberal values. Thus if secular and liberal are seen as
co-terminous, the U.K. experience undermines such a claim. On the one
hand, the Archbishop lays claim to Enlightenment values, and at the other
end of the political spectrum, Trotskists who are aggressively secular are
unable to participate in a process that ensures pluralism and justice for
underprivileged minorities. I discuss the paradoxes faced by liberals and
Marxists alike.
The last issue is that carefully thought out initiatives, based on the
idea of common citizenship can lead to toleration. Since the appointment of
two Commissions of enquiry on race relations following endemic rioting in
the northern cities, the U.K. has turned towards a new approach to
pluralism, the policy known as “social cohesion.” This policy constitutes a
necessary and sufficient condition for a stable pluralist society.
I begin by considering two kinds of misplaced initiatives. One is the
recent suggestion by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that
different faiths could be allowed their own religious laws and practices as a
“supplementary” jurisdiction. This caused a huge furore, the Archbishop
coming under attack from Anglicans, politicians to the right and left and
feminists alike. I discuss the Sharia row to indicate how well-meaning
intentions can result in producing negative consequences and causing
further damage. I analyze the lecture because it instantiates the argument I
have made in Chapter I, that the language of Enlightenment cannot sustain
16
the discourse on toleration. Rowan Williams, considered a liberal
philosophical person, has used the language of Enlightenment to arrive at
the conclusion that multicultural and multifaith policies are a necessity. In a
sense, he hijacks the Enlightenment from secular liberals.
The initiative proposed by the Archbishop was only a proposal. Far
more serious are the consequences of multicultural policies actually
implemented in the eighties. When Margaret Thatcher was swept to power
in 1979 on an anti-immigrant wave, the multicultural policy initiated by the
Labour government in the sixties was more or less scuttled. In the face of
the mounting racism, certain boroughs and councils where Labour was in
power continued to try and implement the provisions of the 1976 Race
Relations Act. However in doing so, they pursued an aggressive policy of
rooting out racial discrimination. The focus was on rights and making
discrimination punishable, with little effort to promote understanding in the
white communities. Some of these councils were left-wing and came to be
known as the “loony left.” The aggressive pursuit of racial equality
measures, especially in the ethnic monitoring of housing allocations led to
further alienation among the white communities, some of whom were
equally deprived. This “Stalinist” approach allowed the right-wing press to
re-inforce a sense of victimization on the part of white communities. There
was a feeling that “positive discrimination” was being practiced in favor of
17
the black communities although positive discrimination is not permitted in
the U.K.
Against this backdrop, it is important to understand that ill-
conceived and ill-implemented multicultural policies can actually vitiate
matters. Endemic rioting in the inner cities culminated in riots in the
summer of 2001, prior to 9/11/2001 and several years before Britain had its
own 7/7, the suicide bomb attacks on the London transportation system in
2005. The government appointed two independent commissions. The focus
in Chapter IV is mainly on the findings and the recommendations of these
two commissions. Their recommendations focus on the idea of common
citizenship, which has now become a mandatory topic in the school
curriculum. This appeal to common citizenship while preserving diversity
constitutes a necessary and sufficient condition for toleration.
The overall philosophical conclusion of my investigation is that toleration
as a practice is both desirable and achievable as a goal. The argument supports my
core thesis that insofar as we affirm our nature as beings engaged in productive
activity, insofar as we value a world that facilitates that activity, toleration is
desirable. Insofar as we are interdependent in the economic sphere, we have a
material basis to achieve that goal. Some philosophers might believe that it is more
important to ground toleration as a virtue. The late Judith Shklar wrote that “[t]he
question of what meaning and worth toleration has within a pluralistic and skeptical
context is far from clear, but it might be helpful if one looked at the demands of
18
tolerant personal conduct apart from toleration as a political practice.” My project
is precisely the contrary. It is the meaning and worth of toleration as a practice that
is the object of my investigation. It is prior to the attempt to find a normative
justification for toleration. I do not address the question of toleration as a personal
virtue. My argument is that our interdependence as human beings makes toleration
as a practice in a pluralistic context both desirable and achievable.
19
Chapter 1 Endnotes
1. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the occurrence of the term for the first time
in The Edinburgh Review, 1886. There is some ambiguity here as to whether the
reference is to Scottish Celts or the Celtic nation as a whole.
2. In France, the head-scarf ban is based on the idea of laicité, itself derived from
the French Revolution. In the UK and Germany, the idea of equal rights does not
exclude recognition of cultural identity.
20
Chapter 2: Pluralism, Monism and Difference
The philosophical discussion of tolerance has been beset by
difficulties in grounding it as a virtue. Many of these difficulties arise
because there is an assumption that moral disapproval is involved in
tolerance. Yet intolerance can arise because of mere dislike or distaste.
Racial discrimination is thought to be about dislike and Susan Mendus has
asked the question whether it is proper to speak of toleration in that
context. (Mendus, 1989, 5) Whether it is or is not, tolerance is perceived
as a personal virtue. What is overlooked in such a view is that historically,
the debate on toleration arose because of its need as a practice. In the
context of the European religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and the bloodletting between Catholics and Protestants,
toleration was seen as the only alternative to endless strife. Over the
years, the issue of toleration has moved away from religious toleration and
evolved into a normative debate on its justification as a virtue. By the late
twentieth century, the various paradoxes associated with tolerance have
become the focus of debate. In a parallel development, with increased
migrations of population and conflict arising from ethnocultural
differences, toleration as a practice is once again on the agenda. Yet, as
Bernard Williams has noted in “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue,” we
cannot assume that what underlies a practice or an attitude is a personal
virtue. (Williams, 2002, 11)
21
Whatever the specific sources of conflict in contemporary
societies, conflict is over difference. In the case of religious conflict, a
truth claim is involved. This is the true way (to God, to the Kingdom of
Heaven). Most religious beliefs rest on a Bossuet-like claim: “I have the
right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong.” (Mendus,
1989, 18) In the case of racial discrimination too, conflict arises because
of difference. The intolerant group usually considers itself superior and
would like to deprive the other(s) of any claim to equal rights. In either
case, intolerance is of difference and can exist in non-moral situations.
While there is no doubt that the eccentric individual is also the object of
intolerance it is difference between groups in society that makes toleration
a necessity. Or to put it the other way round, social conflict occurs
between groups that are intolerant of each other’s different beliefs and
ways of life.
1
In this chapter I propose to examine the issues involved in
conflicts among such groups. Instead of the term ‘toleration’ I will
characterize the problem as one of pluralism. I begin by trying to define
the concept before I lay out the major philosophical positions on the
question of how to negotiate pluralism.
I. Pluralism
Pluralism, as one political theorist has recently pointed out, is a
“capacious” concept. At one end, it is seen as synonymous with
22
multiculturalism and the politics of recognition, and is associated with the
claim for group rights in the context of diversity. Pluralism in this sense is
understood to refer to cultural pluralism. At the other end, it is associated
with value pluralism in ethical theory where ultimate values held by
persons are said to be often not merely incompatible, but
incommensurable. These two different strands of thought converge in the
contemporary debate on pluralism in intricate ways.
Value pluralism is a concept that arose in the mid twentieth
century. The most famous proponent of this view is Isaiah Berlin. In the
landmark essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty" which he delivered as his
inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory in
Oxford in 1958, Berlin affirms:
Pluralism, with the measure of negative liberty that it entails, seems
to me a truer and more humane ideal than the goals of those who
seek in the great disciplined, authoritarian structures the ideal of
'positive' self-mastery by classes, or peoples, or the whole of
mankind. It is truer, because it does, at least, recognize the fact that
human goals are many, not all of them commensurable, and in
perpetual rivalry with one other. (Berlin, 216)
Although value pluralism has become an important issue in ethical
theory today, it must not be forgotten that Berlin was writing in a political
context. He was writing partly in response to the totalitarianism of the
Soviet Union. (Berlin, 166) His opposition was to monism, where all
values and goals are reducible to a single principle. Value pluralism was a
philosophical bulwark against the horrors that had been committed in the
23
name of a single principle. In this sense, his intellectual lineage goes back
to Benjamin Constant rather than to Mill. Constant, horrified by the
excesses of the French Revolution and the Jacobin Terror, warned against
the dangers of despotism.
The correlation between the ethical and political domains has been
the object of much debate. I do not propose to engage in it. What is of
importance today is that in the political sphere, critics of the universalist
liberalism of the kind articulated by Brian Barry in Culture and Equality,
have been largely influenced by Berlin. Thinkers such as Stuart
Hampshire, John Gray and Bhiku Parekh are characterized as “liberal
value theorists”. They uphold the spirit of Berlin's value pluralism. At the
same time, some of these critics, Parekh in particular, draw their sources
from a discourse that originated in Canada and Australia. The
circumstances that gave rise to the debate now known as
"multiculturalism" were largely empirical. The question of minority rights,
particularly those of aboriginal peoples became a serious political problem
in Australia and Canada in the 1970s. Charles Taylor's The Politics of
Recognition (1992) is the first serious attempt to give a philosophical
perspective to a matter that until then was largely deemed to be a matter of
constitutional decisions. I shall briefly discuss Taylor's analysis before
taking up the more recent debate on pluralism.
24
Using the Canadian Meech Lake amendment granting Quebec the
status of a "distinct society" as a case, Taylor lays forth the issues involved
in what has come to be known as the libertarian-communitarian debate of
the 1990s. Taylor notes that there are two forms of politics that have been
in conflict on the question of recognition. The first he characterizes as "the
politics of equal dignity" whose standard-bearers have been Rousseau and
Kant. The other he calls "the politics of difference" where the demand is
for recognition of the unique identity of an individual or group as being
distinct from everyone else. Feminists and minorities who feel themselves
to be "second-class citizens" belong to the latter category. Taylor has cited
the Quebec case as an example because it brings to the fore the
fundamental questions involved.
There is a form of the politics of equal respect, as enshrined in a
liberalism of rights, that is inhospitable to difference, because (a) it
insists on uniform application of the rules defining these rights,
and (b) it is suspicious of collective goals. . . . I call it inhospitable
to difference because it can't accommodate what the members of
distinct societies really aspire to, which is survival. This (b) is a
collective goal, which (a) almost inevitably will call for some
variations in the kinds of law we deem permissible from one
cultural context to another[.] (Taylor, 60-61)
Taylor is careful to distinguish between different models of
liberalism. However, he argues that even the more “hospitable variant” is
problematic. It may be cleared of the charge of homogenizing difference,
but its claims to neutrality are questionable. It presupposes a certain
number of distinctions, between what is public and private, between
25
politics and religion. Taylor cites the Salman Rushdie case to show that
these presuppositions are themselves not neutral.
2
In mainstream Islam,
politics and religion are not separable. The division of Church and State
itself has Christian origins:
The very term secular was part of the Christian vocabulary. All this
is to say that liberalism can’t and shouldn’t claim complete cultural
neutrality. Liberalism is also a fighting creed. The hospitable
variant I espouse, as well as the most rigid forms, has to draw the
line. (62)
Taylor’s solution to the problem is to propose comparative cultural study
that would lead to a fusion of horizons, a phrase he has borrowed from
Gadamer.
Taylor’s essay was the first salvo in a series of increasingly serious
challenges to liberal universalism that drew its sources from the
Enlightenment ideal. The literature on multiculturalism, also known as the
politics of identity, or the politics of difference, has proliferated in the last
fifteen years or so. In the next section, I will focus on the two political
theorists who represent the polar extremes of the debate: Bhiku Parikh and
Brian Barry. In Section III, I will examine attempts by liberals such as
Will Kymlicka and Michael Walzer to come up with a solution that would
reconcile the politics of equal respect and the politics of difference.
26
II: Cultural Embeddedness and Unitary Citizenship
Of the many recent challenges to liberalism, Bhiku Parekh's
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory
(2006) is the major work on the subject, covering the theoretical, historical
and practical aspects of the question. Parekh begins by taking up the
politics of recognition and describing the various movements that assert
identity and difference in the face of the homogenizing tendency of the
wider society they live in. And although multiculturalism is the term
associated with the diverse movements, Parikh holds that multiculturalism
must be construed more narrowly:
Multiculturalism is not about difference and identity per se but
about those that are embedded in and sustained by culture; that is,
a body of beliefs and practices in terms of which a group of people
understand themselves and the world and organize their individual
and collective lives. Unlike differences that spring from individual
choices, culturally derived differences carry a measure of authority
and are patterned and structured by virtue of being embedded in a
shared historically inherited system of meaning and significance.
To highlight this distinction between the two kinds of differences, I
shall use the term diversity to refer to culturally derived
differences. Multiculturalism, then, is about cultural diversity or
culturally embedded differences. (Parekh, 2006, 2-3)
Parekh's main charge against liberalism is that it is monistic. It is
important to note that Parekh has been deeply influenced by Berlin's value
pluralism, and applies this concept to culture. However, Parekh's aim is
not merely to write of minority cultures, but to provide a much larger
account of the nature of political theory.
27
He states explicitly:
Much of traditional political theory either ignores the subject
altogether or gives a misleading account of it. Broadly speaking it
is dominated by two major strands of thought, one making human
nature and the other culture the basis of political theory. Arguing
rightly that political theory should be grounded in a theory of
human beings, and wrongly equating the latter with a theory of
human nature, the first group of writers, whom I shall call
naturalists or monists, claimed to arrive at one true or rational way
of understanding man and the world and leading the good
life.(Parekh, 10)
Most major Greek and Christian philosophers, Locke, Mill, and
Hegel fall under the category of the monists. Culturalism, which emerged
as a reaction against naturalism, is represented by Vico, Montesquieu,
Herder and the German Romantics. Their mistake, on Parekh's view, is
that they ended up 'naturalizing' culture, seeing it as an immutable
ahistorical fact of life. Neither of the two traditions gives a coherent
account because the one ignores the fact that human nature is culturally
mediated and the other overlooks the fact that we have a shared humanity.
Parekh's claim is that his theory will break this polarity.
The important point to note here is the distinction Parekh makes
between 'a theory of human beings' and 'a theory of human nature'. Much
of his critique of classical and contemporary liberalism turns on the idea
that it is grounded in a theory of human nature which assumes that human
beings are basically the same in all societies. Parekh believes that the
monist can only prove that one way of life is superior to all others by
28
grounding this belief in a certain conception of human nature that is
transcultural and transcendent. He could of course appeal to the structure
of the universe or God, but in the end these would have to be mediated
through human nature.
But if the conception of human nature is "to do the required
philosophical work", the monist must assume that human nature is
uniform, and that there is "a moral and ontological primacy" of similarities
over differences. Parekh cites several other assumptions but I would like
to focus on these two because they are the recurrent motifs that occur in
his critique of liberal egalitarianism. Parekh is very thorough in his
homework when he engages in a historical and philosophical account of
monism and ‘culturalism’. For reasons of space I will not go into the
detailed argument he offers. What is of relevance here is that he opposes
the uniformity of the monist theory of human nature with a theory that is
culturally embedded.
The question of uniformity is central to the issues thrown up by
pluralism. Uniformity is usually opposed to diversity and I shall discuss
this at length in a later chapter. For the moment, with regard to Parekh’s
theory, it is significant that he defines multiculturalism in terms of
diversity. Yet Mill too opposed uniformity to diversity. For Parekh, this
appeal to diversity predicated on individual characteristics is itself
culturally embedded. Thus, classical liberalism, as exemplified by Locke
29
and Mill, was formed by Christianity, colonialism and the nation-state.
“Monists take no account of the role of culture in shaping human beings
and defining the nature and content of the good life, and have little
appreciation of the sources and significance of cultural diversity.” (Parekh,
80)
When it comes to contemporary liberalism, Parekh seems to
concede that some liberals have tried to avoid the mistakes of both monists
and culturalists:
They appreciate both the shared human nature and the cultural
embeddedness of human beings, and redefine liberalism to make it
more hospitable to diversity than their classical predecessors
without compromising its commitment to certain universal
principles. (Parekh, 80)
I will consider in greater detail Parekh’s arguments against Will
Kymlicka’s liberal pluralism in section III below. For the moment, I
would simply like to note that with regard to contemporary liberals,
Parekh holds that they too cannot accommodate cultural diversity in any
meaningful sense. In the case of Rawls’ political liberalism, “although
other ways of life are not prohibited, they live in the over-powering
shadow of political liberalism.” (Parekh, 90) Political liberalism itself is
culturally-embedded. Since Rawls is primarily interested in moral
diversity, he does not seem overly concerned with cultural diversity, avers
Parekh. With Joseph Raz, too, the emphasis on personal autonomy is a
value grounded in the historical character of the modern Western
30
individual. Parekh concludes that although contemporary liberals have
begun to recognize the cultural embeddedness of human beings and are
critical of their classical predecessors, they are too committed to the
transcultural view of human beings to understand the role of culture in
shaping the individual. Parekh believes that culture has a far more
determinate role to play in autonomy:
Although Raz appreciates this more than most other liberals, the
ghost of a transcultural and culturally untainted power of
autonomy continues to shadow even his thought. Liberals cannot
take a transcultural view of human powers and expect culture to
play an obligingly passive role in developing them.” (Parekh, 110)
Parekh’s other reproach is that liberals continue to absolutize liberalism.
There is a tendency to keep liberalism as the frame of reference and to
“divide all ways of life into liberal and non-liberal, [and] equate the latter
with illiberal.” (Parekh, 110)
It is Parekh’s third charge that really opens up the contentious
issues involved in pluralism. In terms of the responses to “so-called non-
liberal ways of life, liberal writers adopt one of two strategies. Some,
mostly of teleological persuasion, confront non-liberals with a full-
blooded liberal vision and attack them for failing to measure up to it.” The
other strategy is to thin down liberal principles and reduce them to a
minimum and make acceptance of this minimum a condition of acceptance
of other cultures.
31
I would like to take up the first of these “strategies” since it is the
full-blooded liberal vision in its confrontation with multiculturalism that
brings to the fore the intractable differences between the two views.
Although John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin are held to be the leading
liberal theorists, it is Brian Barry’s version of liberalism that
multiculturalists react to most strongly. It is also of interest that Barry is as
critical of Kymlicka as he is of Parekh and others. He is uncompromising
in his defense of liberal egalitarianism and is, in that sense, the true heir of
the Enlightenment.
In Culture and Equality (2001), Brian Barry mounts in a
devastating critique of multiculturalism and the politics of difference. One
of his main aims is to challenge the core assumption made by
multiculturalists (on his view), that identical treatment of equal citizens
under an Enlightenment-model constitution is to be contrasted with
equitable treatment. Barry believes that the anti-universalism of the
multiculturalists is essentially reactionary in nature and not dissimilar to
the Counter-Enlightenment.
[T]he anti-liberal rhetoric of multiculturalists is not uncongenial to
the reactionary right. Thus, exponents of the ‘politics of difference’
typically inveigh against the ‘abstract universalism’ that they
attribute to liberalism. . . . Ethnic groups, it has been said, are seen
by multiculturalists as ‘self-evident, quasi-biological collectives of
a reified “culture’’. All this fits in very nicely with the essentialism
of the Counter-Enlightenment, encapsulated in de Maistre’s well-
known remark that he had seen Frenchmen, Italians and Russians,
and so on, ‘as for man, I declare I have never in my life met him; if
he exists, he is unknown to me.” (Barry, 11)
32
Barry’s defense of the Enlightenment and his own ‘liberal
egalitarianism’ rests on the conviction that the concept of ‘culture’ and
group identity is one that has historically been used to justify racial
difference and the maintaining of privilege and hierarchy. He sees the
French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
as being a watershed in the development of democracy and egalitarianism.
It swept away the privileges of the clergy and the nobility by introducing a
uniform system of law and taxation based on the idea of a uniform
common citizenship. Prior to the Revolution, the clergy and the nobility
benefited from “traditionally sanctioned differences.” Thus the uniformity
written into the Declaration could guarantee the aspiration that every
citizen was equal.
While Barry’s concern is that an anti-Enlightenment position based
on notions of cultural distinctness might lead to justification of genocide,
national aggrandizement and other reactionary practices, his target in
Culture and Equality is not the reactionary right. It is “those
multiculturalists who would be happy to embrace the watchwords of the
French Revolution: liberty, equality and (in some appropriately non-sexist
rendition) fraternity.” (12) This point is of considerable importance
because the multicultural critique of liberalism is not only that it is monist,
but also that it fails to deliver on the Enlightenment promises of liberty
33
and equality. The demand for group rights is based on the idea of equality
among groups. On this view, in the liberal democracies of the West, there
is a dominant culture, that of Enlightenment liberalism, that stands in a
hegemonic relation with other non-liberal groups. In the case of societies
with national minorities such as Canada, matters are more complex
because national and ethnic groups, as against cultural groups, are also
victims of inequality. The important point in all these cases is that the
demand for group rights is based on the principle of justice. The criticism
of liberalism and its model of unitary citizenship is that with the insistence
on individual rights, it cannot ensure social justice.
It is of some interest and irony that the communitarian view on this
question converges with Marx’s position on the French Revolution
because Parekh sees Marx as primarily monist. The similarity in the
arguments indicates that Parekh too is inclined towards a monist approach
on the question of individual rights. Both hinge on what the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and Citizen achieved or failed to.
In On the Jewish Question (1843), Marx advances the view that
the political emancipation brought about by the French Revolution was not
enough for human emancipation. Although this essay is nominally a
response to Bruno Bauer’s article on the Jewish question, Marx is
articulating some of the ideas that were to constitute his theory of
alienation. Notice that Marx believed that the granting of individual rights
34
did not lead to what he called ‘emancipation’, his equivalent of what
Parekh and others would call justice.
Bruno Bauer had written that Jews who sought emancipation could
only be emancipated if they abandoned their religion. Only by abolishing
religion, through political emancipation, could one achieve true
emancipation. Marx argues that this is not so. He points out that one may
be politically emancipated without being emancipated in a real way. He
cites France and the United States as examples of political systems which
instantiate this point.
