Multiculturalism, Interculturalisms and the Majority

Abstract

Interculturalism, in its two forms, critiques multiculturalism. A European version emphasises cultural encounter and novelty, and is relatively apolitical except for its disavowal of the national in preference for the local and the transnational. In contrast, its Quebecan counterpart gives significance to the idea of the right of a national community to use state power to reproduce itself. Whilst the former is a recognisably cosmopolitan vision I ask if the latter represents a distinctive mode of integration. The core of the article is a textual examination of two recent publications by leading public intellectual scholars in Quebec, Gerard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, respectively, including a lengthy discussion of the former’s concept of ‘majority precedence’. I argue that Quebecan interculturalism challenges multiculturalists to offer a positive view of ‘the majority’, which to date they have largely neglected to do, but which is possible within the conceptual and normative resources of multiculturalism.

Keywords:

• multiculturalism
• interculturalism
• the majority
• Quebec
• Gerard Bouchard
• Charles Taylor

Notes

1. Bouchard and Taylor (2008, p. 118) state that the first record of the term ‘interculturalism’ in Quebec is in 1985, prior to which they could only find two references, a Council of Europe and a Belgian government document, both dated 1981. So it seems that ‘interculturalism’ is only about 15 years behind the emergence of ‘multiculturalism’ in the late 1960s, that it originated in Europe and was soon followed by Quebec.

2. These issues are matters of debate in Europe too, but no European country has come close to the view that there is no such thing as a national historic culture, and few MCs are demanding that they do, a position that comes closer to cosmopolitanism than multiculturalism. As a matter of fact, the same tensions exist within IC-Q, too (Maxwell et al., 2012).

3. In a private communication Bouchard has said that he thinks I am ‘making way too much of the idea of precedence’. He says that he sees it as ‘stemming from a sociological necessity … every society, in order to function and to survive, needs a strong symbolic foundation’ and his ‘point is that it should be preserved not as the culture or identity of the majority … but as a necessary social feature.’ I have re-read his article in the light of this communication and do not feel the need to make any changes to my text.

4. I appreciate that examples are necessary to understand general propositions and two detailed examples are offered below.

5. Dialogue is one of the foundational ideas of MC (Parekh, 2000, 2006; Taylor, 1994) in contrast to political and social theories which centre on logics of conflict, abstract rationality, market choices, legal mechanisms and so on. Multiculturalists have mainly thought of dialogue at the level of public discourses and political controversies, interculturalists have added the micro in terms of interpersonal cultural encounters and group dynamics at the level of youth clubs, neighbourhoods, towns and cities etc. (Meer & Modood, 2012).

6. I accept my two examples run against US practice and sensibilities, but nevertheless they are consistent with educational policy and practice in most liberal democratic states.

7. Again, I appreciate that this may read oddly to US readers. They should bear in mind that the US is not typical of how religion is treated in schools in the western democracies. For example, all states of the European Union give funding either to religious schools or for religious education in state schools.