The droits de l’homme, the rights of man, are, as such, distinct
from the droits du citoyen, the rights of the citizen. Who is homme
as distinct from citoyen? None other than the member of civil
society. Why is the member of civil society called “man,” simply
man; why are his rights called the rights of man? How is this fact
to be explained? From the relationship between the political state
and civil society, from the nature of political emancipation.
Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man,
the droits de l’homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are
nothing but the rights of a member of civil society – i.e., the rights
of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the
community (Early Political Writings, 44 )
For Marx, the ‘rights of man’ alienate man, and make of him an
egotistical being. For the communitarians too, the idea of individual rights
seems to privilege the individual alienated from his cultural community.
For Marx, “community” would mean something quite different from what
it means in communitarian parlance, namely, civil society. From the
standpoint both of class (Marx) and culture (the communitarians), the
35
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen fails to guarantee human
emancipation or justice for all because of its attribution of primacy of
unitary citizenship.
It is important then, to understand Barry’s argument in defense of
unitary citizenship. The vehemence of his tone may lend credence to
Parekh’s characterization, cited above (p 9 ) that liberals ‘attack’ non-
liberals for not being liberal. The point, however, is that Barry believes
that only unitary citizenship can prevent certain groups from retaining
traditional privileges.
Barry’s position is that multiculturalist policies are not designed to
further liberty and equality; if anything, they mark a retreat from both. The
“alleged failings” of the Enlightenment on the question of equality can
elicit three kinds of responses. One is that the universal civil and political
rights enshrined in the French Declaration need to be supplemented by
universalistic social and economic rights, a position Barry endorses. A
second possible response could go along with the first but make a case for
certain group-based rights such as affirmative action in employment, or
educational subsidies for groups who are disadvantaged. Barry makes it
clear that ‘disadvantage’ needs to be defined in universal terms, as a lack
of something -- resources, opportunities -- which place members of those
groups are in a position of inequality. In such cases, he concedes that
group rights are justified as long as they exist only when that inequality
36
persists. The aim is to make the inequality go away, not maintain the
group rights for the sake of maintaining them. (Barry, 13)
A third response, and this is the object of Barry's attack, is the
multiculturalist argument in favor of granting special rights to groups who
are defined by their distinctive cultural identity. Unlike the second
response, the demand is not made on the grounds of lack of resources or
opportunities, though these may exist. The argument is for special rights to
be granted permanently in order to maintain the distinct nature of that
group's culture. The need for special rights arises because it is that
distinctive cultural identity that prevents the groups from benefiting from
the standard right to resources.
Barry does recognize that diversity exists, in any society. His
quarrel with the ‘politics of difference’ is that it tends towards in
egalitarianism. He believes that talk of cultural identity is romantic
wishful thinking, an idealizing of a fictitious ‘organic’ community that
was wiped out by the introduction of individual rights. Barry’s fear is that
the granting of group rights to any group that wishes to retain its cultural
distinctness is necessarily to endorse hierarchical privileges within that
group and encourage other practices that are morally questionable.
Thus far I have discussed the two extreme and intractable
positions. On the multiculturalist view, individual rights are a Western,
ethnocentric imposition on non-liberal groups or communities. On the
37
‘full-blooded’ liberal view, group rights based on cultural identity are
inegalitarian, sentimentalist and often not different from right wing claims
made on the same basis of ‘difference’. I would now like to discuss liberal
attempts to resolve this conflict between individual rights and group rights
before I point to the weaknesses in both the group-rights model and the
universalism of the classical liberal position. I shall consider first Will
Kymlicka’s theory of ‘liberal pluralism’ and then take up Michael
Walzer’s views on the subject.
III: Liberal Pluralism
Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship (1995, 2001a) is the
first serious attempt by a liberal theorist to address the problems posed by
cultural diversity in a world where ethno-cultural conflicts are the primary
source of political conflict. On Kymlicka’s view, the Western political
tradition has had very little to say on the matter. He makes a distinction
between “classical liberalism” and his own. Classical liberalism has
tended to use the ancient Greek polis, the city-state, as the model of a
homogeneous political community where citizens share a common
language and culture. Historically, minorities have been either eliminated
or forcibly assimilated. Attempts to protect minorities in the early
twentieth century took the form of bi-lateral treaties. However, these
proved not only ineffective, but provided pretexts for belligerent nations
38
to invade other countries. This was the case of Nazi Germany which used
treaty violations to justify the invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia.
(Kymlicka,2001a p 2)
With the end of the Second World War, the emphasis was on
universal human rights. World leaders who came together to form the
United Nations thought that vulnerable groups and minorities could be
protected by guaranteeing individual rights. The doctrine of human rights
replaced the concept of minority rights. Thus, when the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948, all mention of ethnic
and minority rights was dropped. Liberals welcomed such a shift,
believing that the historical model of separation of church and state could
be applied to ethnocultural differences.
Kymlicka believes that the events of the last fifty years have
shown that minority rights cannot be subsumed under human rights
because cultural minorities have special needs due to the fact that they
have been disadvantaged as ethnocultural groups. Ethnocultural conflicts
have been on the increase, especially with the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War. Human rights based on individual rights
have failed to deal with problems such as language rights, regional
autonomy, land claims and educational curriculum:
The problem is not that traditional human rights doctrines give us
the wrong answer to these questions. It is rather that they often
give no answer at all. The right to free speech does not tell us what
an appropriate language policy is. . . . the right to mobility does not
39
tell us what an appropriate immigration and naturalization policy
is. These questions have been left to the usual process of
majoritarian decision-making within each state. The result. . . has
been to render cultural minorities vulnerable to significant injustice
at the hands of the majority, and to exacerbate ethnocultural
conflict. (Kymlicka, 5)
Kymlicka thus believes that these traditional rights must be supplemented
with a theory of minority rights, that is, group-differentiated rights.
An important feature of Kymlicka’s theory is the distinction he
makes between the two meanings of “collective rights”. One sense in
which a group could claim special rights is the right to limit the liberty of
its members in order to preserve its cultural purity. He call this “internal
restrictions”. The other is the right to limit the economic or political power
exercised by the larger society over the group, or “external protections.” A
liberal theory of minority rights would accept external protections for
ethnic groups and national minorities but would be “skeptical” of the
former. (Kymlicka, 27)
Kymlicka also draws the distinction between ‘multination states’
(where previously self-governing, territorially concentrated peoples have
been incorporated into a larger state) and ‘polyethnic’ states (where
diversity arises from immigration). The resulting pluralism can lead to
demands for different kinds of rights: 1) Self-government rights (leading
to some kind of federalism); 2) Polyethnic rights (requiring financial and
legal protection) and 3) special representation rights (in various
40
institutions). All three categories fall under what is loosely termed
“collective rights”.
However, Kymlicka believes that it is a mistake to conflate group-
differentiated rights with collective rights.. The category of collective
rights is large and heterogeneous and can range from trade union rights to
class action suits. None of these have anything in common. He believes
that it is natural to assume that collective rights stand in opposition to
individual rights, but this is not the case for group-differentiated rights
where matters are more subtle and complex.
Kymlicka points to an in important distinction that needs to be
made between two kinds of claims that an ethnocultural or national
minority might make. These claims correspond to the distinction referred
to earlier on “internal restrictions” and “external protections”:
Both kinds of claims can be seen as protecting the stability of
national or ethnic communities, but they respond to different
sources of instability. The first kind is intended to protect the group
from the destabilizing impact of internal dissent. . . . whereas the
second is intended to protect the group from the impact of external
decisions (e.g. the economic or political decisions of the larger
society. (Kymlicka, 35)
It is Kymlicka’s view that liberals can and should endorse certain
external protections where they promote fairness between groups, but
should reject internal restrictions which limit the right of group members
to question traditional practices or refuse to conform to them.
41
There are some national groups, according to Kymlicka, who seek
group-differentiated rights solely for external protections, and in such
cases, the claim for group-differentiated rights does not conflict with the
individual rights of group members. The classical liberal objection to
group rights assumes that the granting of group rights will automatically
lead to oppression within the group. Such objections have been raised in
the context of claims for self-government by indigenous peoples. In the
context of North America, the Native American tribal councils or the self-
governing band councils of Canada have been cited as examples where the
self-government rights allow for sexual discrimination against women.
(Kymlicka, 39)
As against this, many Native American leaders argue that this
reflects a stereotyped prejudiced view of their culture. What they are
asking for is the external protections from the larger societies. These
indigenous groups have been incorporated into the larger society through
conquest or occupation. Had a different balance of power existed, they
may have retained or established their own sovereign governments.
Therefore their claim for special rights, in the matter of land use or
hunting and fishing rights is to reduce their vulnerability to the economic
and political decision of the majoritarian culture. Their concern is that
white judges or decision makers in the Supreme Court would view
indigenous practices through their own culturally biased ways. For
42
instance, Indian forms of consensual decision making do not necessarily
involve voting in the sense of the ballot but they are consensual
nonetheless.
Kymlicka is clear on one point, that he has in mind those groups
who make their claims for reasons of external protections alone. Some
Indian groups have also accepted the idea that their governments, like all
sovereign governments, should be accountable to international human
rights tribunals (e.g., the United Nations' Human Rights Commission).
What they object to is the claim that their self-governing decisions should
be subject to the federal courts of the dominant society - courts which,
historically, have accepted and legitimized the colonization and
dispossession of Indian peoples and land. (Kymlicka, 40)
Kymlicka also addresses in considerable detail the claims made by
immigrants for what he describes as “polyethnic” rights. I do not propose
to enter into the details of these claims. Rather, I would like to state
Kymlicka's theory in a nutshell.
A liberal theory of minority rights would be able to supplement a
universal theory of individual rights with the proviso that two conditions
be met: 1. Minority rights should not allow one group to dominate other
groups. 2. They should not enable a group to oppress its own members.
By introducing these limits, Kymlicka believes that liberal
principles can be upheld while granting the legitimate claims of minorities
43
for group-differentiated rights in the interests of justice. Historically,
liberals have made ethnocentric assumptions on the question of minority
rights and failure to recognize this has led to the majority having an
advantage over ethnocultural minorities.
We need to be aware of this, and the way it can alienate and
disadvantage others, and take steps to prevent any injustices. These
steps might include polyethnic and representation rights to
accommodate ethnic and other disadvantaged groups within each
national group, and self-government rights to enable autonomy for
national minorities alongside the majority nation. Without such
measures, talk of ‘treating people as individuals’ is itself just a
cover for ethnic and national injustice. (Kymlicka, 194; emphasis
added)
This is the core of Kymlicka’s theory. The attempt here is to reconcile the
group-rights claims of minorities without compromising on universal
human rights that protect the individual qua individual.
Admirable though Kymlicka’s effort may be, he has been criticized
by liberals and communitarians alike. Barry denies outright that Kymlicka
is a liberal at all, and refers to Kymlicka’s exchange with the political
theorist Chandran Kukathas in the journal Political Theory as “the battle
between Tweedledum and Tweedledee”. Parekh, on the other hand,
reproaches Kymlicka with unduly favouring national minorities against
other groups, thereby re-introducing liberal inegalitarianism. I shall begin
by presenting Barry’s rather stringent criticism of Kymlicka, followed by
the communitarian critique before I offer my own analysis of the
inadequacies of all three approaches.
44
Barry's response to Kymlicka is to engage in a robust defense of
the principles of egalitarianism that I have outlined above (p 15) He is
firmly convinced that the kind of group rights claimed in the name of
diversity amount to permitting oppressive practices within groups.
The defining feature of a liberal is, I suggest, that it is someone
who holds that there are certain rights against oppression,
exploitation and injury to which every single human being is
entitled to lay claim, and that appeals to 'cultural diversity' and
pluralism under no circumstances trump the value of basic liberal
rights. On this criterion, Kukathas is not a liberal - but no more is
Kymlicka, despite his protestations to the contrary[.](Barry, 132-3)
Barry believes that Kymlicka, like Walzer, is a cultural relativist.
"A liberal is a liberal, not a chameleon," he asserts, and on this count, both
Walzer and Kymlicka would be chameleons. He holds that Kymlicka is
“spellbound” by sub-state nationalities. The fact that Kymlicka believes
that national minorities should have self-government and that self-
governing national minorities should not have measures imposed on them
by a liberal state indicates that he "buys into the idea that human rights are
a form of “cultural imperialism." (138)
A theory that has the implication that nationalities (whether they
control a state or a sub-state polity) have a fundamental right to
violate liberal principles is not a liberal theory of group rights. It is
an illiberal theory with a bit of liberal hand-wringing thrown in as
an optional extra. (Barry, 140)
He adds, with some malice: “Kymlicka's idea that the liberal answer is in
some sense the universally correct one is like one of Wittgenstein's levers
45
that looks as if it must serve some purpose but is not actually connected to
anything.” (140-1)
Barry is so adamantly universalist that he overlooks Kymlicka's
first condition, the one pertaining to "internal freedoms” (p 41, above). I
shall discuss the question of universalism in the last section. For the
present it suffices to note that Barry rejects Kymlicka's claim (that he has a
liberal theory of group-rights) as being liberal at all.
It is interesting that Parekh, from the multiculturalist point of view,
focuses on exactly the same question that Barry takes issue with: that of
national minorities. He reproaches Kymlicka with having established a
hierarchy of minority cultural rights, with different moral weights
assigned to the claims of each minority. Thus, national minorities have the
highest range of cultural rights and immigrants the fewest:
It is difficult to see what general principles inform this hierarchy of
rights. Kymlicka appeals to such disparate criteria as territorial
concentration, history of independent existence, institutional
completeness, past commitments, consent, the level of poverty in
the immigrant's country, and the receiving country's degree of
responsibility for it. Some of these criteria are highly contentious
and do not admit of agreed answers, for example, the third and last.
They also conflict and we need to find ways of striking a judicious
balance between them, a question on which Kymlicka offers no
guidance. (Parekh, 109)
Parekh believes that Kymlicka's theory is not only incoherent, but
indirectly continues to absolutize liberalism. Where Barry disregards
Kymlicka's first condition entirely, that internal freedoms are respected,
46
Parikh sees in it a liberal attempt at subverting an "inner balance and
identity." Kymlicka does not respect the 'authentic otherness' of cultural
minorities. Thus, Kymlicka would be a cultural imperialist on Parikh's
view. For Barry, Kymlicka would be among those cultural relativists who
accuse liberals (such as Barry) of being cultural imperialists.
There is much irony in the fact that such a major effort on the part
of Kymlicka to provide a detailed account of minority rights that would be
consistent with a liberal theory of universal human rights should be so
easily dismissed by multiculturalists and liberals alike. I shall discuss the
reasons that underlie such a rejection of Kymlicka's theory. Parekh objects
to Kymlicka’s theory of minority rights on two grounds. One is that there
is a hierarchy among the minorities and the rights they are supposed to
enjoy on this account. The other objection is that ultimately there is an
imposition of liberalism on the minorities in question.
In the passage I have cited above, Parekh states that he fails to see
what principles inform this hierarchy. But there are principles involved. In
the case of indigenous peoples, it is colonization and conquest that have
put them at a disadvantage. Whether it is Native Americans in North
America, or the aboriginals in Australia, ways of life have been destroyed
with the peoples unable to adapt to the larger society. Likewise with Afro-
Americans, slavery and involuntary immigration have placed them in the
socially disadvantaged position they find themselves in. Obviously the
47
situation of these two groups cannot be on a par with voluntary
immigrants. Parekh objects to the criteria being “disparate”. But clearly
they have to be disparate because the different minorities are
disadvantaged for different reasons and in differing ways. Parekh's
objection is that there is a hierarchy in the allocation of rights. Surely the
question is less one of a hierarchy than of the nature of the rights.
Indigenous peoples ask for rights pertaining to land use, fishing rights and
some degree of self government or territorial jurisdiction. Furthermore, in
the case of Native Americans, a history of broken treaties led to the
formation of an Indian Claims Commission. The criteria for adjudication
of such claims will necessarily be different from those that involve claims
by immigrant groups. A Sikh immigrant to the U.K. can hardly ask for
fishing rights any more than a Native American could ask for an
exemption to the mandatory wearing of helmets while riding motorcycles.
If immigrant groups are disadvantaged vis-à-vis the majoritarian society, it
is as immigrants that they are disadvantaged.
3
They cannot constitute a
'people' in the way that indigenous peoples do. Immigrants to liberal
democracies come from different parts of the world. Even in the case of
South Asians in the U.K. where there are some cultural similarities, the
immigrants are heterogeneous, for they may consist of Immigrant
Muslims, Immigrant Sikhs, and Immigrant Hindus with religious and
48
linguistic differences. Yet they face the same disadvantages as Afro-
Caribbean immigrants.
It has to be asked, does Parekh believe that all minority groups
should have the same rights? The implications of this position are serious.
It would imply in the first place that there is no difference between one
minority and another and this would undermine the very principle of
multiculturalism and the politics of difference. Secondly, the parity that
Parekh implicitly seeks suggests that there is an underlying assumption of
difference-blind egalitarianism. So what is the quarrel with liberalism
about? Parekh seeks the same operative principle among groups that a
liberal such as Barry would seek among individuals: that everyone is
entitled to the same rights, regardless of the particular cultural identity.
Parekh’s other objection, that Kymlicka’s theory absolutizes
liberalism, takes us back to the heart of the liberalism-multiculturalism
dispute. Is universalism ethnocentric? Can there be a principle of
egalitarianism that is universal but not ethnocentric? Kymlicka’s theory
rests on the idea of equality between groups and freedom and equality
within groups. Parekh appears to desire the former and denies that
Kymlicka’s theory of rights will guarantee such equality. He does not say
much about the latter condition.
Much of the reason that Parekh rejects Kymlicka’s theory has to do
with the fact that the latter identifies individual freedom with liberal
49
principles. Parekh’s criticism is that “in subtle ways [Kymlicka] seeks to
impose liberalism on minorities.” The question to be asked of Parekh and
other multiculturalists is the following: do they object per se to the
principle of individual freedom within a group. Can an individual be
coerced to conform to a cultural practice? I believe that Parekh sidesteps
the issue.
The fact that both Parekh and Barry reject Kymlicka’s theory is
more revealing of their own intransigent positions than of weaknesses in
the said theory. In the debate on multiculturalism, neither Parekh nor
Barry is willing to consider the arguments against their respective theories.
Thus, Parekh sees only the ethnocentrism behind liberal theory and
conflates it with colonialism and cultural imperialism. He does not see, for
instance, that the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and
Citizen laid great emphasis on individual rights precisely because the
system of estates privileged the clergy and the aristocracy and that it was
the existence of group rights that allowed for injustice to be perpetuated.
As I have pointed out earlier, Barry repeatedly stresses this point
throughout Culture and Equality. However, he does not even consider the
possibility that there is some truth to Parekh’s assertion that colonialism,
conquest and slavery have played an important role in the history of the
liberal democracies of the West and that there is in fact a dominant
majoritarian culture. He dismisses the idea of cultural identity as romantic
50
nostalgia and assumes that the granting of group rights will automatically
oppress the individual. As John Horton has pointed out, Barry's theory is
procrustean. He resorts frequently to the rhetorical device “of counter-
posing an idealized liberal society to a warts-and-all presentation of
particular cultural groups” (Horton, 2003, 32) Barry seems utterly
convinced that the nominal existence of individual rights would allow
individuals belonging to cultural minorities to avail themselves of those
rights as easily as an individual from the privileged majority. So
convinced is he that liberalism is synonymous with egalitarianism, that he
fails to see that it is one thing for the French Declaration to affirm
individual rights in order to secure justice, and quite another for Mill to
outline his theory of liberty while justifying exclusions. The very fact that
there are group-rights claims indicate that cultural minorities do feel
alienated and disadvantaged.
Neither Barry nor Parekh is willing to consider the arguments of
the other side. For it is entirely true that claims based on the idea of a
distinct cultural identity can lead to ethno-nationalism, and in its extreme
form, to ethnic cleansing. But it is equally true that liberal claims are often
underpinned by Western cultural dominion, and in the name of universal
rights, a particular majoritarian culture is imposed on other societies.
Sometimes, universal human rights are a pretext for armed intervention in
other countries, when in fact there is a highly dubious political agenda at
51
stake. The dangers inherent in the extreme forms of both doctrines are
very real. This is not to suggest that either Barry or Parekh are advocating
cultural imperialism or ethnic cleansing. They just fail to acknowledge
that certain aspects of their respective theories may have such
implications, unless there are safeguards built into the theory.
The fact that Barry and Parekh hold intractable positions does not
mean that individual and group rights are necessarily incompatible. They
appear to be so because the claim for one kind of rights is perceived as
excluding the other. It is possible for a state to affirm unitary citizenship
and grant group rights that would remedy whatever disadvantage an
individual may have because of the person's group identity. This has been
precisely Kymlicka's attempt. The two conditions he specifies are meant to
safeguard individuals from oppression within the group, and other groups
from oppression by a group that, in the name of a distinctive cultural
identity, may impose its culture on other minorities. The difficulty with
Kymlicka's theory is that it cannot deal with situations when a non-liberal
group simply refuses to consider individual freedom as a value when the
exercise of such a freedom by someone outside the group gives offence to
the group’s core values. The Rushdie affair is a notorious example of such
a case. Where liberals tend to see only the fatwa, what is lost sight of is the
fact that moderate Muslims with no thoughts of violence were deeply
52
offended by The Satanic Verses. Such differences may well be
intractable, as Waldron has pointed out.(Waldron, 1996)
This is a major difficulty with the theories I have discussed so far.
In all three approaches, the primary problem is seen as a conflict between
cultural minorities and a dominant liberal Greco-occidental culture that
occupies a hegemonic role. And although Kymlicka stipulates that one
minority should not dominate another when its group-rights claims are
granted, the fact is that there is a tendency for groups to do so. Conflict
between groups-rights claims often have to do with allocation of
resources, and more often than not, over territory. Pluralism would not be
a problem if every cultural group had access to the resources it needed in
order to survive. Beyond the question of resources is also the fact that
conflict often arises on religious or other grounds. Pluralism is
inextricably bound up with the question of toleration. If various groups
were to tolerate each other’s practices, there might not be any conflict in
society.
The theories I have outlined above tend to approach the issue of
pluralism 1) as a societal aim involving recognition of difference (Parekh)
and 2) as a question of minority rights (Kymlicka). I believe that pluralism
must be seen in the first place as a fact, a fact of diversity that leads to
conflict. It may well be possible to ease the tensions that arise from
cultural diversity without necessarily subscribing to the politics of
53
difference. With this perspective in mind, I would like to take up Walzer’s
views on the subject. His approach to the question of pluralism is from the
standpoint of peaceful coexistence. He is concerned with toleration as a
practice and has various models within which coexistence can be
achieved.
IV: Regimes of Toleration
In On Toleration, Walzer states that peaceful coexistence is a good
in itself. At the outset, he makes it clear that he is concerned with
toleration between groups. The need for toleration arises when differences
at issue are cultural or religious, they concern conflicting ways of life. He
is not concerned with toleration at the political level, where conflicts may
arise due to ideological differences. He is concerned with toleration as a
practice which corresponds to the virtue, tolerance. As an attitude or state
of mind, toleration describes a number of possibilities. He lists five of
them.
1. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the religious wars led
to a call for toleration, with Locke’s Letter on Toleration representing the
paradigm case: a resigned acceptance of difference for the sake of peace.
Walzer also cites Voltaire on the subject.
2. Another possibility is a passive, relaxed, benignly indifferent
attitude to difference. A live and let live approach to difference.
54
3. The third stems from a moral stoicism : a principled recognition
that the 'others' have rights even if they exercise those rights in
unattractive ways.
4. A fourth attitude consists of an openness to others, perhaps even
respect, a desire to learn from those who are different.
5. Finally we have an enthusiastic endorsement of difference. It is
an aesthetic attitude, one which sees difference as a necessary condition of
human flourishing. (Walzer, 1997, 11)
For Walzer, these states of mind lie in a continuum. Where they
stand in relation to the “regimes of toleration” is unclear, and this is one of
the ambiguities in the theory. The concept of a “regime of toleration” is
central to Walzer’s theory. There are five of them: multinational empires,
international society, consociations, the nation-state and immigrant
society. In a separate chapter, he discusses two other forms of toleration,
modern and post-modern toleration.
The multinational empire is the oldest arrangement where various
groups, autonomous or semi-autonomous, are obliged to coexist, at the
behest of imperial bureaucrats. Walzer has Persia, Ptolemaic Egypt and
Rome in mind, though he cites the Ottoman millet system as another form
of such a regime. The survival of member groups depends on official
toleration, which is sustained for the sake of peace. The imperial regime
can be called a regime of toleration, “whether or not the members of the
55
different communities are tolerant of one another.” (Walzer, 15) These
regimes are autocratic, but are successful in maintaining peaceful
coexistence, in some cases for centuries.
The next regime, international society, is only briefly considered
by Walzer. He describes it as an anomaly, since it is not a domestic
regime. Some would even describe it as an anarchic and lawless condition.
But, says Walzer, “international society is not anarchic, it is a very weak
regime, but it is tolerant as a regime despite the intolerance of some of the
states that make it up." (Walzer, 19) This is so because the principle of
sovereignty requires toleration: it is an essential feature. But, he adds,
sovereignty has its limits, and these are fixed by the legal doctrine of
humanitarian intervention. Acts or practices that shock the conscience of
humanity are not tolerated. However, since international society is a weak
regime, in practice it is member states that may actually intervene to stop
such practices. Walzer cites the case of the Vietnamese invasion of
Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge regime engaged in barbarous practices.
One needs to note that international society is tolerant in principle and
more tolerant because it is weak. However, the intolerance of the nation
state may result in humanitarian intervention.
Walzer next turns to the “consociation”, the bi or tri-national state.
Consociationalism is a “heroic program” says Walzer, because it aims to
maintain the imperial coexistence without the imperial bureaucrats. The
56
different groups are not tolerated or obliged to tolerate each other by the
imperial power, they tolerate one another because of the political
arrangement they have arrived at. Belgium, Switzerland, Cyprus, Lebanon
and the “stillborn” Bosnia are examples. Two or three communities come
to a practical arrangement and strike a political bargain that protect their
divergent interests. The communities have lived side by side for a long
time before they come together in formal negotiation. They may have been
united by imperial rule, or may have come together in a common struggle
against that rule. The consociation is successful when it predates the
appearance of strong national movements. It breaks down when there is
fear of disturbance, when social or demographic change alters the balance
of size and strength between the groups. If one group looks dangerous to
the others, when the fear is that the consociation will be turned into a
nation-state, some groups will become minorities who will ask to be
tolerated by the majority who do not require to be tolerated.
The liberal nation-state, which is what most states are in
international society, is also a regime of toleration, in the sense that
minorities are tolerated. A single dominant group that may organize the
common way of life that reflects its history, its political apparatus “is an
engine for national reproduction.” (Walzer, 25) Yet minorities are
tolerated in liberal and democratic nation-states. The toleration however,
is focused on individuals rather than groups. They are first perceived as
57
citizens, then as members of this or that minority. They have the same
rights as everyone else, but as members of minorities, although allowed to
form voluntary associations, they are not allowed to organize
autonomously. On Walzer’s view, minority religions and culture belong to
the “private collective” which is viewed with suspicion by the “public
collective,” the nation state. There is pressure to assimilate to the
dominant nation. A crucial feature of the nation-state is that the majority is
permanent. Toleration in nation-states has only one source and moves or
doesn’t move in only one direction.
In contrast, Walzer offers the model of toleration embodied in the
immigrant society. He clearly has the United States in mind. The members
of different groups have left their homeland and come to a new land and
have dispersed over it. They come together as groups but in relatively
small numbers and intermixed with others. As ethnic or religious groups,
they sustain themselves as voluntary associations. The state assumes a
certain autonomy and is neutral among the groups, even though the first
immigrants may have thought they were forming a nation-state. The
objects of toleration are individuals who are encouraged to tolerate each
other qua individuals. The result is that people tend to ascribe to
themselves a hyphenated identity, such as Italian-American, the first
designating a cultural identity, the second a political one. In this context
Walzer expresses the concern that groups may not be able to sustain
58
themselves except in a “double-hyphenated version,” that is, the culture of
the group is American-Italian, something quite distinct from the original
Italian, while its politics is Italian-American.
In addition to these regimes, Walzer writes of the “modernist” and
“postmodernist” project, both of which may incorporate any one of the
regimes listed above. The modernist project has two aspects. One is
democratic inclusiveness which is predicated on individual assimilation,
and has its source in the French Revolution. The individual is set free from
the old communities and relates directly with the state, thus encouraging
“cultural assimilation and political participation.” The individuals may
form associations which would help preserve their collective identity, but
“when they enter the city, they enter as individuals.” (Walzer, 84-85)
However, the modernist project also has another form of toleration,
collective toleration:
The alternative to entry is separation. This is the second modernist
project: to provide the group as a whole with a voice, a place, and a
politics of its own. Now what is required is not a struggle for
inclusion but a struggle for boundaries. The crucial slogan of this
struggle is “self-determination,” which implies the need for a piece
of territory or at least a set of independent institutions – hence,
decentralization, devolution, autonomy, partition, or sovereignty. .
. . Communal autonomy confirms the authority of traditional elites;
consociation commonly takes the form of a power-sharing
arrangement among those same elites; nation-states interact
through their diplomatic corps and political leaders. (Walzer, 86)
59
This has broadly been the pattern since the French Revolution.
However, in the last few decades, there has emerged what Walzer calls the
“postmodern project”:
In immigrant societies (and also now in nation-states under
immigrant pressure), people have begun to experience what we
think of as a life without clear boundaries and without secure or
singular identities. Difference is, as it were, dispersed, so that it is
encountered everywhere, every day. Individuals escape from their
parochial entanglements and mix freely with members of the
majority, but they don’t necessarily assimilate to a common
identity. . . . The postmodern project undercuts every sort of
common identity and standard behavior: it makes for a society in
which the plural pronouns “us” and “them” (and even the mixed
pronouns “us and me”) have no fixed reference; it points to the
very perfection of individual liberty. (89)
Walzer is a little ambiguous in his evaluation of this model. He
believes that the modernist project depends on a tension between the
individual and the collective, and that likewise, the postmodern project
requires a certain tension with modernity: “between citizens and members
on the one hand and the divided self, the cultural stranger, on the other.”
One is not clear where Walzer stands in relation to this, for he concludes
the section by stating that “ the point of toleration is not, and never was, to
abolish “us” and “them” (and certainly not to abolish “me”) but to ensure
their continuing peaceful coexistence and interaction.” (92)
Walzer has come in for criticism from various quarters for
inconsistencies in his political positions over the last three decades. As I
have noted earlier, Barry has described him as a “chameleon”, whose
60
project is "the romance of the nation-state." More recently, Walzer has
been criticized for having described the intervention in Afghanistan as a
“just war”. Walzer himself believes that he has been more or less
consistent, but has moved towards a more communitarian position lately.
For the purposes of this chapter, I would like to focus on those aspects of
Walzer's theory that bring new insights into the issues involved in
pluralism. I have laid out Walzer’s theory of the regimes of toleration
rather schematically. The purpose in discussing his theory is two-fold. One
is that Walzer rightly focuses on toleration as a practice. The strains of
pluralism arise because groups are in conflict. If peaceful coexistence is a
priority, then of course, a practical, political arrangement may be arrived
at in a number of ways and Walzer has cited them. Some of these
arrangements may be the result of political initiatives that do not rest on
any principle at all, as John Horton has argued. (Horton, 40)
The other, more important reason is that in constructing the
postmodern model, Walzer moves the issue away from the liberal-
multiculturalist deadlock and relocates it in what is effectively, a
postmodern world. This is of some importance since the deadlock arises
largely because liberals and multiculturalists alike are still within the
paradigm of modernity. Barry is suspicious of cultural embeddness
because he sees it as a return to feudal hierarchy. He defends the French
Revolution because it abolished the privileges of the aristocracy and the
61
clergy. Multiculturalists such as Parekh see liberal universalism as
embodying the monism of the French Revolution. What they overlook is
that the phenomenon known as globalization, a more appropriate term to
describe the world we live in, has made inroads into any fixed notion of
culture. Walzer's postmodern model opens up new perspectives on the
question of pluralism. Before I consider these, I would like to comment
briefly on certain ambiguities in Walzer’s account of immigrant societies.
The regimes of the nation-state and immigrant societies are too
tidily demarcated. My concern here is with the fact that Walzer overlooks
the strong nationalist underpinnings of most societies today. Walzer seems
to recognize this when he discusses the nation-state. He is, however, over-
optimistic in his account of the USA as an immigrant society: “The state,
once it is pried loose from the grip of the first immigrants, who imagined
in every case that they were forming a nation-state of their own, is
committed to none of the groups that make it up.”(31) Elsewhere, Walzer
supports this claim to neutrality by pointing to the fact that there is no
official language in the US Constitution. (Walzer, 1992a) But this is
clearly not the case. As Will Kymlicka puts it:
There is growing recognition. . . that this idea of ethnocultural
neutrality is simply a myth. Indeed, the claim that liberal-
democratic states – or ‘civic nations’ – are ethnoculturally neutral
is manifestly false, both historically and conceptually. The religion
model, with its strict separation of church and state, is altogether
misleading as an account of the relationship between the liberal-
democratic state and ethnocultural groups.
62
Consider the actual policies of the United States, which is the
alleged prototypically ‘neutral’ state. Firstly, it is a legal
requirement for children to learn the English language in schools.
Secondly, it is a legal requirement for immigrants over the age of
50 to learn the English language to acquire American citizenship.
Thirdly, it is a de facto requirement for employment in or for
government that the applicant speak English. Fourthly, decisions
about the boundaries of state governments, and the timing of their
admission into the federation, were deliberately made to ensure
that Anglophones would be a majority within each of the fifty
states of the American federation. (Kymlicka, 2001, 17)
Curiously enough, Walzer himself concedes the point a few
paragraphs after the passage that I have cited at above: “In fact, the West
still dominates the curriculum everywhere.” (Walzer, 1997, p 32)
A similar ambiguity can be found in Walzer’s discussion of France
as a “complicated case.” He describes it as one of Europe’s leading
immigrant societies but adds that “it isn’t a pluralist society.” He accounts
for this anomaly by pointing to the French Revolution. Because the
struggle was against the clergy and the ancien regime, it was political and
populist in character. "Though the cause was French as well as republican,
this was not a Frenchness that could be defined religiously, ethnically or
historically. One became French in this new sense of the word by
becoming republican; at the height of the revolution, foreigners were
welcome . . . so long as they learned the French language.”(Walzer, 1997,
38) Walzer sees a continuity between 1791 and the France of today. He
overlooks the history of the nineteenth century, in particular the period of
the Third Republic (1875-1914). France, traumatized by defeat at the
63
hands of the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian war, and by the spectre of
the 1871 Paris Commune, sought to recover from Bismarck's humiliating
conditions and attempted to recover national pride through colonialist
expansion overseas, particularly in North Africa. France is the nation-state
par excellence, with the added legacy of brutal colonialism. The point is
that most liberal democracies began as nation-states and do have a
majoritarian culture. They are all under pressure of immigration, and
therefore a clear demarcation between the nation-state as an intolerant
regime and the immigrant society as a tolerant one cannot be made.
Yet, it is these very ambiguities that allow Walzer to construct the
model of post-modern toleration. In the passage I have cited on p 59,
Walzer is pointing to a trend, a pattern that is emerging in immigrant
societies. Walzer expresses his own uneasiness with the “commingling of
ambiguously identified individuals.” First generation mixed families still
have a longing for “coherent communities.” Walzer foresees that in the
future, individuals may fashion themselves out of “fragmentary remains of
old cultures. “ However, he describes the situation as a “post-modern
project,” as if it were an aim, in much the same way as modernity and the
Enlightenment were.
I venture to suggest that this trend that Walzer describes is not a
“project” or a self-conscious aim of individuals in a post-modern world. I
believe that the term “globalization” better describes a process, rather than
64
a project, that is largely economic, that has consequences for pluralism
and toleration. Increased migrations and the spread of technology have
their impact on culture. Walzer concludes his section on the postmodern
model by stating that the point of toleration is “not, and never was, to
abolish ‘us’ and ‘them’ (and certainly not to abolish me’) but to ensure
their continuing coexistence and interaction.” (92)
In saying this, he overlooks the fact that it is precisely the “us and
them” that provides the basis for intolerance. It is true that not everyone
who has the nostalgia for community is necessarily fundamentalist. But it
is an “us and them” attitude that makes for the strains of pluralism. In the
next chapter I will argue that in the context of globalization, notions of
community and culture are radically changing; at the same time,
individuals are less fragmented than appears to be the case. I shall argue
that increased interdependence in the economic sphere can also provide
the conditions under which greater tolerance is possible. It is what
individuals have in common with others that provides a basis for identity.
In the present age, the choice is no longer between cultural embeddedness
and fragmentation of the individual. Both trends are present but there is
also a third possibility: greater interdependence and changing notions of
culture that lead neither to tribalism nor to homogenization. In Chapter II,
I shall present a theory of human nature hat, taken with economic
integration, can provide a basis for toleration and pluralism.
65
Chapter 2 Endnotes
1.There is no doubt that individuals too are victimized, but it is usually as members
of a social group that they face intolerance
2. As is well known now, the publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic
Verses in 1987 caused a furore in the Islamic world. It resulted in the Ayatollah
Khomeini issuing a fatwa ordering Rushdie’s death. Most Muslims were outraged
at the caricaturizing of the Prophet Muhammed, but did not endorse the fatwa.
3. There is, of course a great difference between types of immigrants. Boat
people and illegal immigrants to the U.S. flee their home countries
because their lives are threatened by armed conflict or oppressive regimes.
This is not true of most immigrants to the UK.
66
Chapter 3: Interdependence: Between Cultural Difference and
Homogenization
In the previous chapter I have laid out the broad philosophical
positions on the question of pluralism. I have suggested that the
intractability of the positions arises because the discourse takes place within
the paradigm of modernity. The language of Enlightenment and counter-
Enlightenment can no longer sustain the discourse on toleration and
pluralism. A shift in the paradigm is necessary because today, the problems
associated with pluralism occur in the context of the phenomenon known as
globalization. The spread of the market economy has meant a certain
porosity in borders, both geo-political and cultural. With population
migrations, conflict now occurs between ethno-cultural groups who were
not previously in contact. At the same time, traditional conflicts between
national minorities have been exacerbated, especially in the former Soviet
Union and the East bloc countries. What is significant is that both types of
conflict occur among ethnocultural groups who have no experience of
liberal democracy. As some scholars have observed in response to Will
Kymlicka's Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? it cannot.
1
In this chapter I shall attempt to construct a new paradigm for the
discourse on pluralism in the context of globalization. I shall argue for a
theory of interdependence among human beings that transcends
ethnocultural differences. My use of the term 'ethnocultural' subsumes
67
religion and language. I argue that there is both a natural and a material
basis for such interdependence that is far more significant than the
differences between groups that lead to conflict and intolerance. I argue that
a stable basis for a pluralist society can be found in:
1. A fact about human nature that lies deeper than any set of beliefs or
values.
2. An actual, material fact that results from activity in the economic and
social sphere.
Before I present this theory, I would like to make a couple of
observations on the idea of ethnocultural identity for this has a bearing on
the paradigm I propose. The argument from culture presupposes some kind
of organic bond that holds a community together. Values and mores are
passed down from generation to generation, hence the idea of "roots" and
embeddedness. The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, in his work
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1875), used the term Gemeinschaft, the
German for community, to describe this form of pre-capitalist social
organization. He opposed it to Gesellschaft which stands for (industrial)
society that is impersonal and consists of an agglomeration of individuals.
2
Multiculturalists and communitarians who argue from the standpoint
of cultural embeddedness overlook the coercive character of Gemeinschaft.
Gemeinschaft has its cruelties. An individual is not free to choose her
culture or to opt out of the "way of life". No doubt the idea of individual
68
choice itself would be perceived as ethnocentric by communitarians. This
does not alter the fact that coercion is involved in the transmission of
culture from generation to generation.
3
The other point is that almost any ethnocultural group identity is
constructed on the idea of some self-delusional sense of superiority. In Chapter 1, I
stated that a truth claim is a source of religious intolerance. A similar cultural
claim: "this is the best way of life" underlies the idea of ethnocultural identity. This
would be true of most traditional communities. Historically there have been
oppressed minorities, and in recent times, minorities in search of emancipation
have also leaned on the idea that there is something special about belonging to their
own particular group. This is understandable, but does not alter the fact that such a
claim exists and this too is a potential source of intolerance. The idea of being
superior or special by virtue of "belonging" to an ethnocultural or religious group is
one that is fraught with certain dangers. I shall discuss these two aspects of
ethnoculturalism more fully when I present my argument based on homogenization.
My argument in this chapter has four steps. In Section I, I lay out my theory
of human nature, based largely on the writings of the English philosopher of
evolutionary ethics, Mary Midgley, the Russian evolutionist Peter Kropotkin and
the early writings of Karl Marx. In Section II, I show how globalization makes us
interdependent in a way that transcends cultural differences. I then pull together the
different strands of the argument and suggest that the strains of pluralism may be
eased through this interdependence. The interdependence constitutes a necessary
69
condition for toleration, but not a sufficient one. In Section III, I present what I
consider a sufficient condition: the tendency towards homogenization that
accompanies globalization. This homogenization translates from the economic to
the cultural sphere. I argue that the strains of pluralism are eased with greater
resemblance between individuals from different ethnocultural backgrounds. I ask
whether the Internet does not constitute a global public sphere within which the
discourse on toleration and pluralism can be extended. In the next chapter I discuss
this question in detail.
I. We do have a Nature
At the outset I would like to make it clear that I use the term 'human
nature' to describe what is in our nature as a species, what we all have in
common, independent of culture or ethnicity. One of Bhiku Parekh's
criticisms of liberalism, as I pointed out in Chapter 1, is that it equates a
theory of human nature with a theory of human beings. He is not quite
precise on this distinction, except to affirm that 'human nature' is culturally
embedded and is not the same from culture to culture. I shall not quibble
with the niceties of Parekh's distinction. I would merely like to point out
that to deny that we do have a nature is to adopt what the English
philosopher Mary Midgley has called the 'Blank Paper' view, that we have
no instincts at all.
4
I argue that we do have a nature. I take it as unproblematic that this
nature is something we may share with other species. This does not alter the
70
fact that we do have a nature. Enough research has been done in
evolutionary theory and science to establish that we are indeed a species and
have evolved out of other species. What we have in common with other
species is the instinct to survive, to reproduce, to mate and nest and to
nurture the young. This instinct for survival may be seen in every species,
from the lowest creature to the highest primate. Food-gathering in any form
is the first instinct. Seeking shelter from the elements is another. No
creature however, could survive with only this. The mating instinct ensures
the survival of the species. The nurturing of the young requires nesting or
the construction of dwellings. We share these instincts with most creatures.
Philosophers however, have traditionally sought to emphasize differentia.
From Aristotle to the eighteenth century natural scientist Georges-Leclerc
Buffon, they have underscored what marks us off as a species: the capacity
to reason. In the case of the early Marx, it is the capacity for conscious life
activity that differentiates man from animals.
I believe a more promising avenue may be found in exploring what
we have in common with other species: our sociability. By sociability, I
mean our interdependence as individuals within a species. The theory of
human nature that I offer is predicated on instinct. It is in our nature to
engage in productive activity with other human beings. Just as bees and ants
work together to ensure their survival, so it is with human beings. No matter
how highly evolved we are and how complex our life activity is, we are
71
interdependent because our instinct for survival requires us to work with
others in order to produce our means of subsistence. It is virtually
impossible to engage in productive activity alone. I have stressed instinct
because we are living organisms first before we become anything else. We
are a species and have survived as a species. Our existence as species-being,
to use Marx's phrase, makes us essentially social creatures. The individual is
the social being, as the young Marx put it.
5
This need for social existence,
this instinct to engage in productive activity is an intrinsic property. This
property is not culturally determined. It obtains across cultures and is
universal. Such activity is conducted in cooperation with others.
Aristotle, in Book VIII of the Nicomachean Ethics also underscores
our social nature although he does so in his discussion of friendship as a
virtue.
After what we have said, a discussion of friendship would naturally
follow, for it is a virtue, or implies virtue and besides is most
necessary for living. For without friends, no one would choose to
live; though he had all other goods; even rich men and those who are
in possession of office and domination of power are thought to need
friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the
opportunity of beneficence which is exercised chiefly and in its most
laudable form towards friends? Or how could prosperity be guarded
without friends. . . . And in poverty and other misfortunes men think
friends are the only refuge. (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII)
I shall discuss sociability below but before I do so, I would like to
make it clear that we have other properties too, many of them negative. We
can be competitive and aggressive. We are capable of envy and cruelty.
72
However, as Mary Midgley has pointed out in Beast and Man, no one
property is enough to define or explain a species. There may be a cluster of
properties that constitute that nature.
6
These properties, or "passions" as
Hume calls them, are manifold. Anger, hatred and greed, to name a few, are
as much part of our nature as kindness and selflessness are. Most of these
are contingent upon circumstances such as scarcity, deprivation and
insecurity. But sociability is not contingent on any circumstance. It is sui
generis. Our interdependence is abiding, even as forms of economic and
social organization become more complex. Under circumstances of plenty,
interdependence is what makes life and human flourishing possible. In
times of great collective distress, we help each other. The response to the
Asian tsunami of 2005 attests to this.
A similar point was made by the nineteenth-century thinker Peter
Kropotkin in Mutual Aid, A Factor in Evolution (1902). Throughout the
nineteenth century, in England and in France particularly, the movement
known as 'social-Darwinism' chose to emphasize the ‘struggle for life’
aspect of our nature as a species, with a clear political agenda in mind. The
most notable proponent of such a view was T.N. Huxley. His 1888 essay,
"The Struggle for Existence" appeared in the London periodical Nineteenth
Century. Huxley, who saw himself as ‘Darwin's Bulldog’ chose, like
Herbert Spencer and others, to pick out a single aspect of Charles Darwin's
theory and map it on to a notion of progress that was the hallmark of the
73
Victorian era. Not only was this a gross misreading of Darwin, but it was
matched by an even more crude attempt to map a similar misreading of
Hobbes on to evolutionary theory. The 'struggle for existence' was a 'law of
nature' and the condition of progress.
7
On this reading of Darwin, the
animal species and savage man were engaged in this bitter competition for
survival and only the fittest would survive. 'Moralist' man, however,
embodied in the civilized Victorian gentleman, had 'evolved’ to a stage
beyond that. The moral and social order of Victorian England represented
the highest stage in evolution:
[S]ociety differs from nature in having a definite moral object;
whence it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man–the
member of society or citizen–necessarily runs counter to that which
the non-ethical man–the primitive savage, or man as a mere member
of the animal kingdom–tends to adopt. The latter fights out the
struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal; the
former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the
struggle.(331)
And it was precisely to counter such views that Peter Kropotkin wrote Mutual Aid.
Kropotkin points out that contrary evidence indicates that all species are capable of
mutual aid. Ethnological studies indicate that this is true of human beings.
Sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life and is not opposed to it:
Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protecting
colours, cunningnesss and endurance to hunger and cold which are
mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making
the individual, or the species, fittest under certain circumstances, we
maintain that under any circumstances sociability is the greatest
advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly or
unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those animals
74
which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of
survival and further evolution[.] (Kropotkin, 55)
The Kropotkin- Huxley debate has resurfaced in the late twentieth
century. Theories such as the one offered by Richard Dawkins in The
Selfish Gene (1976) echo Huxley’s struggle for life account of human
nature and are conflated with ethical and psychological egoism. Dawkins’
work has been influential, both within philosophy and without. J.L. Mackie,
in particular, has found in Dawkins’ theory a biological justification for his
own ethical position. This in turn has led to an acrimonious exchange
between Mackie and Mary Midgley on the question of egoism, with the
latter accusing the former of upholding ‘philosophical’ egoism and the
former denying this.
8
I mention this debate because the error made by the nineteenth
century thinkers has spilled over into the twentieth century debate. In the
nineteenth century, thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and T.H. Huxley
conflated Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” concept with a psychological
egoism they attributed to Hobbes and the theory that emerged became a
justification of social conditions in England and France. The paradigm
became one of egoism and altruism. In the twentieth century, a similar
failure to distinguish between biological egoism and altruism and
psychological egoism and altruism has muddied the waters somewhat. In a
recent essay, the philosopher of science, Elliot Sober has set the matter
75
straight, and has made a clear distinction between the two, although he does
so in the context of the distinction between biological and ‘vernacular’
altruism.
9
The relevance of this debate for my theory of human nature is that a
possible objection could be made that it is in our nature to be selfish, not
sociable. It is my contention that the property of sociability does not stand
opposed to egoism, biological or otherwise. Nor can it be made identical
with altruism. Sociability as I define it, as interdependence, involves
dependence. The self-interest of the individual is dependent on the self-
interest of the species. This interdependence is such that even the most
selfish instinct cannot fulfill itself because the existence of every individual
is contingent on the existence of others. Individual survival is tied up with
the survival of the species. And this is a function of instinct, not motive or
intent.
This interdependence is primarily economic but not exclusively so. The
economic and the social cannot be tidily demarcated. The very fact of producing
involves association with other individuals. In The Descent of Man, Darwin
indicates that man was descended from a social species, like the chimpanzee.
10
Paleo-ethnographic evidence painstakingly put together by John Lubbock in the
nineteenth century indicates that primitive man lived in bands and tribes. The cave
dwellings discovered in the Dordogne valley of France are superimposed like
colonies. The lake-dwellings of Switzerland dating back to the Stone Age similarly
76
attest to the fact that in a more advanced stage of society, human beings lived and
worked together.
11
The more complex forms of social organization that have developed since
prehistoric times have paralleled a complexity in the form of economic activity. As
the division of labor has gradually extended, from the fruit gathering stage to the
pastoral, to settled agriculture, the interdependence between human beings has
increased. In pre-industrial societies, the economic and social spheres were
inextricably linked in a web of complex relations of kinship and cultural
community. This form of social organization, as I have stated (p 66 above), is
usually described by sociologists as Gemeinschaft.
12
With the growth of
industrialism, the economic interdependence becomes greater and more complex.
With advanced capitalism, the flow of capital becomes transnational. The cultural
and social bonds remain within the nation state.
II: Globalization and Interdependence
I would now like to connect the theory of human nature based on the
interdependence of human beings in their productive activity with the
second point I had made earlier regarding interdependence in the sphere of
economic activity. The nature of the economic system today is such that
there is greater integration of economies than in the first half of the
twentieth century. This is what Bernard Williams has in mind when he
alludes to "international commercial society" offering a possible source of
77
toleration in his essay “Toleration, An Impossible Virtue.”(Williams, 1996,
26) This phenomenon is also known as globalization and is the subject of
much controversy. I refer to this phenomenon because today, issues of
pluralism and toleration arise in the context of globalization and increased
migrations of populations. It is worth briefly considering the nature of this
interdependence of economies and the effects that it may have on conflicts
between groups within a given society.
I would like to make it clear that I do not endorse the view that
globalization is an unmixed blessing. It is not only the protesters at Seattle
who question the global economic order because it exacerbates existing
inequalities. The philosopher Thomas Pogge believes that supporters of
globalization such as the Economist erroneously report growth in terms of
gross domestic product (GDP) instead of gross national income (GNI). The
Economist, in response to the Seattle protests, published two charts, one of
which showed that if one considered population size, then the poor also
benefited from growth. Pogge, in a recent article published in Dissent
argues that if one looks at the per capita GNI of the richest and poorest
countries, and the ratio between the two, inequality has increased.
In terms of the more appropriate GNI measure, the developing
countries, and the poorest of them especially, have not participated
proportionately in global economic growth in the globalization
period. In fact the distance between the richest and poorest countries
has more than doubled, to a staggering 122:1 ratio. (“Growth and
Inequality: Understanding Recent Trends,” Dissent, Winter 2008)
78
Pogge believes that the trend of ever increasing global inequality has been
persisting for some time and much more needs to be done to reverse the
trend. No less a person than Nobel Prize winner and former World Bank
director Joseph Stiglitz has acknowledged the negative effects of
globalization. It is not within the scope of this chapter to examine the
arguments in favor of or against globalization. I merely wish to point out
that the global economic order is a fact. The protesters at Seattle may be
right in questioning this order, but as an economic phenomenon, it cannot
be reversed. Efforts are being made to mitigate the negative effects of this
phenomenon and I shall discuss those later when I discuss the Internet in the
next chapter. For the moment, our concern is whether one consequence of
globalization may not be positive, namely its creating a greater
interdependence between people. I shall first explain in what sense it is a
fact that makes human beings interdependent in ways that cultural
allegiances cannot reverse. Neither proponents nor opponents of this
phenomenon would disagree that it is a fact.
The term 'globalization' has been used to describe a variety of
phenomena that are inter-related, but not always in perceptible ways. We
usually mean the spread of the market economy across the globe. The
spread of the market economy does not only mean that such a system
obtains in every country; it also means that market forces tend to be
transnational. There is greater economic integration, not only at a regional
79
level but across countries flung far apart. Raw materials from one country
are assembled in another and the product marketed in yet another country.
Ships built in China reach the scrap-yard in Bangla Desh when they are no
longer sea-worthy. The other aspect of globalization, the revolution in
communications technology serves to facilitate this integration: most
banking and financial transactions are conducted through the Internet. It is
no longer necessary for an industrial or financial enterprise to be located in
a single physical location. Corporate headquarters could be located in one
country and production could take place in another.
This interdependence of economies is accompanied by increased
population migrations. The total figures for world migrants increased from
154, 943,333 in 1990 to 190,633,564 in 2005. Until the mid-twentieth
century, migration has been mainly from Third World countries towards the
affluent countries of the world, Western Europe, North America and
Australia. However, recent studies by Eurostat, the European Union's
statistical agency, indicate that migration within Europe is also on the rise.
In 2005, the European Union (EU-25) had 462 million inhabitants, 389
million (84 percent) of which were either citizens or foreign residents of the
EU-15. The other 73 million were citizens or foreign residents of the 10
new EU Member States. In addition, Spain had the highest figure of
migrants.
80
The United States has traditionally been an immigrant society, and
while efforts are being made to regulate immigration in terms of quotas by
region, it is well-known that most immigrants to the U.S. come from Latin
America. According to the U.S. Census bureau, 53.7 percent of the total
immigrant population to the U.S. were born in Latin America, with 37 % of
the Latin American population born in Central America.
Most migrants bring with them their culture and way of life. In the
first place, they have to deal with a language barrier. In the case of Europe,
many of the migrants are in transit in several countries before they settle in
any one country. Faced with the dominant culture of the host country and
the prospect of learning a new language and adapting to a different way of
life, migrants tend to hold on to their traditional culture. For the cultural
majority of the host country, even if there are existing minorities, the new
ethnocultural groups are often perceived as an alien presence.
One consequence of the new wave of immigration is that countries
that were hitherto nation-states are now becoming immigrant societies. The
United States and Canada have traditionally been countries of immigration.
In these societies, the new wave of immigrants do not pose a serious
cultural challenge. Conflict between existing groups has still not been
resolved. In the case of Canada, where two major ethnic groups pose a
challenge to the very survival of the state, new ethnocultural groups do not
upset the balance.
81
In the case of Europe, matters are different. There is far greater
contact between diverse ethnocultural groups now than before the breakup
of the Soviet Union. The strains of pluralism are today felt as far north as in
Sweden. It is far more difficult for a dominant ethnocultural majority to
accept that their sense of collective identity must accommodate diversity. In
Chapter 4, I shall take up the United Kingdom as a case study. For the
moment, I would like to point out that cultural pluralism is now on the
agenda in many countries where there was, until recently, a dominant
cultural majority.
The intermingling of cultures is perceived as the source of conflict,
usually by the dominant majority. In itself, diversity should not produce
conflict, but more often than not, it does. Usually, the underlying causes of
the conflict have to do with the sharing of resources. The newly immigrant
groups are perceived as being a drain on the taxpayers' money. They are
seen as persons who take away jobs from citizens born in the host country.
They are seen as "illegal aliens."
This, however is a perception. As I shall argue in the case of
immigrants from Latin America, the migrants actually contribute to the
economy and sustain it. My argument is two-pronged. I shall argue that in a
situation of increased diversity, there is an economic interdependence that
eases the strains of pluralism. Secondly I shall argue that with globalization,
there is a tendency towards homogenization. Ethnocultural differences are
82
eroded and with less difference, people have more in common and therefore
there is less cause for strife.
I have stated above (p 75) that with globalization, there is increased
integration. Integration means an interdependence of national economies. In
itself, this would not mean that individuals and groups from diverse
ethnocultural backgrounds would become interdependent. It is the fact that
there are population migrations in the wake of globalization that bring
ethnocultural groups into contact that allows for interdependence.
Interdependence occurs at two levels. One is between ethnocultural groups
as a consequence of globalization. The other is structural. That is to say, even in the
absence of ethnocultural diversity, there is interdependence in the workplace. This
interdependence obtains regardless of the economic architecture. I will call this
form of interdependence the employer/employee relationship. Further, there is also
the interdependence between the businessperson and the client. Both types of
interdependence are subject to market forces under conditions of globalization.
I shall now proceed to show how, in a situation of ethnocultural pluralism,
these market forces tend to reinforce interdependence and hence offer the
possibility of greater toleration and pluralism. I begin with the employer/employee
relationship and show how the law of supply and demand regulates patterns of
employment.
The law of supply and demand was formulated by David Ricardo in the
eighteenth century in The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817).
83
The architecture of the new global economy is infinitely more complex than the
nascent capitalism of Britain. Nonetheless, profit, supply and demand are still the
mainstay of market forces. In the case of transnational corporations, the scale of
operations is such that the market forces cross borders and the pattern of
employment is necessarily transnational. The employer/employee relationship is
impersonal, because no one person is the employer. Corporations such as Google
and Citibank have diversity from the CEO position down to interns. The largest
single shareholder of Citibank is Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia. Its current CEO
is of Indian ethnicity.
I shall therefore focus on interdependence in small enterprises because it is
in these workplaces that tensions based on ethnocultural difference can arise.
Newly arrived immigrants in a country usually seek out communities of the same
ethnicity. These communities are concentrated geographically in ethnic
neighborhoods. Hence the "Little Armenias" and "Thai Towns" of Los Angeles and
a century ago, the "Little Italy" of Manhattan. Although my examples are from the
U.S., similar patterns obtain in other immigrant societies.
13
Most of these
neighborhoods are not very large and are contiguous with other ethnic
communities. Patterns of employment vary according to the length of time a
particular community has lived in the host country. What all of them have in
common is that a number of small businesses flourish that cater to the needs of the
community. These consist of mainly ethnic grocery stores, restaurants, law offices
and the like.
84
Market forces operate on these ethnic communities in a variety of ways.
These small businesses cannot provide employment to all the members of a
particular community. First generation immigrants must go in search of work
where work is available. Since Latino-Americans constitute the largest segment of
immigrants, I shall take them as an example. In the Los Angeles area, the Latino
work force is scattered over most of the region. Newly immigrant Latinos work in a
variety of professions ranging from construction work to farming. They live in
concentrated neighborhoods but commute to work.
If one takes the restaurant business alone, one sees how market forces
strengthen interdependence. A restaurant owner, in order to stay in business, must
keep costs low and maximize profits. Usually this is done by keeping wages as low
as possible. If an employer had a choice between paying someone the minimum
wage and someone who asked for a higher wage, he would opt for the former
choice. Deplorable though it may be, the new immigrants from Latin America are
willing to work for any wage. It is an empirical fact that most restaurants in Los
Angeles employ Latinos as bus-boys and bus girls. This is true even of upscale
restaurants.
The issue here is not whether the employees are legal or illegal. The
employers need the immigrants as much as the immigrant needs employment. And
this where another market force fosters interdependence: no matter what the
ethnocultural background of the owner or the chef, the employer will recruit a
work-force from a population that is available and willing to work at a certain
85
wage. This is why I have cited the law of supply and demand. If there are simply
not enough persons from the owner's own ethnocultural community available for
the job, the owner, in order to survive , must employ someone of another ethnicity.
A similar pattern obtains in the businessperson/clientele relationship. If the
retired senior citizen is too old to walk several blocks to the grocery store of his or
her community and there is a convenience store next door that sells basic goods
like soap and drinking water, the client will be inclined to shop there for non-ethnic
products. If the owner of the ethnic store is losing business because of ethnic
considerations, he will try and expand his clientele and his range of products.
Along with the ethnic products, the owner may be obliged to sell products that will
draw clientele from other communities. In the case of convenience and corner
stores, the owners will sell what persons from any community are likely to need:
snacks, drinks. tinned foods, household goods and lottery tickets.
The upshot of the foregoing is that market forces oblige ethnocultural
groups to interact in the economic sphere because they are interdependent. A
community may be able to survive as an ethnocultural group without intermingling
with others, but it cannot sustain itself economically without contact with others. In
itself this interdependence is not a sufficient guarantee of pluralism and toleration. I
will show however in what way it is a necessary condition.
I turn again to the case of Latino immigrants because this example
instantiates the argument thus far. On May 1, 2006, about half a million people
took to the streets in Los Angeles as a part of a nation-wide rally under the banner
86
"Day without an Immigrant". This was not the traditional May Day rally that is
held all over the world. The specific aim was to demand immigration rights for
undocumented aliens and the show of strength was to demonstrate how important
immigrants were for the economy. Most businesses and restaurants employing
immigrants were closed and according to the New York Times, 70% of the goods
were not transported in the Long Beach area because truckers did not turn up for
work. While estimates of how the economy was affected vary, the fact that half a
million people turned up in a show of solidarity in Los Angeles and another
400,000 in Chicago indicates that the economic interdependence translates into
social solidarity.
I cite this case not to highlight the purpose of the march - immigrant rights -
but to indicate that interdependence is very much a fact. Bankers in three-piece
suits and ministers in collars emerged from their high-rise offices and their
churches to endorse support for the rally. Furthermore, the House of
Representatives had just passed a bill which made it a felony to be an illegal
immigrant in the country or to aid one. On this account, virtually all the private
employers, in Los Angeles at least, would be felons, in the same way that the
undocumented immigrants are "illegal."
Thus, nominal issues apart, what is significant is the recognition across the
ethnocultural divide that the interdependence is overriding. Bankers would not
endorse a rally such as this if they did not recognize market forces for what they
are. If it were materially possible for a Korean bank to hire only Koreans, including
87
in janitorial positions, it may just be the case that the management would follow
such a policy. A variety of forces act against an exclusionist policy. The
recognition of this fact is what constitutes the necessary condition. The May 1 2006
rally may have translated into social solidarity, but this could well be a transitory
phenomenon. It is in this sense that interdependence in the workplace is a necessary
but not a sufficient condition for stable pluralism.
III: Homogenization
That sufficient condition may be found in the fact that globalization has a
tendency towards homogenization. This stems from the nature of capital.
Industrialism means above all large scale production and production in series. This
has been captured best by Charles Chaplin in Modern Times. Scale requires
uniformity. Since the number of objects produced - be it automobiles, shoes, any
industrial product - is vast, they must be duplicated. Every model of a particular
automobile looks the same.
Prior to the advent of globalization, large scale industrial production
was possible without any significant impact on a given national culture.
This is most discernible in the matter of language. I define “ethnocultural”
as subsuming language. Most of the 'strong' varieties of ethnocultural
nationalism tend to be weighted in favor of religion and ethnicity. Language
tends to accompany these. Most nations or nationalists are proud of their
language. Thus, a country like France could function as an industrial
88
economy, engage in trade with other countries without other cultures
impinging on the French national culture. At the most, a foreign language
like English would make its presence felt at the margins.
With globalization, the tendency towards homogenization extends from the
economic to the cultural sphere. Again, this is most noticeable in the case of
language. A UNESCO expert recently estimated that the world's 6700 languages
would be halved in a decade and that another 3000 were endangered.
14
English is
emerging as the lingua franca. France and the French-speaking world are
concerned about what they perceive as a trend towards American monolinguism.
While such concerns are understandable, it would be a mistake to view this
phenomenon as cultural imperialism. It is true that there are lobbies in the English-
speaking world that seek to promote English as a global language, but conscious
promotion of a language alone cannot explain why one language is more widely
spoken than another. It must also be remembered that the smaller languages that are
in danger of disappearing are being superseded by other regional languages.
Contrary to Francophone fears, English is not the most widely spoken
language in the world. Estimates vary but Mandarin has the largest number of
native speakers, with Hindustani or Spanish coming second, depending on the
source. English is in the third position. Many factors contribute to one language
being the most widely spoken, demography being a major consideration, as in the
case of Mandarin. Demography also explains why Hindustani or Spanish have a
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greater number of native speakers than English. However, English heads the list as
a second language.
As David Crystal, the world expert on English, has pointed out, the number
of speakers do not account for why one language is the global language. It has to do
with "who those speakers are." He states emphatically:
There is the closest of links between language dominance and cultural
power . . . Without a strong power-base, whether political, military or
economic, no language can make progress as an international medium of
communication. ( Crystal, English as Global Language, p 5)
There are historical reasons for the spread of English, British colonialism and the
economic might of the United States being the major ones. Multiculturalists and
nationalists alike, especially Francophones, would cite these historical factors as
part of an argument about cultural imperialism.
However, there are other reasons for the current trend. Just as I have argued
that, despite its negative effects, globalization is a fact, so too must one see the
trend towards English being the preferred second language as a fact. It may not be
neutral in its effects but it is in its aims, because it has none.
15
Globalization is an
aggregate effect of multiple agents’ local choices. The transnational character of
globalization requires a language that will facilitate communication. English serves
that purpose, although, as Crystal has pointed out English is not a language that
lends itself easily to the function of a lingua franca. It could as well have been
Spanish, but it happens to be English.
16
The point I wish to stress is that there is a trend towards homogenization
and the spread of English as a second language reflects that trend. Cultural
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homogenization takes several forms though. Another sphere where the
homogenization is very palpable is in the entertainment industry. Multiculturalists
would argue that this is yet another instance of Anglo-American cultural
imperialism. In France, there have been grave concerns over the impact of
Hollywood films and considerable efforts have been made to preserve French
cinema. There is some basis for these fears in terms of the film industry's need for
international box office revenue. There is also the ideological content that could
justify charges of cultural imperialism. I shall therefore focus on music and MTV
because here, the homogenization is cross-cultural and cannot quite be construed as
imperialism.
The genre of popular music known as "Hip-hop" has its origins in
Jamaica in the 1960s. In the 1970s, it surfaced in New York with the
Jamaican rapper Kool DJ Herc popularizing it in the Bronx. It was initially
known as "rap." "Rap" is the isolation of the break-beat and refers to the
lyrics. For reasons of convenience I refer to this genre as Hip-hop. In the
1980s, the genre spread through the United States and a little later, to
different parts of the world. In the 1990s, it had reached countries as far
apart as Sweden, Tanzania and Japan.
The significance of the spread of the genre is that it best instantiates the
tendency towards homogenization in multiple directions. It is true that in the 1960s
and 1970s rock music was extremely popular the world over. Furthermore it was
the province of the famous Anglo-American rock stars who sang in English. The
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music did not affect the indigenous popular music. Today, Hip-hop is sung in
French in France, in Japanese in Japan and in the national language of each of the
70-odd countries where it has taken root. This is not all. Major Hip-hop artists have
drawn on other musical traditions, such Indian music and incorporated them into
the American version. Indian hip-hop artists use traditional instruments to create
their own variety of the genre.
The example of Hip-hop is not trivial. The cross-cultural flow is of extreme
importance. Just as the market economy may have originated in the West and
spread the world over, a similar phenomenon may be observed. Music that
originated in Jamaica has spread via New York to Beijing. Why a particular genre
is more popular than another is no more explicable than the question of why a
particular ethnocultural group speaks a particular language and has certain customs
in the matter of ritual, cuisine and dress. The important point to note is that the
argument from cultural embeddedness does not wash here. Conspiracy theory
cannot explain this cross cultural phenomenon. If one listens to contemporary
popular music other than Hip-hop, one can sense strains of Central Asian music
along with more traditional Afro-Caribbean rhythms. More importantly, almost all
contemporary music has an electronic component, with most young musicians
actually composing their work on computers. Multiculturalists may argue that
media manipulation and aggressive marketing have "brainwashed" a younger
generation into listening to MTV and acquiring tastes alien to their culture.
Brainwashing cannot explain the cross-cultural nature of the trend.
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I argue that the opposite is true. Cultural embeddedness is a function of
coercion. I have said above (p 66) that Gemeinschaft has its cruelties. I would like
to draw attention to an important aspect of Gemeinschaft that is overlooked by
those who seek protection for minority cultures. The observations I make are about
the concept of community and not directed at any particular group or culture.
Inherent in the concept of an organic bond is the idea that it is
something binding and indissoluble. The organic is associated with what is
natural. What is rarely discussed is the coercive nature of the bond. If the
individual does not exist outside the community, it is also because she has
no choice. The idea of choice and individual freedom is again associated
with Western values, with the social contract. If for a moment one sets aside
the provenance of the politics of equal respect, and one simply examines the
idea of Gemeinshaft, certain difficulties emerge.
It is well known that every community has its system of cultural
practices and rituals. But it also has its system of crime and punishment.
Failure to conform to these laws leads to retribution in some sense -
exclusion or often, some ritual punishment that would include the use of
force. Thus much of the strength of the organic social bond does depend on
the community's ability to make those ties binding. No doubt the closeness
of family ties, the connectedness with the wider family and community
attach a person to those ways of life. Yet, any attempt to choose a different
way of life invites quick retribution.
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The other feature of community that escapes scrutiny is its
hierarchical nature. Perhaps in some remote tribe in the Amazon there is a
more or less egalitarian way of life. However, most of the cultural groups
demanding group rights in contemporary liberal democracies are extremely
hierarchically structured. On a group rights model, such hierarchies would
go unquestioned. There is some basis here for Brian Barry's severe criticism
of multiculturalism.
I do not however endorse Barry's defense of the Enlightenment
model. As I have said, a paradigm shift is needed. My argument is from
homogenization. Traditionalists may rue the erosion of traditional culture. It
may be odd that an Asian person streaks his hair blond or magenta but, he
does so as an act of defiance. The youth of today may favor what one writer
has described as the "pop cosmopolitanism" and wear the same designer
labels and speak into the same brand of cell-phones. The fact is that in one
generation, the idea of culture can be, is being, modified. The same
individual may actually speak her native tongue and have a preference for
her native cuisine, but she shares with individuals of a different ethnicity the
willingness to experiment and taste of other cultures. It is my contention
that cultural differences are eroded with greater cross-cultural exchange.
The combined effect of greater diversity in the work-place, educational
institutions and the like, and the trend towards homogenization can ease the
strains of pluralism.
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There is also the fact of mixed marriages. A child born of a mixed
marriage might not opt for either of the parents' ethnocultural identity. That
child may choose a spouse of another ethnocultural origin. The common
language spoken may be English. Thus this tendency towards
homogenization levels difference. In one generation, ethnocultural identity
is modified and the sources of strife and intolerance dry up considerably.
The chief medium for this homogenization is of course the Internet.
Although MTV predates the Internet by a decade or so, and in a sense has
paved the way for cross-cultural homogenization, today even MTV is
mediated by the Internet. While television still has its grip on audiences,
films are now being watched on the Internet. Music and film clips can be
downloaded in seconds and access to these is not limited by any time-frame,
as it is with television. A television channel may replay programmes and the
number of channels can increase but television cannot match the Internet in
scale. The sheer volume of traffic on the "information superhighway" has
made it the ideal vehicle for cultural diffusion.
I have mentioned the cell phone above in terms of brand names. The
technological revolution is such that now, the cell-phone becomes the
ultimate medium of communication. It combines voice, text and e-mail. In
the next chapter I shall study the Internet as a new kind of public sphere and
discuss the cell-phone in that context. Thus far, I have argued that the
Internet facilitates homogenization. In Chapter 3, in my discussion of the
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Internet, I shall ask whether it may not also promote tribalism. As a public
sphere, it may also serve as a means of reinforcing attitudes of intolerance. I
shall argue however that there are certain intrinsic features of the Internet
that neutralize efforts to use it to promote bigotry.
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Chapter 3 Endnotes
1. Alexander Ossipov, "Some Doubts about Ethnocultural Justice" in Will
Kymlicka’s Can Liberal Pluralism be exported?
2. The title of his work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, has been translated as
Community and Civil Society. Tönnies, writing in the late nineteenth century,
witnessed the disintegration of organic communities with the rise of industrialism.
"In Gemeinschaft, [people] stay together in spite of everything that separates them;
in Gesellschaft they remain separate in spite of everything that unites them." (p 52)
Throughout the nineteenth century, there were fears in Europe of the growing
individualism that accompanied large-scale industrial production. Tönnies'
diagnosis seemed to confirm the worst fears. Similar fears seem to underlie the
multiculturalist position.
3. Thus, in the Indian sub-continent, arranged marriages are the norm. Culture is
preserved through endogamy. There is also the case of the Native Americans, cited
by Kymlicka.
4. Sociologists, psychologists and Existentialists, says Midgley, tend to hold
such a view: “According to the Blank Paper view, man is entirely the
product of his culture. He starts off infinitely plastic, and is formed
completely by the society in which he grows up. There is then no end to the
possible variations among cultures; what we take to be human instincts are
just the deep-dug prejudices of our own society. Forming families, fearing
the dark, jumping at the sight of a spider are just the results of our
conditioning. Existentialism at first appears a very different standpoint,
because the Existentialist asserts man's freedom and will not let him call
himself the product of anything. (Beast and Man, 23)Nonetheless, she adds,
the notion of the human condition and the primacy of freedom oblige the
Existentialist to adopt the Blank Paper view, albeit from the other side.
Midgley cites Sartre: ' there is no human nature . . . Man first of all exists,
encounters himself, surges up in the world, and defines himself afterwards. .
. . to begin with, he is nothing.' (24)
5. "But above all we must avoid conceiving of society again as a fixed
abstract thing opposed to the individual. The individual is the social being.
His life, therefore, even when it’s not manifested in a directly communal
way or as or as accomplished in common with others, is a manifestation and
confirmation of social life. Man's individual life and species-life are not
different[.] "(Early Political Writings, 81)
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6. She makes this point in her discussion of differentia (Midgley, p.198)
7. In a famous passage, Huxley writes: "From the point of view of the
moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator’s show.
The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight – whereby the
strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The
spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given."
(Huxley, 330)
8. This polemic was conducted in an article “Gene-juggling” published in the Royal
Philosophical Society’s journal.
9. “Vernacular” egoism is the common-sense psychological use of the term. In
biology, egoism has a more technical sense.
10. The Descent of Man, Chapter II, pp 63-64/67
11. Lubbock, J, Prehistoric Times, (p 232, 242)
12. Tönnies, F. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1875. Community and Civil
Society, 2001.
13. In Paris, Belleville, the traditional North African Jewish quarter dating from the
19th century, now has a new Chinese immigrant community on its lower reaches.
The Chinese run grocery and convenience stores. The Jewish still have their
restaurants with traditional north African cuisine.
14. UNESCO has decided to make "2008 the Year of the Mother Tongue"
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-
URL_ID=41781&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
15. I have borrowed this distinction made by John Rawls in Political Liberalism to
draw attention to the multiculturalist and francophone propensity to view cultural
phenomena as a function of motive.
16. Crystal believes that English was in the right place and the right time. British
political imperialism and American economic supremacy account for English
being the linguafranca. English as a Global Language. p 8
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Chapter 4: The Internet and the Limits of Tribalism
Having argued that globalization leads to greater interdependence, and
therefore, the possibility of greater toleration, I will now consider whether the
opposite phenomenon may not occur. In this chapter I will examine the dialectic
between the tendency towards homogenization on the one hand and the rise of
tribalism on the other, as a consequence of globalization. In the previous chapter, I
have drawn attention to the fact that political theorists have observed that with
economic integration, there is an increase in calls for ethnic and linguistic
recognition. I have argued that the rise of ethnonationalism in Europe is due to
certain factors such the break-up of the Soviet system. The brutal suppression of
nationalism in the various countries that made up the Soviet Union and its satellites
merely served to put the lid on latent nationalist sentiments. With the collapse of
the centralized state structure, ethnonationalism came to the fore in the early 1990s.
This resurgence of ethnonationalism, a term coined by Walker Connor, (Connor,
1994) has been called the New Tribalism. Tribalism in this sense is a metaphorical
term. The phenomenon in question is one of nationalism, a twentieth century
variant of classical nineteenth century vintage.
I would like to define tribalism in a more precise sense. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines tribalism as 1) the condition of existing as a separate tribe and 2)
loyalty to a particular tribe. The term “tribalism’ was first used in the Edinburgh
Review to characterize Celtic nationalism. Curiously, it was opposed to nationalism
of a broader kind, the allegiance to the United Kingdom.
1
Tribalism, taken in the
second sense, is at the core of nationalism. Walker Connor and Ernest Gellner have
separately insisted that the subjective sense of loyalty and identity with an
ethnocultural group is what constitutes nationalism, and not the mere contingent
fact of two or more persons having a shared history or culture.
2
I allude to this
definition because I would like to mark off ethnonationalism from tribalism within
a given pluralist society. Ethnonationalism is usually accompanied by a call for
self-determination and recognition as a geo-political entity. My discussion of
tribalism extends to groups who do not claim territorial sovereignty.
I define tribalism as the attempt to maintain a ‘distinct’ and often fictive
social identity based on any one of the following criteria: shared ethnic, linguistic,
religious or secular beliefs. The most notable example of the fictive nature of
identity can be found in the official ideology of the French Third Republic. “Nos
ancêtres, les Gaulois” was a refrain that was introduced in the school curriculum in
the aftermath of the 1871 Paris Commune and the humiliation of watching
Bismarck crown himself Emperor at Versailles.
3
Whether we consider classical nationalism or the demands for self-
determination across the globe today, there is a kind of symmetry between shared
identity and geopolitical location. There is, however, another kind of tribalism
where allegiance to the group identity does not require national borders. It is
transnational in character although the same criteria I have laid out above apply.
There is also an ideological component involved. In itself, this should mean no
more than the fact that additional criteria are involved in the definition of identity.
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100
However, the ideological component often entails exclusion of other ethnocultural
groups, often with calls for their elimination. I shall call this form of tribalism
‘extreme tribalism.’ The neo-Nazi groups of Europe and the United States are
examples of this variant of tribalism. Race and/or religion are usually the basis of
the shared identity, and these lead to an entente beyond borders.
There is a third type of tribalism that neither demands statehood nor does it
seek to expand membership. It merely wishes to maintain its 'distinct' identity
within an existing society and wishes to do so by isolating itself from the larger
society. I call this variant ‘isolationist tribalism.’ The Amish community of North
America are an example of this form of tribalism, where the same criteria apply but
the aim is neither to have a political entity that will promote the 'distinct' identity
nor to exclude other ethnocultural groups from the existing political entity.
I shall focus on the extremist and isolationist variants of tribalism since our
concern here is with toleration and pluralism within a given society. Elements of a
fictive history and past are present in most forms of tribalism and the desire for
social identity is perhaps understandable and ought to be innocuous. Unfortunately
it is not usually the case. This is because most tribal allegiances involve a claim to
superiority. Intolerance requires the Other. The Other is inferior, the Other must be
eliminated. The fear is that the Other will dominate me. The existence of the Other
threatens my existence, our existence as an ethnocultural or religious group. When
this mode of thinking is translated into calls for action, we have the extremist
version, most manifest in the ideology of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and neo-Nazi
groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
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The question now arises, whether the communications revolution that has
accompanied globalization can facilitate such tribalism. Prior to the advent of the
Internet, such groups relied on conventional media. Now, they host websites where
they are able to propagate their ideology. In Chapter 3 I argued that globalization
brings in its wake homogenization. For tribalism to manifest itself in cyberspace,
the Internet must offer an expanded shared public space. If the Internet is to allow
for both tribalism and homogenization, it must constitute a new kind of public
sphere. I shall attempt to describe this space in the context of the larger debate on
the public sphere. I begin by discussing the concept of the public sphere. I then
argue, against recent views offered by neo-Kantian theorists, that there are certain
intrinsic features of the Internet that make it constitute a different kind of public
sphere. Its easy accessibility facilitates tribalism initially. However certain other
features defeat such use of the Internet. Those features demand openness and
reciprocity. I conclude by showing how those agents who act on the principle of
reciprocity can avail of cyberspace to pursue their goals.
I: The Public Sphere
The concept of the public sphere came to the fore with the publication in
English of Jurgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in
1989. In that work, written several decades earlier, Habermas argues that certain
social changes in Europe in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries allowed for
the possibility of a bourgeois public sphere in which private individuals could come
together and engage in rational debate on matters of mutual interest. What began as
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literary and artistic debate soon evolved into political discourse. From the literary
salon there emerged the Jacobin clubs. The new space that was created thus
mediated relations between the state and the individual. According to Habermas, in
the twentieth century, however, with the rise of the welfare state, the lines between
the state and society were blurred. The state intervened directly in the lives of
individuals and public discourse was replaced by political interest groups lobbying
within state structures. (Habermas, 1989, p 176)
Habermas has been criticized for, among other things, idealizing rational
discourse and not taking sufficient account of the repressive origins of state
institutions. The historian Geoff Eley, for instance, remarks that
by using a model of communicative rationality to mark the rise of liberalism
and the constitutionalizing of arbitrary authority and by stressing the
transition to a more interventionist state under advanced capitalism, he
strongly implies a weak state during the classical public sphere's period of
initial formation." (Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures,” 321).
Eley affirms that it was not so, and cites the case of eighteenth century Britain,
where the rise of parliamentary liberty and the rule of law were inseparable from
the attack on popular liberties. The ambiguities of the liberal position can only be
grasped by extending the idea of the public sphere to the larger public domain, to
include subaltern groups who not only submit to authority but contest and modify
the terms of its legitimacy.
4
In response to such criticism, Habermas has modified his theory to extend
the idea of the public sphere to include a plebian public sphere. This plebian public
sphere is in collision with the dominant bourgeois public sphere. The bourgeois
public sphere is no longer the model today. Instead, "the modern public sphere
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comprises several arenas in which, through printed materials dealing with matters
of culture, information, and entertainment, a conflict is fought out more or less
discursively.” He concedes that the mass media has played an important role in
restructuring the public sphere and that a political public sphere needs more than
the institutional guarantees of the constitutional state. (Habermas, “Further
Reflections on the Public Sphere,” 453). Civil society now has a larger political
impact through the mass media. He ends his reflection with a question for which he
says he does not quite have the answer:
This is the question of whether, and to what extent, a public sphere
dominated by the mass media provides a realistic chance for the members
of civil society, in their competition with the political and economic
invaders' media power, to bring about changes in the spectrum of values,
topics, and reasons channeled by external influences, to open it up in an
innovative way, and to screen it critically. (455)
Part of my attempt in this chapter is to answer this question. I argue that global civil
society does indeed open up the public sphere. Before I do so, I would like to
consider more recent work on the public sphere that has tried to bring new
perspectives on the question.
In the collection of essays After Habermas (2004), various thinkers have
tried to advance the discourse beyond Habermas. James Bohman in particular
believes that the notions of the public sphere, publics and public reason need to be
re-defined in light of the fact that today the Internet plays a major role in our lives.
In “Expanding Dialogue,” Bohman develops the Habermasian idea of the
pluralization of the public sphere further. He allows for the possibility of many
publics and overlapping public spheres. There are not only many national public
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spheres but publics may be constituted by a city's institutions and these may
overlap with others. He sees the Internet as “a public of publics.” Bohman’s main
claim is that the Internet cannot support a public sphere based on any “intrinsic”
features. By “intrinsic” he means the technology, its speed and scale. He follows
Habermas in postulating rational and deliberative communicative action as a
precondition for the Internet constituting a public sphere. “Rather than simply
entering into an existing public sphere, the Internet becomes a public sphere only
through agents who engage in reflexive and democratic activity.” (140)
Such a view implies that the Internet is like some kind of Turing machine
that has an input, a state and an output. The input consists of the ‘reflexive and
democratic activity’ of agents, the state the intrinsic features of the Internet, and the
output the public sphere. I believe that Bohman follows Habermas in over-
emphasizing the role of communicative rationality. By making the agents’
‘reflexive and democratic’ input an exclusive precondition for the Internet to
constitute a public sphere, Bohman ignores the undemocratic input that still allows
the Internet to become a public sphere.
I believe that this precondition is far too optimistic. The question whether
the Internet facilitates tribalism arises precisely because it offers a public space that
both types of agents, democratic and undemocratic, can avail of. It is not just a
piece of electronic plumbing. It is not just the "public of publics," it is also the
"public of the private." Salons and clubs are inclusive of some and exclusive of
others, as contemporary associations are. The Internet cannot exclude, but the
Intranet can. I shall use the term cyberspace to subsume both.
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The Internet constitutes a different kind of public sphere because of its
intrinsic features. By intrinsic I mean those features that are a product of the
technological character of the medium. These very features, transparency,
accessibility, and interactive connectivity do not facilitate tribalism. While the
extremist variant of tribalism may derive some kind of initial publicity, it also faces
exposure because of the built-in transparency of the medium. I shall discuss these
in Section III. I would first like to discuss the Intranet, since this type of network
can indeed facilitate tribalism.
II: The Intranet
When we think of the Internet, we usually mean the World-Wide-Web.
There is however one kind of network that is not part of the World-Wide-Web.
This is known as the Intranet. It is a private network with its own server and is
usually associated with institutions, educational establishments, banks, hospitals
and the like. This network requires membership, a password and therefore
nominally functions like a conventional association. And yet the Intranet occupies
cyberspace, which is essentially public. In this sense it is the public of the private.
The Intranet, as I have noted, is a closed institutional system with accessibility open
only to the members of the institutions. Most such Intranet systems require a server.
There is also the Listserve which is a software that is basically a sophisticated e-
mail list. This could be used by any organization which does not have a server and
does not require a physical location.
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Listserve would then be an ideal vehicle for extremist groups to carry on
secretive activities. However, even such software is vulnerable to exposure. The
case I am about to cite looks nominally like a turf war, but is illustrative of the
intrinsic nature of the technology. A group of Turkish extremist hackers, operating
mainly out of Scandinavia would regularly hack into Swedish websites largely as a
reaction to cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad being posted on those websites.
They would then boast about their success on the website of a Turkish Forum
called Ayyildiz. A Swedish online newspaper, The Local, reported in October
2007 that Swedish hackers broke into the database of Ayyildiz and posted a
comment on the Flashback forum revealing thousands of names on the Ayyildiz
Listserve. They also broke into thousands of e-mails and MSN addresses and
published these as well. The Local reported that Ayyildiz was temporarily put out
of service.
This kind of turf war is described as "hackerism" by information
technologists. The ethics of hacking is open to question. The term came into being
in the 1960s when a software specialist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence unit was
asked to overcome a technical obstacle that computer engineers were facing. The
specialist, Richard Stallman, said he had to “hack” through the problem. Within
information technology, the term is more or less synonymous with designing
software. However, since the invention of the personal computer and the Internet,
anyone familiar with the technology can “hack” or design software. The term has
acquired pejorative connotations today, because individuals with unusual computer
skills regularly ‘hack’ into computer systems and vandalize networks, including
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bank and government databases. Thus “hacking” understood in the sense of
manipulating software is an intrinsic feature of the medium. Elaborate anti-virus
programs have been initiated to off-set the vandalism that is currently prevalent.
I cite this particular case to indicate that even a program like Listserve
which would facilitate the activities of extremist groups is vulnerable, though the
Swedish hackers who retaliated were themselves extremist. The substantive
question here is of secrecy. Those who wish to remain anonymous cannot do so on
the Internet, for the technology is such that even closed systems are vulnerable.
Apart from the turf war I have cited, governments themselves are engaged in
penetrating networks. In Germany, for instance, where hacking is a crime, the
government recently proposed measures that would enable it penetrate the
computers of suspected terrorists. Human rights activists were outraged and feared
a return to Stasi times. Stasi was the secret police in the former Communist East
Germany.
5
The question of Internet censorship is fraught with controversy. Human
rights groups are against censorship while governments increasingly engage in
electronic surveillance. The point I wish to make is that even the Intranet and
Listserve can facilitate tribalism only to a limited extent. By virtue of occupying
cyberspace, they render public what is sought to be kept private.
III: The Public of Publics
I turn now to the Internet, the “public of the publics.” The thrust of my
argument is that the intrinsic features of the medium make it qualitatively different
from conventional media. As one writer has put it, most developments in media
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result in either more information being accessible, or allowing a larger number of
people having access to existing information. (Rodgers, 2003) With the Internet,
both trends converge to produce a synergistic effect. and constitute its first feature,
its easy accessibility. This easy accessibility then entails transparency. There are
other features too, and I shall discuss these in order. As a word of caution, I would
like to clarify that many of the intrinsic features have negative effects in the realm
of arts, humanities and education. In the matter of buying and selling and “pop-
ups,” Habermas’ phrase, “the political and economic invaders’ media power” is
most apt. In the matter of tribalism however, the Internet is constituted in such a
way that it requires openness and reciprocity. It is socially constructed. Its
transnational character makes it even more so. Communication is now global and is
not constrained by national barriers.
In my discussion of the Intranet, I have shown how it can facilitate
tribalism, the question now arises can the Internet do so? The Internet is accessible
in more than one sense. Not only is more information available for more people,
but also more people can post information on the Net and advertise themselves.
Thus hate-groups and the more extreme variants of tribalism could gain publicity to
which they might otherwise not have access. The Ku Klux Klan in fact openly says
so on its web-site.
I have made a distinction between two forms of tribalism. I would like to
differentiate further between the two. The isolationist kind would in principle be of
a non-expansionist nature. The Amish community in North America would belong
to this category. The Amish wish to preserve their distinct identity. They wish to
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preserve their way of life and their values in a closed community. They do not
proselytize. The other, extremist kind, seeks to increase adherents to a particular
ideology or culture. This kind is expansionist. I shall examine the different ways in
which such groups make use of the Internet to achieve their goals and ask whether
they are successful in their enterprise. Since the Amish are a special case, I will
consider the extremist groups first.
As is well known, in the United States there are several anti-Semitic, neo-
Nazi and white supremacist groups who believe that the United States is or should
be a white Christian nation. Historically, these groups, the Ku Klux Klan in
particular, are known to have engaged in incitement to hate-crimes against Jews,
Catholics and African-Americans. More recently, other minorities such as Hispanic
immigrants and gay rights activists have been targeted. While the specific stated
goals vary in the details, the aim appears to be to “take back America” and achieve
political power. Prior to the invention of the Internet, such groups would have used
conventional means of communication such as the telephone or the postal system to
stay in touch with members. If the groups wished to expand membership and reach
out to like-minded persons, they would have relied on print technology. Now, with
the Internet, they are able to deploy a multimedia strategy. These groups have
websites which they use for propaganda purposes and to disseminate their
ideology.
The easy accessibility would mean at the very least that these groups can
reach out to a wider audience. The other feature, the transnational character of the
Internet, would allow such groups to link up with like-minded groups the world
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over. Stormfront, which claims to be the largest “world-wide White Pride” website
has links in several countries in Europe. In the case of the German neo-Nazi
websites that were banned recently, Stormfront.com was one of the websites cited
and it was found that the websites originated in Ohio.
6
On the face of it then, the Internet facilitates this kind of tribalism.
However, these initial gains in publicity actually make such groups vulnerable. I
argue that the Internet does not facilitate tribalism but integration. This is because it
is the Internet. My argument turns on the Internet constituting a new kind of public
space. There are several correctives built into the intrinsic features of the Internet
that neutralize attempts at propagating tribalism. One of these is the fact that the
very accessibility of these web-sites also increases their visibility. Most extremist
groups need secrecy for fear of a clamp-down by authorities. In order to incite
hatred, the groups would have to communicate in secret. The FBI had to infiltrate
the Ku Klux Klan in the 1950s and 1960s, and later, skinhead groups, through
individual agents in order to conduct raids and make arrests. If these groups today
rely on the Internet to spread propaganda, they also make themselves more visible
and hence vulnerable to the authorities. The Internet does not facilitate secrecy. It
may be more difficult for governments to impose censorship because of the
procedures involved, but technologically governments have the capacity to track
down hate-groups through their websites and identify the perpetrators. The neo-
Nazis are the object of electronic surveillance on both sides of the Atlantic. It has
now become easier for governments to identify the sources of
intolerance/extremism and then take legal action.
7
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It is not only governments that monitor such websites. The Internet
empowers civil society. It is precisely the use of the Internet by extremist groups
that allows for counter-propaganda to take place. In the United States, the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty and Law Center (SPLC)
monitor hate web-sites and maintain their own websites in which these groups are
listed and profiled. Where earlier the KKK and other hate groups were an elusive
ghostly presence, operating in the dark, now they are visible and can be identified.
In recent years, an increasing number of law suits and claims have been filed
against white supremacist groups and weakened them. According to the ADL,
much of the KKK’s rhetorical claim of increased membership is a smokescreen to
cover up an actual decline in power. Some estimates put the total membership of
the various KKK factions and neo-Nazi groups at a few thousand.
8
There is also the fact that the group in question must, in order to expand
membership, have a blog or a “contact us” address on the web-site. This would,
among other things, enable counter-propaganda to creep in. Or, quite simply, the
FBI or individuals in civil society could simulate affinity and enlist and infiltrate
such groups. Many of the hate-groups are known to use software known as
“Listserve” which are private mailing lists. The ADL says on its website that it is
fairly easy to join such lists. Since the Internet functions in a way that individuals
can maintain anonymity, it would be quite easy to subvert the propaganda of the
hate groups.
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I turn now to the wiki, the one feature of the Internet that requires
transparency in order to be operative. Ultimately it is transparency that is the
undoing of tribalism. I shall take the Wikipedia as a way of instantiating the point
that there is something intrinsic about the Internet that makes it a different kind of
public sphere. The Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, its name being a
synthesis of ‘wiki’, a type of software, and ‘pedia’ from encyclopedia. The wiki is
an interactive software which allows for a collaborative website. Jimmy Wales and
Larry Sanger, editor of the online Nupedia came up with the idea of a wiki which
would allow for a collaborative encyclopedia, the aim of which was neutrality.
9
Since its launch in 2001, the Wikipedia has become one of the most popular online
sources of reference. It has been criticized for many reasons, among others its
inaccuracy, and the fact that it is open to vandalism.
I shall cite the case of the historian Taner Akçam to support my claim that
the Internet does not facilitate intolerance. Taner Akçam is a Turkish historian who
has long called for the Turkish government to acknowledge responsibility for the
Armenian genocide of 1915. He has also opposed the Turkish government’s
policies on human rights in general and had to flee Turkey for Germany in the
1970s. After taking a Ph.D in history from Hanover University and having
published a number of books on Turkish history, Akcam joined the Minnesota
University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies as a visiting professor in
2001.
Early in 2007, Akçam was to give a talk at McGill University on his latest
book, A Shameful Act: Turkish Responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. At
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Montreal airport, however, he was detained for several hours by Canadian
immigration officials and interrogated without being told why he was detained.
Meanwhile, his hosts at McGill contacted him via cell-phone and on being told that
he had been detained without explanation, contacted high-level officials at Ottawa.
Akçam was finally released, but before leaving for McGill, demanded an
explanation. The Canadian immigration official handed him a printout from the
Internet. It was the entry for Akçam’s biography in the Wikipedia. His biography
had been vandalized by anonymous contributors and he had been labeled a terrorist.
According to Akçam, even before the publication of A Shameful Act, he had been
threatened and harassed by various Turkish-American organizations, acting at the
behest of Turkish diplomats. He was constantly harassed during his lecture tour in
the U.S. He had also been vilified on two Turkish websites: “Tall Armenian Tale”
and Turkish Forum. The current entry for Taner Akçam in the Wikipedia has an
account of this incident.
Several conclusions may be drawn from this case. As I have stated earlier,
the easy accessibility of the Internet seemingly allows intolerance to propagate
itself. However, there are self-correcting mechanisms built into the medium. One
person taking away information means another can block erroneous information.
The fact that the incident has been reported in the Wikipedia indicates that
ultimately, the transparency of the medium requires the user to be transparent.
Intolerance excludes that principle.
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In a sense, the Wikipedia mirrors the development of the Internet. The
Internet is socially constructed. The Wikipedia is socially constructed too but it is
the self-conscious expression of that social construction. Anyone who has access to
the web can edit the entries. This gives the public greater control over the flow of
information. Following the incident that I have cited, a number of blogs and articles
were posted on the Net. The vandalism itself was publicized and, the sources of the
vandalism identified.
I have cited this case to underline the fact that if extremists take advantage
of the Internet to garner publicity, they do so at the risk of being identified. It is not
only the Anti-Defamation League that monitors these sites, but the news media and
individual bloggers as well.
IV: Amish.com
I turn now to the other kind of tribalism, the isolationist variant. The Amish
community in North America, as is well known, wish to retain their distinct way of
life as a religious sect. They are an Anabaptist sect that broke away from the
Mennonites in the late 17th century and migrated to North America in the 18th
century. There are several different Amish communities concentrated in the
American Mid-West and Ontario, Canada. They take some of the Scriptural
injunctions literally. St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, had exhorted his
converts to live separately from the unbelievers:
Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there
between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there
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between light and darkness? . . . Therefore come out from them, and be
separate from them, says the Lord and touch nothing unclean; then I will
welcome you[.]" (II Corinthians 6: 14, 17)
The Amish live by these commands in secluded farming communities. Some
Amish are more conservative than others. The Old Order Amish are considered the
most traditional.
The Lancaster County, Pennsylvania home page describes the Amish thus:
The more traditional groups are called 'old order'. They do not permit
electricity or telephones in their homes. By restricting access to television,
radio, and telephones, the Amish are better able to keep the modern world
from intruding into their home life.
Brian Barry, in Culture and Equality has devoted an entire chapter to a
scathing criticism of the Amish and how, in fact they are not so unworldly. On
Barry's view, they relate very much to the world through proxies. My concern here
is whether the Internet facilitates this kind of tribalism, even though it may be
innocuous. There are several web-sites devoted to the Amish with details of their
origins, beliefs and practices. Some of these web-sites describe themselves as
groups committed to defending religious freedom, others as the local county home
page as in the case of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. There are also similar web-
sites for Holmes County, Ohio and each of the counties where the Amish live.
The significance of these web-sites lies less in the fact that they may be run
by proxies than in the fact that most of them function as tourist bureaus. The
websites advertise a large range of Amish goods, from organic foods to furniture
and artifacts. More importantly, they invite non-Amish to visit Amish country, stay
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in Amish country lodges and farms and dine in Amish restaurants. If the Amish
goal is to live away from the world, they have failed singularly. The websites are a
self-proclaimed gateway into the secluded world of the Amish. In other words, the
Amish have been sucked into the market economy of the larger society they
ostensibly shun. Their raison d'être and the basis on which they seek exemptions
such as mandatory schooling has ceased to exist.
The Amish may continue to farm and ride horse-drawn buggies, but their
way of life cannot be sustained without dependence on the market economy and a
non-Amish clientele. Tourism is the clearest indicator of economic and cultural
integration. The Amish.Net website is awash with advertisements including pop-
ups with large headlines such as "Amish.Showroom.com." The site looks like any
other marketplace, using the same technological devices that any Dot.com business
would use.
To sum up my arguments so far: The Internet constitutes a new kind of
public sphere because of certain intrinsic features. While the Intranet may initially
facilitate tribalism, the extremist variety of tribalism cannot use the Internet for
purposes of propaganda, because of the transparency requirement. The Internet is
the Internet. In the case of the isolationist variety, the Internet, because of its
interactive nature, allows for greater contact with the larger world, eroding the
barriers that would otherwise permit hermetically sealed life worlds to persist.
V:The New Cosmopolitanism
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If the Net does not facilitate tribalism of either kind - extremist and
isolationist - because of its intrinsic features, it could facilitate the opposite trend. I
shall now look at those movements and groups on the Internet whose aims require
greater transparency and reciprocity. In the previous chapter, I have discussed
globalization in terms of economic integration. I have shown how the negative
effects of globalization can be offset from within the phenomenon by global
initiatives that seek to reverse these effects. In this section I shall show how the
Internet facilitates such initiatives and how its transnational character fosters a new
kind of cosmopolitanism.
It would be beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a comprehensive list
of organizations that have come together through the Internet to campaign for
global justice. The term ‘global justice’ is used by a range of organizations,
scholars, and academicians to denote several different things, some of which may
be in conflict. On the one hand, we have organizations that take global justice to
include promoting the market economy. At the other end, we have the World Social
Forum, Scottish and European groups who are opposed to the market economy and
draw on their socialist traditions. Even the World Social Forum, which came into
being following the protests in Seattle against the World trade organization summit
in 2000, and probably the largest coalition of its kind, is riven with differences. As
one writer put it:
There are wide political differences within the International Council of the
WSF which involves about 100 organizations. Views range from those who
believe that you can negotiate fair trade and debt cancellation with the
institutions of capitalism to those who present a critique of the entire
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capitalist system and who want to develop alternatives to capitalism.
(Frances Curran, “What happened to the Global Justice Movement?”)
Curran believes that the global justice movement is being co-opted by the British
government through events such as the 2005 Live 8 concerts, with Bob Geldof and
Tony Blair mutually endorsing each other’s initiatives.
It would be out of place to enumerate the spectrum of solutions offered by
each of the advocates of global justice in what is indeed a rainbow coalition. I shall
focus therefore on one umbrella coalition that does not stand at either extreme. In
doing so, I do not mean to present a ‘middle-of-the way’ point of view. Rather it is
to show how this umbrella organization uses all the features of the Internet to bring
about transnational connectivity. Coalitions are usually formed at the national level
and then at the international level. The better known global organizations such as
Amnesty International and Médécins Sans Frontières are transnational in character
but focus on one aspect of global justice. There is, however, one umbrella
organization which more truly forms the “public of publics”. This is the Ethical
Globalization Initiative.
I have described those features of the Internet that require transparency.
There are other features of the Internet, usually not considered significant by
commentators on the Internet, that are conducive to the promotion of a global civil
society. These features are scale and speed. Scale is a requirement for transnational
business corporations, financial institutions and intergovernmental agencies. The
revolution in information technology came about because of this need. There is a
sense in which the Internet has scale that makes it intrinsic to the medium. This is
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its electronic character. Corporations can conduct business on the telephone, and
through the Internet. At some point however, there has to be a physical movement
of persons and goods. I have remarked in Chapter 3, p 76 above, that ships built in
China find their way to scrap yards in Bangla Desh. These ships have to be
physically re-located. The overseeing of such movement requires supervision.
Since billions of dollars are at stake, senior executives must travel to ensure that the
transactions run smoothly. Air travel still flourishes. This implies that the scale
offered by the Internet is not commensurate with the needs of the market economy,
by virtue of its locus.
It is quite otherwise with the Ethical Globalization Initiative. It is an
umbrella organization that brings together various global coalitions, and in this
sense literally constitutes the “public of publics.” Initiated by Mary Robinson,
former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and former President of
Ireland, and co-founded by the Aspen Institutive, Columbia University and the
Geneva-based International Council on Human Rights, its declared aim is manifold
as against the specialized aims of an organization such as Médécins Sans
Frontières.
The function of an umbrella organization is to co-ordinate the actions of its
various constituents. If co-ordination were all, then the conventional telephone
would serve the purpose as well. Conference calls could be arranged, and various
decisions could be made with a consensus. The EGI however, aims to address five
critical issues which it enumerates as 1) fostering more equitable trade and
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development; 2) the human right to health; 3) strengthening efforts at realizaing
and shaping more humane migration policies; 4) encouraging women’s leadership
and 5) influencing corporate social responsibility. It states that: “[o]ur mission is to
put human rights standards at the heart of global governance and policy-making
and to ensure that the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable are addressed on the
global stage.” The EGI has its own projects in these fields in addition to its
coordination work with other agencies that have specialized programs in each of
these areas.
The sense in which the EGI is more than just an umbrella that has
coordination as its function is the same as the one in which the Internet is more
than a “public of publics.” There is a synergistic effect of aim and function in such
an initiative. Specialized organizations such as Amnesty International and
Médécins Sans Frontières may have goals that overlap on the margins. With the
EGI, the manifold aims require coordination with the specialized agencies. And this
is where the Internet proves to be commensurate with such goals.
The other intrinsic feature I have referred to above, speed, manifests itself in
the form of what is known as “Quick Links.” If the quick link were merely a
function of this feature, it would have no particular significance. This is probably
what Bohman has in mind when he says that the Internet cannot constitute a new
kind of public sphere based on its intrinsic features. Hence the distinction he makes
between hardware and software. I suggest that the way in which the EGI has made
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use of the quick link combines two or three features to produce a tool in which
software and hardware are interlocked.
The link is a feature of the Internet that enables the user to drag a URL to a
link bar on the homepage, so that the user may access that website without having
to type in the URL. A Quick Link is used by most websites to send the visitor to
another web page. In the case of corporate organizations, governments and public
service institutions such as the utilities, the quick link usually sends the visitor to
another page on the same website. In the case of news services, television and print
alike, in addition to the internal links there are links to “related” websites. These
links are provided with the disclaimer that the host providing the link is not
responsible for any information or opinion expressed on that website. These are
known as “external” links. In the case of the EGI, however, the distinction between
internal and external is erased. Under an “internal” link on the EGI home page,
there is a Quick Link “Additional Resources” under each of the five issues listed
above. A click on that link sends the visitor to the websites of various coalitions or
organizations that campaign for global justice. Under “Human Rights”, the visitor
has a link to the websites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,
among others. These in turn, send the visitor to websites in at least 72 different
countries. Under Health, the visitors can access various agencies ranging from MSF
to the WHO. Under each category, there are ten to twelve coalitions listed.
The substantive point here is that through an umbrella organization such as
the EGI, one has, through smaller umbrella organizations, instant access to
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websites in at least 72 different countries not to speak of access to the WHO and
the home page of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The erasure of the dividing line between internal and external allows for a
kind of osmosis between hardware and software. The quick link as something
internal functions as a kind of Intranet within the Internet, with this difference:
anyone can access those links once they have accessed the home page. By
providing the external links, the EGI effectively opens out its own home page, and
the quick link is something more than a by-product of speed. Taken with the
transnational character of the Internet, and the openness offered by the easy
accessibility and transparency, these features create a new kind of public sphere.
With one click or two, the user has the globe in her hands, so to speak.
The upshot of the foregoing is that the interaction between hardware and
software is dialectical. The intrinsic features of the Internet lend themselves to a
variety of things. One the one hand, they serve to market products more easily,
especially since the development of the hardware follows from this need. On the
other, they facilitate communication in ways perhaps not foreseen by software
engineers.
In my discussion of extremist groups, I have drawn attention to the fact that
initially, the accessibility of the Internet does provide publicity for groups that
incite hatred and violence. In countries like Germany and France, governmental
controls limit such publicity. In the United States, the First Amendment precludes
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the kind of measures taken by the French and German governments. My argument
appeals to the in-built features of the Internet: the sheer visibility of such sites
allows the Anti-Defamation League to monitor the activities of such groups and
even post information on rallies and meetings.
10
Beyond the visibility, the other
features, such as the blog and the wiki allow for correctives: those who oppose
incitement to hatred can enter the websites in question. These issues are
contentious, because there those who believe that the Wikipedia is not neutral and
others who believe that freedom of expression must be maintained at all costs.
While this debate is ongoing, what is not altered is the equalizing power of the
Internet. Just as I have argued in Chapter 3 that globalization brings with it a
tendency towards homogenization, I argue here that the Internet brings with it a
tendency towards equalization. Attempts at using the Internet to promote the
extremist variety of tribalism are contained by groups who represent the opposite
trend, such as the Anti-Defamation League, and the intrinsic features of the Internet
which facilitate transparency. Attempts to use the Internet to promote tribalism of
the isolationist variety result in the isolation being eroded, thus defeating the
nominal aims to be pursued, as in the case of the Amish.
This is not to paint an over-optimistic picture of what the Internet can
facilitate. The example of the Ethical Globalization Initiative that I have cited
indicates however that the weightage is in favor of such initiatives rather than those
which seek to exclude the Other. Homogenization and equalization have the effect
of neutralizing extremes and tribalism is an extreme when it is founded on
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intolerance. I am not here arguing for the Aristotelian mean. I argue that when
hardware and software combine in a certain way, civil society can open up public
space in new ways. With the Internet, a greater role devolves on global civil
society. Tribalism is constrained by the intrinsic features of the Net and by
conscious initiatives on the part of agents.
For all that I have insisted on the positive effects of homogenization, I do
not suggest that it alone can bring about stable pluralism. In the next chapter, I shall
examine efforts to promote tolerance while maintaining cultural difference. I shall
engage in a case study of U.K. Muslims since many of the issues of toleration and
difference have crystallized recently around two major issues: the 2001 summer
riots and the terrorist attacks on the London transportation system in 2005. Through
an analysis of the various efforts being made to promote understanding and
toleration among communities in a pluralist society such as the U.K., I shall
attempt to strengthen the paradigm I have outlined so far. Homogenization, taken in
conjunction with appeals to common citizenship can provide a basis for a stable
pluralist society.
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Chapter 4 Endnotes
1. The Oxford English Dictionary online entry for “tribalism” defines it as follows:
“a. The condition of existing as a separate tribe or tribes; tribal system,
organization, or relations. 1886 Edin. Rev. Apr. 443 No national life, much less
civilisation, was possible under the system of Celtic tribalism. 1893 GOLDW.
SMITH Ess. 176 National churches have lapsed into something very like tribalism
in this respect [about war]. 1898 Weekly Reg. 29 Oct. 561 Those who have set the
maxims of Christ above those of narrow tribalism.
b. Loyalty to a particular tribe or group of which one is a member.
1955 Times 30 Aug. 9/7 If a stable parliamentary democracy is to be introduced
one stable political party, avoiding if possible the extremes of tribalism and anti-
tribalism, would seem necessary. 1969 Busara (Nairobi) II. II. 56 According to
Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘the chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the
tribal limits of his sense of obligation to the other man’. In tribalism Niebuhr
includes race, language, religion, class and culture as important traits. 1976 Drum
(E. Afr. ed.) Apr. 3/1 Tribalism? Isn't it true that in some firms about 75 per cent of
the employees come from one tribe depending, of course, on which tribe the
bosses come from. 1978 Times Lit. Suppl. 1 Dec. 1390/5 His call for a fusion or
integration of cultures is one that commits him to the course of liberal tolerance,
and sets him against closed systems of thought such as Marxism and tribalism.
2. Ernest Gellner, in his landmark work, Nationalism (1989) affirms that it is the
sense of loyalty and what is owed to another of the same shared culture that
constitutes nationalism, not the fact of having a shared culture itself. Connor makes
a similar point when he emphasizes the subjective factor in national identity.
3. Until the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, French national identity was
primarily Republican. Although the Third Republic was still a republic, Gallic
ancestry became the source of historiography in the hands of Fustel De Coulanges,
Ernest Renan and other conservative thinkers. (Hartog, F. Le Dix-neuvième siècle
et l’histoire.)
4. The English historian E.P. Thompson, in a new approach to
historiography, has undertaken seminal work in this area. Whigs and
Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, his best known work, provides a
detailed analysis of the rise of English capitalism.
5. The Register, an online UK newspaper, in an article “Freedom of
Information or inciting racial hatred?” dated October 2004 reports:
“An administrative court in Germany has upheld a ban on access to Nazi content
targeted at German ISPs based in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The court
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ruled that the cross-border character of the web "cannot undermine powers vested
to the Federal states. . . . Blocking orders were issued in 2001 by the district
government of Dusseldorf to ISPs in North Rhine-Westphalia. The authority
demanded blocking of the domain names nazi-lauck-nsdapao.com and
stormfront.com by domain name or IP address. An online protest forum was
penalized for violating those orders".
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/08/german_web_freedom_case
In a related article, the online Computer Weekly reported that an unidentified ISP
had sought to reverse an order issued by the Düsseldorf district authority
preventing Germany-based ISPs from granting access to foreign servers hosting
neo-Nazi material.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/01/07/207595/german-court-
upholds-web-ban-on-nazi-content.htm
6. cf. note 5 above
7. Reporters Sans Frontières, an organization dedicated to freedom of
information reports on its website that Germany belongs to the US spy
network Echelon: “The media revealed in June 2001 that the government
had allowed the country to become a link in the US Echelon electronic spy
network. The Bavarian daily paper Merkur, citing a US military intelligence
report, said the US base at Bad Aibling (Bavaria) housed one of Echelon’s
biggest European electronic monitoring and interception centres, after the
US base at Menwith Hill, in Britain. It enables the US to spy on e-mails sent
from much of Europe, including all the former Soviet bloc countries.The
revelation caused an outcry because Germany has not signed the UK-USA
agreement setting out the roles of the United States, Britain, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand in the spying system.”
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10678
8. The ADL, on its website “Extremism in America,” writes of the KKK: “Its
impressive presence on the Internet obscured its diminished power and meant to
give the casual observer the impression of a revived, vital and active Klan attracting
members everywhere: “Here are some reasons why we are growing so fast and why
the Klan Movement is the White People's answer...The Klan name and symbol
breaks through the paper curtain of the anti-White media and brings us to the
attention of those who want to learn more about us. . .The Klan is youth oriented. . .
The Klan is worldwide in scope. . .The Klan is surging; it is pulsating forward and
growing with every day and every hour.”
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9. Details of how the Wikipedia evolved can be found in the entry for Jimmy Wales
in the Wikipedia.
10. See the ADL website at:
http://www.adl.org/Learn/Events_2001/events_2003_flashmap.asp
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Chapter 5: Beyond Homogenization: Protecting Difference and Social
Cohesion
In his essay “Toleration: An Impossible Virtue?” Bernard Williams has
suggested various ways in which toleration can be achieved as a practice. He also
concludes that “it will be all the clearer – clearer than it is if one concentrates on
the very special case of the United States – that the practice of toleration has to be
sustained not so much by a pure principle resting on a value of autonomy as by a
wider and more mixed range of resources.” Williams does not spell out what it is
that makes the United States a special case. What comes to mind though is the First
Amendment that marks off the separation of religion and state. There is also the
fact that the United States is an immigrant society and has a long history of
diversity.
Historically, the need for toleration as a practice arose in the wake of the
religious wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe. Locke’s Letter
on Toleration (1689) was the first attempt to theorize the question. In the Letter, he
argues forcefully for a separation of religion and state: “I esteem it above all things
necessary to distinguish the business of civil government and that of religion and to
settle the just bounds between the one and the other.” The framers of the U.S.
Constitution, largely inspired by Locke, laid down in the First Amendment that
Congress should not make any law establishing any religion or prohibiting the free
exercise of religion. This principle enshrines freedom of worship as well as the
separation of religion and state.
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In this chapter, I take up the United Kingdom as a case study on the
question of pluralism. The U.K. experience throws up a number of issues
that intersect with some of the paradoxes that I have discussed earlier. The
first of these issues is that the separation of religion and state is not a
requirement for toleration. What is required is recognition of pluralism as a
fact.
The second issue is that recognition of pluralism alone is not a
sufficient condition. Multiculturalism, wrongly construed, can lead to social
fragmentation. Certain ill-conceived policies aimed at promoting a stable
pluralist society in the 1980s actually had the effect of destabilizing British
society in the next decade.
The third issue is that secularists, liberal and Marxist alike, face a
dilemma in the matter of toleration and pluralism. If they are
uncompromisingly secular, they cannot contribute to the process of building
a stable pluralist society, since many of the ethnocultural groups define
themselves in terms of religious allegiance. This in turn would marginalize
the secularists.
The fourth issue is that if one approaches pluralism in a multi-faceted way,
there is more than one sufficient condition for toleration as a practice. I choose the
U.K. as a case study because the new policy of “community cohesion” exemplifies
an approach that constitutes a sufficient condition for toleration and pluralism
through an appeal to common citizenship. It appeals to common citizenship and
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instantiates my argument that a necessary condition for a stable pluralist society
may be found in our interdependence.
These issues intersect in the cases I discuss. What emerges from the
discussion is that the intractability I have discussed earlier, when manifest
on the ground, leads to an impasse that is confrontationist. If toleration is to
be achieved as a practice, it requires a multi-faceted approach, relying on a
range of resources and in the spirit of Berlin’s value pluralism. If one
accepts that human goals and values are many and not always
commensurable, but not necessarily hostile, then toleration as a practice is
possible. Recognizing difference, but also what there is in common between
citizens of a particular society - - citizenship - - can lead to pluralism
without tribalism. Such an approach is instantiated in the new policy of
“community cohesion” proposed by the Cantle Commission and adopted by
the government and is being implemented at various levels in a number of
ways. It involves education, dialogue in public forums as well as use of the
Internet. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the idea of common
citizenship.
I: The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Sharia furore
In a recent lecture, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury
had suggested that certain elements of Sharia law pertaining to the family
could form a “supplementary jurisdiction” for U.K. Muslims, with similar
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provision for other faiths. I discuss this case because it instantiates two of
the issues I raised above: the first, that the separation of religion and state is
not a requirement for toleration, but recognition of pluralism is. Secondly,
well-meaning but ill-conceived initiatives can actually further intolerance.
In the case of the Archbishop, the two intersect. He also raises the same
issues as Jeremy Waldron does in his essay “Toleration and
Reasonableness.” Can the deepest core beliefs held by a person be relegated
to the “private” sphere? Can the private and public spheres be so easily
demarcated?
Among the liberal democracies, the U.K. does not have an official
separation of religion and state. There is an official religion, that of the
Church of England. The Crown is the head of the Church. The U.K. is a
constitutional monarchy but real power lies in Parliament. Nonetheless
some 20 bishops are automatically appointed unelected to the House of
Lords.
There are two senses in which the separation of religion and state is
not required for toleration. One is the mere fact that I have cited above, that
there is an official religion, yet various efforts on the part of different agents
to promote toleration have been underway for some time now. Thus the
existence of an official religion is not an impediment to the striving for a
tolerant, pluralist society.
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The second sense in which the separation of religion and state is not
required for toleration is that initiatives have come from within the Church
of England and from the monarchy to actively promote toleration. I limit
myself to the U.K. Muslims because the main tensions in British society are
between Muslims and white Britons, though not exclusively so, following
the 2001 riots in the north and the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on the London
transportation system. The background to these events and the pattern of
immigration will emerge in my discussion of the ill-conceived
multiculturalist policies of the eighties.
Although I focus on the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Sharia
furore, I will briefly touch on one initiative on the part of the monarchy.
Charles, Prince of Wales is due to become the next monarch. Both Charles
and the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey have taken the
initiative to propose a multi-faith ceremony after the coronation.
Traditionally, the ceremony requires the monarch to take an oath pledging
to defend the Church of England. The fact that both the Crown and the
senior-most archbishop have suggested a multifaith ceremony is significant.
It indicates 1) that there is recognition that the U.K. is a pluralist society and
that 2) pluralism must be respected and protected. The fact that the
suggestion comes from the future monarch is important because it is a
recognition that the configuration of national identity is subject to revision.
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It is also an instance of how toleration may be achieved in a variety of
ways.
I turn now to a proposal initiated by the incumbent Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, that has created a furore across the political
spectrum. I cite this case primarily because it is an instantiation of the issues
I have raised in Chapter 1: pluralism versus monism, multiculturalism
versus liberalism. It also raises a further question. The fact that there is an
official religion does not mean that there cannot be toleration. However, the
Archbishop’s proposal is also an instance of how ill-conceived multicultural
policies can lead to social divisiveness. That is what the furore was about.
In a lecture at London’s Royal Courts of Justice on 7 February 2008, Rowan
Williams suggested that Sharia law could possibly be incorporated into British
Constitutional law. In the lecture, “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious
Perspective,” Williams is careful to state that the issue is not about Islam alone but
about other faiths, including Roman Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism. His
suggestion was that certain aspects of Sharia law pertaining to family and tax
matters could be allowed to function as a supplementary jurisdiction. The issues
arise when there are communities who relate to something other than the British
legal system. In a sense, his approach mirrors those of the classical multiculturalist
arguments that I have presented in Chapter 1, except that the Archbishop sees it as
a matter of the rule of law. What is the role of law in a pluralist society of
“overlapping identities? Williams is careful to concretize this point. If the reality of
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society is plural, and identity has “multiple affiliations,” an abstract idea of equal
citizenship would result in these affiliations being marginalized and privatized
resulting in “a ghettoized pattern of social life.” These were exactly the findings of
the Cantle Commission but the causal factors were attributed to the multiculturalist
policies in the councils. I discuss these in a later section. The suggestion that
aspects of Sharia law could be introduced in the system earned the archbishop the
ire of the Church of England, the liberal press and the feminists, Muslim and non-
Muslim. Calls for his resignation came from within the Church, his most vocal
critic being the Pakistani-born Bishop of York. Thus, conservatives, liberals and
feminists found themselves on the same side, ranged against the Archbishop.
Yet, as one or two analysts have pointed out, none of Rowan Williams’
critics paid much attention to the lecture itself. For the lecture itself has deep
philosophical implications. I believe that the Archbishop inadvertently threw a
spanner into the works of received wisdom about British identity and the result has
led to a lot of soul-searching, particularly among secularists. The most serious
claim made by the Archbishop is that he has laid a foundation for a universal
principle of legal right which requires a) a valuation of the human being as such
and b) a recognition that the human subject is “endowed” with some freedom over
actual systems of social life. These are historically rooted in Christian theology. In
other words, the Enlightenment principles are of Christian origin. The Archbishop
is explicit on this. These themes have been strongly emphasized by the
‘Abrahamic’ faiths and without them, the Enlightenment would not have taken
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place. It must be emphasized that the Archbishop’s aim, which was lost in the
Sharia furore, is to emphasize the common Abrahamic roots of the major
monotheisms and to state that the humanistic values of these faiths are in no way in
conflict with the Enlightenment principles upholding human dignity.
His reasoning in the peripatetic lecture goes thus: Britain is a multicultural,
multifaith society. There are persons who do not relate to the British legal system
alone, there are other allegiances. commitments and beliefs that govern their lives.
He is careful to state that this is not true of Muslims only, that the day to day
operations of the Church of England are left to authorities who have a certain
degree of autonomy. In a sense, Rowan Williams' argument is similar to Will
Kymlicka's theory of liberal pluralism that I have outlined in Chapter 1: Universal
human rights must be complemented with a theory of minority rights. Where
Kymlicka uses the language of rights, the Archbishop views the issue in terms of
the rule of law and jurisdiction. The British legal system with its "abstract level of
citizenship" needs to be supported by "supplementary jurisdiction" in certain areas
where the individual's identity is part of a system of beliefs and allegiances. He
makes it clear that it is not a question of a stand-off between Islamic and British
law. Williams cites Orthodox Judaism and the Roman Catholic Church as well. In
fact, he cites Native American communities in Canada as a model. His effort is
similar to Kymlicka’s but the idea of religion being a core value is similar to
Charles Taylor’s view.
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There are several implications in the lecture, some are philosophical, others
have to do with rights issues not concerning Muslims alone. The deeper implication
of the lecture is that in effect the Archbishop has more or less hijacked the
Enlightenment. When he says that the Enlightenment is a wake-up call to religion,
he means to say that the Enlightenment was against despotism and unequality.
Slave societies and innate notions of racial superiority have always existed and
have even “infected Abrahamic societies.” The Enlightenment was a reminder to
(Christian) religion that it had departed from its true principles. However, the
Enlightenment itself was in the danger of reducing social identity to citizenship as
an abstract form of equal access. The various attempts to reduce citizenship to
rational equality, as with France in the 1790s and China in the 1970s led to violent
injustice. By making Christianity and the Enlightenment the twin pillars of the
universal principle of human dignity and equality, the Archbishop has caught
secularists in a double bind. If they deny that Christianity and the Enlightenment
are entwined, they will still have to account for Britons believing in a “vague
liberal protestantism.”
1
If they deny that this is the case, they still have to account
for the reaction to the proposal on Sharia law while the issue of gay rights went
unnoticed.
I would now like to draw out the larger implications of the Sharia affair.
One is, as the theologian Theo Hobson pointed out, a deep malaise about what
constitutes British national identity. Is Britain a Christian nation, as the writer
Daniel Finklestein argued in the Times? If so, how does the claim to tolerance sit
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with the intemperate tone of Finklestein’s and other reactions? The more serious
issue, for the purposes of this thesis, is that secularists do not have the monopoly on
liberalism and toleration. The Archbishop, a man of faith, is far more liberal and
multiculturalist than most secularists have proved to be. The other issue, which is
the focus of this chapter, is that no matter how well-meaning the agent, ill-
conceived or inadequately thought out initiatives can actually harm the process of
building pluralist tolerant societies. The principle of the Archbishop’s very subtle
lecture is laudable: individuals and communities have needs and allegiances that
cannot be adequately fulfilled by appeals to an abstract notion of citizenship. Social
identity is largely determined by the family and community, and this may involve
faith-based values. While this is tangibly true, to suggest that some self-governance
be introduced through religious authorities is to produce the opposite effect. I do
not intend to get into a discussion of Sharia law or the Roman Catholic policies on
gay rights. It is clear however, that to vest power in the hands of conservative
bodies is to further segregation. The conservative Muslim Council of Britain
welcomed the call while the extremist Hizb-ut Tahrir set up a petition campaign to
support the Archbishop. These were the only organizations that were in favour of
Sharia law being adopted in any form. These are the very organizations who desire
segregation. Many Muslim Labour MPs were quick to say that a majority of
Muslims did not want Sharia law to govern their lives.
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II. Parallel Lives
The Archbishop’s proposal is only a proposal. The various multicultural
policies pursued in the eighties were similarly a source of further divisiveness. At
the outset, I would like to make it clear that the ill-conceived multiculturalism of
the seventies and eighties was hardly the cause of segregation. The principle cause
was the racism of the host community, fuelled by the vitriolic speeches by right-
wing Conservatives in the anti-immigration campaign of the late 1960s. As Ted
Cantle, head of the Cantle Commission points out, the immigration problem
became a matter of race: “To the people of Britain and the many other white
European nations that had for so many generations dominated the world . . . their
evident military and economic superiority was synonymous with their whiteness.”
(Cantle, 6) Black, Asian and south Europeans were by definition inferior ‘races.’
To suddenly welcome them into the nation state and to treat them as equals was
difficult for a host community whose social identity had been constructed on the
basis of Empire and dominion. Nonetheless the policies followed by the local
councils succeeded in promoting Islamophobia on the one hand and Islamic
fundamentalism on the other. I discuss both phenomena below.
Immigration to the U.K. began with labour shortages in the textile industry
of the northern towns. Waves of immigrants from the former colonies came in as
Commonwealth citizens, mainly from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent.
The northern towns of Nottingham and Bradford became the area where
immigrants from South Asia were concentrated. Most of them lived in the inner
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city and worked night-shifts in the mills. As with most immigrant communities,
new waves of immigrants would seek work and housing in those areas where the
community was already established.
As the number of immigrants increased, two parallel developments
occurred. The extreme right wing faction of the Conservative party led by the MP
Enoch Powell called for a halt to immigration, often in bloodthirsty and racist
terms. Meanwhile, in 1966, there was official recognition by the ruling Labour
party that the U.K. was a multicultural society, even as immigration control
legislation was passed. The efforts by the Labour Party to integrate immigrants
from the former colonies led to the passing of the amended Race Relations Act of
1976. With Margaret Thatcher being swept into power in 1979 after “stealing the
thunder” from Enoch Powell and the far right, racism became more widespread.
Race Relations deteriorated.
Will Kymlicka, in a recent article, questions the motives of British
politicians in general, given the recent success of extreme right-wing parties in
Europe. That is to say, they might be inclined to make concessions to popular fears
of increased immigration. “[T]here is a fine line between acknowledging public
fears and re-inforcing them.”(Kymlicka, 2003, 206) Be that as it may, there is little
doubt that Thatcher “disavowed” Labour’s policies on integration.
It is against this background that one must see in what sense the
multiculturalist policies of the seventies were ill-conceived. The various Race
Relations Acts of the sixties and seventies were designed to combat racial
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discrimination. Black and Asian immigrants faced discrimination in housing and
employment. Even as the doors were closing to immigration, large numbers of
immigrants flocked to the U.K. before the gates closed completely. They were
concentrated in the inner cities and there was ‘white flight’ from certain areas
leading to further segregation. Not all whites could flee, many of the white
communities also being at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. It must not
be forgotten that these were the Thatcher years, when many of the welfare
programs were dismantled and unemployment was high.
It is also important to note that while racism against immigrants in Britain
emanated from the white community, racism is not a phenomenon that is exclusive
to the white ethnic group. The term ‘white Briton’ is itself a misnomer, for the
Irish, the Scottish and the Welsh are no less white but were considered inferior in
some way. One Briton of Pakistani origin went so far as to say “we’re the new
Irish.” Thus, it is important to define racism not exclusively in terms of race or
colour, but as fear of difference.
With the Thatcher government firmly entrenched in power, bodies like the
Inner London Education Authority, the Greater London Council and some London
Labour boroughs took initiatives to promote equality and prevent discrimination in
housing and education. These came under severe attack by Conservatives.
Meanwhile, in the inner cities there was frustration among young black Britons
who faced racism and unemployment, leading to the first major riots in Brixton in
London and Toxteth in Nottingham in 1981 and unrest in Bradford over the
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“Honeyford affair” in the mid-eighties.
2
In this period, the issue was seen as one of
white Briton versus black Briton, with no distinction made between the various
immigrant communities. Multicultural issues in the U.K. were far more complex
than either governments or multiculturalists themselves were willing to allow for.
Issues were bundled together under a broad category such as Race Relations.
Religion was not considered a separate category from race or ethnicity until the
Salman Rushdie affair in 1989. Exactly how ill-conceived multicultural policies
can further segregation may be seen in the actions of local councils. Local
authorities led by the Greater London Council devised a new strategy by involving
black communities in local decision making, setting up race relations units and
most fatally, by funding black community organizations. Thus began the politics of
ill-conceived multiculturalism. By treating black people as people having special
needs because they were somehow ‘different’ from the British, the local councils
turned a political question into one of cultural difference. The earlier struggles of
the sixties and seventies were for political equality. Now, state subsidies were
channeled into religious and cultural institutions. This led to further segregation
and resentment, and in a climate of rampant unemployment, the two communities,
as one analyst put it “began to view these problems through the lens of cultural and
racial differences, blaming each other for their problems.”
The focus was on rights and making discrimination punishable, with little
effort to promote understanding in the white communities. Some of these councils
were from the left-wing of Labour and came to be known as the “loony left.” The
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aggressive pursuit of racial equality measures, especially in the ethnic monitoring
of housing allocations led to further alienation among the white communities, some
of whom were equally deprived. This “Stalinist” approach allowed the right-wing
press to argue that “positive discrimination” was being practiced in favour of the
black community, although positive discrimination is not permitted in the U.K.
The town of Bradford represents an exemplary case of the dangers of ill-
conceived multiculturalism. At first, the councils began to offer subsidies in terms
of housing allocations. Gradually, there was a demand for subsidies for religious
establisments and schools, since state funding for religious schools was official
policy. Thousands of pounds were funneled into the building of mosques, temples
and gurdwaras and the religious schools attached to them. These funds were
channeled through the local community leaders. And this is the crucial point. The
local leadership of the councils often acted out of expedience. They found it easier
to deal with the self-appointed leaders of each of the communities, instead of
engaging in the life of the communities.
What was overlooked was that the politics of the sub-continent had spilled
over into the U.K. The community leadership reflected the more fundamentalist
elements of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Where Afro-Caribbeans and
immigrants from South Asia had once lived cheek by jowl, polarisation occurred
within the inner cities. The inner cities were internally segregated along religious
lines with Pakistanis, Bangladesis, Sikhs and Hindus living in separate
neighbourhoods, attending separate schools. Meanwhile the far-right British
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National Party would periodically lead marches through the inner city. ‘Paki-
bashing’ had been a pastime since the seventies. Tensions culminated in the riots in
the northern towns in the summer of 2001, three months before the September 11
terrorist attacks in 2001. The Ouseley Commision, appointed before the riots had
noted that “communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines. . .
people’s attitudes appear to be hardening and intolerance towards difference is
growing.” It also pointed to the fact that Islamophobia was widely prevalent and as
a result, “the Muslim community therefore tends to draw on the comfort derived
from staying together, retaining its strong culture, religious affiliation and identity,
to live in self-contained communities [.]”(Ouseley Report, 2001, p 6)
I shall briefly discuss Islamophobia because it is illustrative of how a cycle
of violence and tolerance can actually be set in motion through bad legislation and
policy. The neologism ‘Islamophobia’ came into being in the eighties but was
officially adopted after the Runnymede Foundation commissioned a report on the
phenomenon in 1997. The Oxford English Dictionary entry defines it as
“[h]atred or fear of Islam esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards
Muslims.” The Runnymede report describes it as a “closed view” of Islam. On this
view Islam is monolithic, separate, inferior, violent and aggressive and
manipulative, used as a political ideology for political or military advantage. Such
hostility towards Islam, says the report, justifies discriminatory attitudes towards
Muslims and their exclusion from mainstream society, making them vulnerable to
violent, physical attacks. The report recommended that a legal term such as
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‘religious and racial violence’ is required. Yet the government’s response to the
Commission’s recommendations was to approve funding for specifically Muslim
schools. The pattern that emerges runs thus: the various Race Relations Acts of the
seventies subsumed all forms of discrimination under a generic category like ‘race.’
Since racial discrimination was punishable, the skinheads began to target Muslims
because religion did not come under the prohibition on racial discrimination. With
Paki-bashing on the rise, young Muslims turned to religion since they were
excluded qua Muslim. With funding from the local Labour councils, religious
establishments flourished with fundamentalist clerics coming in from Pakistan.
One can see precisely how bad multicultural policies can vitiate
matters in a climate where racism was already present. By focusing on
cultural difference, by funding religious organizations and schools, by not
taking into account social deprivation in white communities, the local
councils achieved the opposite of what their aim was: putting an end to
racial discrimination. On the one hand they drove white youth into the arms
of the extreme right wing fascist British National Party, and on the other,
Muslim youth into falling prey to the influence of fundamentalist clerics.
III : Community Cohesion and Common Citizenship
In this section I discuss the concept of community cohesion as an instance
of what constitutes a sufficient condition for toleration and the creation of a stable,
pluralist society. This concept, which is now being implemented as a policy at
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many levels, supports my argument that a paradigm shift is necessary if toleration
is to be achieved as a practice. Furthermore, it raises related issues such as common
citizenship and civic responsibility.
Following the riots in the northern towns in the summer of 2001, the
government appointed the Community Cohesion Review Team headed by Ted
Cantle, former Chief Executive of the Nottingham city council. The term
‘community cohesion’ was used to shape government policy in response to the
social fragmentation that was taking place in communities across Britain. It is a
variant of the concept of ‘social cohesion’ which is of Canadian origin. The
Canadian government set up the Social Cohesion Network as a way of promoting,
among other things, shared values and equal opportunity. The two terms tend to get
conflated in the work of some theorists. Cantle, in his subsequent book, makes a
clear distinction. ‘Social cohesion’, he writes, pertains to broad socio-economic
factors and is undermined by social ‘exclusion’ that arises due to class factors.
‘Community cohesion’ is a more specific term used “to describe the societal
fractures which are based on identifiable communities defined by faith or ethnicity,
rather than social class.” (Cantle, Community Cohesion, 47)
Community cohesion is a socially constructed concept. Prior to the
appointment of the Cantle Commission in 2001, the term itself was not in use as
such. Various commissions and reports observed that a new policy had to be
adopted in order to prevent community conflict and unrest. The Ouseley
Commission which had been commissioned before the riots noted that the social
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fabric was torn apart. Other reports similarly recommended that fractured
communities needed to become cohesive ones, uniting people around “a common
sense of belonging regardless of race, culture or faith.” This is an instantiation of
my argument in Chapter 2, that our interdependence is a necessary condition for
toleration. The Cantle Commission, which was appointed to review the situation at
a national level, drew upon these reports and came up with the concept of
community cohesion.
Recognizing that it was a concept not very easy to define, the Report
identifies three features that underpin the idea. 1) Individual commitments to
common norms and values. 2) Interdependence arising from shared interests;
3) Individual identification with the group. Note that (2) supports the paradigm I
have outlined in Chapter 2, the interdependence between individuals that goes
beyond cultural difference. More difficult to define are common norms and values
and the Report acknowledges the difficulty. For a while after the report’s release,
there was considerable debate and disagreement as to what such a concept meant
and whether it was a desirable policy or not. A year later, however, the Home
Office along with the Local Government Association and other bodies issued a
paper called the “Guidance on Community Cohesion” in which they put forward a
broad definition.
Community cohesion aimed at promoting a common vision and a
sense of belonging for all communities while at the same time the diversity
of people’s backgrounds would be appreciated and positively valued. The
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Home Office went on to establish the Community Cohesion Unit whose
function it was to co-ordinate various efforts to implement new approaches
to the problem.
It will be clear now in what way the new policy of community
cohesion differs from the multiculturalist policies of the eighties. The
conceptual approach is to equally stress common values, if not more, than
difference. These common values are to be found in political and economic
integration and the idea of common citizenship. Foremost among the
recommendations of the commissions is that there be a national debate on
what values underlie the idea of citizenship and a revision of the citizenship
component of the National Curriculum with greater attention being paid to
diversity and tolerance.
IV: Education and Dialogue
In what follows, one may see in what way an appeal to common
citizenship can also accommodate difference. Unlike the appeal to unitary
citizenship alone, theorized by Brian Barry, the concept of community
cohesion recognises that only having rights does not guarantee equality or a
sense of belonging to society. The new policy recognizes that Britain is a
pluralist society but seeks to correct the errors of the earlier multiculturalist
policies. The emphasis is now on what citizens have in common rather than
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on what divides them culturally. A white paper issuing guidelines to schools
spells out what that common vision is:
There is a clearly defined and widely shared sense of the contribution of
different individuals and different communities to a future vision of a
neighbourhood, city, region or country. . . [P]eople will naturally hold
different ambitions, aspirations and life experiences. But importantly, [the
report] places a strong emphasis on how they will also share important
characteristics with those from their own and different communities.
(Guidance, p 3)
The sense of belonging entails having a strong sense of an individual’s rights and
responsibilities and a strong sense of trust in local institutions’ capacity to negotiate
fairly between different interests and to be open to public scrutiny.
Community is defined as 1) the school community 2) the community within
which the school is located; 3) the U.K. community; 4) the global community. Such
a definition explicitly acknowledges the fact that globalization is the context within
which cultural pluralism must be negotiated. At the same time belonging to a
community is not limited to a cultural community. While learning to value
diversity, the emphasis is on shared values. These shared values take the form of
concentric circles. In 1) the sense of belonging to a particular school involves
loyalty and allegiance to the institution. In 2) the sense of belonging is geo-
political. That is to say, the school is not merely geographically located in a
community. It belongs to the public sphere, a public space that people of diverse
backgrounds share qua public space. 3) involves political allegiance and the shared
values are directly derived from citizenship. (4) is a recognition that it is no longer
possible to have a sense of national identity in an insular way. With globalization,
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there is integration, and in the case of the U.K., EU integration with common
political norms. The Guidance goes on to state how schools can contribute to
community cohesion at each level. It is the role of the school, regardless of its
ethnocultural composition, to ensure that the pupils learn to live with and respect
pupils from different backgrounds. In the case of schools that are ethnically
diverse, the Guidance notes that such efforts are already underway. In schools that
are relatively homogenous, efforts must be made to bring the pupils into contact
with persons of diverse backgrounds. This can be done through links with different
schools and communities and the provision of extended services. The teaching
curriculum would be designed to promote the sense of shared values, especially in
the citizenship component. Effective September 2008, the strand “Identity and
Diversity: Living together in the U.K.” would allow the pupils to learn about
diverse ethnic, religious and regional cultures, moving to national and international
links.
The Guidance then spells out in detail how this may be achieved: through
extended services such as assemblies between communities, through the Internet,
video-conferencing, school-to-school linkages, and greater parental participation in
the school’s activities. I shall not to discuss these guidelines in detail, but the
important point to note is that these measures are an attempt to translate into
practice the findings of the Commission on Cohesion and Integration, that
meaningful contact between people of diverse backgrounds, at individual and group
levels had the effect of breaking down stereotypes and prejudice. The Guidance
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ends with the announcement that it will make available case studies on individual
projects. The Department of Children, Schools and Families maintains a website to
provide resources and guidelines for schools in every area of education. It provides
links with related EU projects. With regard to the implementation of the policy of
Community Cohesion, it has published case studies from on-going projects aimed
at promoting tolerance and understanding. I take up one of these, not only because
it instantiates the point that well thought initiatives can promote tolerance, but it
raises a larger philosophical problem that I discuss at the end of the chapter: that of
the separation of religion and state.
In Case Study # 6, a Catholic school in the Tower Hamlets area of London
set itself the objective of building good relations with the neighbouring
communities largely composed of Bangladesi Muslims. The school undertook
several initiatives including discussion days, making available the school’s
resources to neighbouring communities, and liaising with local agencies such as the
Safer Neighbourhood Team and the Rapid Response Team. It also undertook a
series of inter-faith initiatives and worked closely with the East London Mosque.
The outcome of these efforts was that inter-community relations improved, with
pupils showing enthusiasm for the projects and an over all reduction in crime and
violence. From this case, and others, it is clear that through education and dialogue,
there has been some reversal of the segregation resulting from racism and the ill-
conceived multicultural policies of the eighties.
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However, when such initiatives occur under the aegis of local and national
governments, the question of the separation of religion and state does arise. In the
U.K., as I have stated at the outset, there is no official separation of religion and
state so the matter would be unproblematic. However, it does pose a dilemma for
secularists and those Britons who would like a separation of religion and state and
those who are avowedly atheist. I discuss this question in the last section.
V: Dilemmas of Secularism
If inter-faith dialogue can promote tolerance, certain dilemmas arise for
secularism and atheism. If an individual atheist values secularism, she can live
consistently by that value and disregard religion. It is quite other for those
secularists who are socially committed. By social commitment I mean a
commitment to creating conditions in a given society that make human flourishing
possible. Those conditions would include toleration and human rights. If the social
fabric of a given society were torn apart by conflict between ethnocultural groups
some of whom have religious affiliations, how would those groups and associations
committed to secularism as a value but also to social justice pursue those goals
without engaging with religion?
Here again the U.K. experience raises issues that instantiate some of the
issues I have raised in Chapter 1. I have argued, following Isiah Berlin, that out of
value pluralism, toleration can emerge. If one recognizes that human goals are
many and may be incommensurable but not necessarily hostile, then toleration is
153
achievable. If, on the other hand, one is monist and holds the view that a single
principle can explain social phenomena, then certain difficulties arise in the matter
of toleration. In this section, I take up the dilemmas faced by the Marxist left. The
U.K. has a long socialist tradition, represented mainly by Labour. It also has a
strong Marxist left represented by Trotskyist factions. I will cite the case of the
International Communist League, the U.K. wing of the Fourth International since it
has tried to engage in the problems faced by the Muslim community in a principled
way. From the standpoint of Marxism, society is viewed in terms of class struggle
and ultimately, a class analysis alone can account for oppression. Surveys have
established that Muslims are in the most impoverished category in Britain. The ICL
views the Muslim community as an oppressed and underprivileged minority and
this position is consistent with a class analysis. However, in 2006, the ICL chose to
involve itself in a controversy involving the Islamic veil, nominally a cultural issue.
In an article in The Daily Hammer entitled “Racism and the Islamic Veil,” the ICL
wrote that Islamophobia was rampant in Europe and characterized the Home
Secretary Jack Straw’s remarks on the veil as “opening the floodgates for a torrent
of bigotry particularly directed at women.” Citing various incidents where Muslim
women were attacked or lost their jobs because of the veil, the ICL goes on to say:
As Marxists – therefore as atheists and fighters for women’s liberation we
oppose the veil as both a symbol and an instrument of women’s oppression.
Nonetheless, we oppose any state or government bans on the veil which are
racist and discriminatory against Muslims. Contrary to liberal claims that
banning the veil is designed to integrate Muslims into society, bans will
lead to the expulsion of Muslim women from schools, universities and the
work force. Bans will also fuel racism and play into the hands of the fascist
BNP. (Racism and the Islamic Veil, ”The Daily Hammer. No. 172)
154
Thus far, the ICL’s position is consistent with a class analysis and shows genuine
empathy for the plight of Muslim women. However, after a peripatetic survey of
the situation in Europe, Blair’s Iraq war, the Soviet role in Afghanistan and the rise
of Osama bin Laden, and a diatribe against multiculturalism, the article goes on to
explain the rise of political Islam. It then returns to the question of the veil and says
that Islam oppresses women. The ICL views Islam as somehow ‘backward’ and
says so explicitly. Jews and Christians have emancipated themselves from religion
because of the industrial revolution, but Muslims have yet to do so. This reasoning
echoes Bruno Bauer’s argument in “On the Jewish Question” that I have cited in
Chapter 1, where he views Jews as backward.
The point here is that such pronouncements are hardly likely to appeal to
Muslim youth in the inner cities who see little difference between such language
and that used by their skinhead tormentors of the BNP. Many of the Asian Youth
Movement were actually members of the rival Trotskist faction, the Socialist
Workers Party, in the seventies. Disillusionment with the SWP in the eighties led
many to turn to the radical Imams in the ghettos.
One may reject the argument from “cultural embeddedness” but one must
cognize the fact that different people have different needs, and this is not a matter
of evolutionary stage. Something like gay rights cannot be explained in terms of
historical “progress.” The post-colonial critique of Mill’s liberalism could well
155
apply to the Fourth International. There is one model that is perfect, and it’s a
matter of time before everyone gets there.
I have cited this case because there is little doubt that the ICL genuinely
wishes to support the cause of Muslim women and oppressed minorities. It is
however handicapped by its monist view of history and society. Some women may
want to wear the veil as a way of affirming themselves. Not all of it is oppression.
Writing on the French head-scarf ban, the philosopher Seyla Benhabib states that
the act of defiance on the part of the French Muslim girls who triggered the ban is
an entry into modernity. I believe that ‘post-modern’ is the more appropriate term.
There are web-sites called “hijab.com.”
It will now be clear why I have foregrounded value pluralism in Chapter I.
The recognition that “human goals are many” and that core values may be
incommensurable allows for the possibility that there may be other values that can
be shared. The case of the ICL does not allow for that incommensurability.
On the other hand, the policy of community cohesion that I have outlined
above does allow for core values to remain different. While recognising diversity,
this policy focuses on what people have in common: citizenship, understood as
allegiance, simultaneously to the immediate community and to the larger political
society. The U.K. experience instantiates my argument that from value pluralism
can emerge toleration and that an appeal to common citizenship can protect
difference and preserve social cohesion.
156
Chapter 5 Endnotes
1. The theologian Theo Hobson wrote that until the furore, most Britons thought
that they believed in a “vague liberal protestantism.” Rowan Williams’ lecture
made them question British national identity in a profound way. (“Rowan
Williams: sharia furore, Anglican future,” Open Democracy,
https://www.opendemocracy.net)
2. Ray Honeyford, the headteacher of an inner city school with a majority of
Muslim pupils questioned the multicultural polices of the education authority. He
published disparaging articles on Islam and Afro-Caribbeans in a right-wing
journal, the Salisbury Review, committed to the repatriation of immigrants.
Cited by Alibhai-Brown, Imagining the New Britain.
157
Chapter 6: Conclusion
I have argued in support of my core thesis, that toleration as a practice
and stable pluralism are both desirable and achievable. I have argued for a
paradigm shift in the discussion of toleration. Insofar as we affirm our nature
as human beings engaged in productive activity with other beings, insofar as
we value a world that facilitates such activity, toleration is desirable as a
practice. If we recognize our interdependence in a world where there is
increased integration as a consequence of globalization, we must also
recognize that what we have in common is far deeper than cultural difference.
To the extent that there is a tendency towards homogenization in a global
society, cultural differences themselves are eroded. This is a necessary
condition for toleration.
I have argued that toleration must be achieved as a practice. It is
achievable as a practice if one adopts a multipronged approach. Or, to put it in
Bernard Williams’ words, one must draw on a variety of resources. The
underlying principle of such an approach is that of value pluralism. My
argument has been in the spirit of Isiah Berlin’s definition of the concept: that
human goals and values are many and may be incommensurable.
Incommensurability does not however mean intractability. The intractability I
have discussed in Chapter 2 arises from a monist approach both on the part of
liberals such as Brian Barry and multiculturalists such as Bhiku Parekh.
158
In the case of Barry, the monism consists in appealing to unitary
citizenship alone as a source of equality. Such a view has the illiberal
implication that the Enlightenment model of liberté, egalité and
fraternité would alone guarantee equality and toleration. But, as the
French Revolution has shown, this is not the case. The kind of
aggressive liberalism advocated by Barry does not allow for the
possibility of social identity being constituted by a range of elements.
Likewise, although Parekh claims to draw his sources from Berlin’s
value pluralism, the claim that we are “culturally embedded” rests on
the idea of culture being something immutable, historically determined.
Multiculturalists do not acknowledge the coercive nature of cultural
determination nor do they recognize that culture is being constantly re-
defined.
Core values may be incommensurable but not necessarily
hostile. If one sees social identity as being constituted by a range of
allegiances, then pluralism and toleration are possible. One may have
religious or ethnocultural affiliations, but there is one allegiance that
citizens of a particular society have in common: a political allegiance to
the constitutional state. Thus identity itself is constituted in a series of
concentric circles that overlap. Recognition of common citizenship,
recognition of cultural differences that may be incommensurable but
also subject to re-defining, can lead to a stable pluralist society. And
159
this can be achieved in a variety of ways, primarily through education,
but also through carefully thought out initiatives. My argument, from
homogenization to common citizenship supports this conclusion.
160
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
My aim in this dissertation is to enquire whether toleration as a practice is achievable. It is prior to the question of how it can be grounded as a virtue. I argue that in liberal democratic societies where there are struggles for recognition on the part of ethnocultural groups, it is possible to negotiate pluralism and tribalism in a way that a stable pluralist society can be maintained. My core thesis rests on a theory of interdependence based both on a theory of human nature and on the material fact of globalization. Insofar as we affirm our nature as human beings engaged in productive activity with other human beings, insofar as we value a world that facilitates that activity, toleration is desirable. It is achievable because with globalization there is a tendency towards homogenization that erodes cultural differences. There is less reason for conflict because what we have in common, our interdependence, goes far deeper than culture. A further sufficient condition may be found in well thought-out policies that are executed through education and dialogue.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Sadagopan, Shoba
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Core Title
Negotiating pluralism and tribalism in liberal democratic societies
School
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Philosophy
Publication Date
10/15/2008
Defense Date
08/22/2008
Publisher
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common citizenship,cultural homogenization,Globalization,liberalism,OAI-PMH Harvest,Toleration,value pluralism
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