Introduction: Spaces of Multiculturalism

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Notes

See Soysal (1997) for a discussion of the role of international human rights discourses in facilitating identity-based claims in contemporary Europe.

There were, to be sure, important social transformations taking place well before the post-Second-World-War era that laid the groundwork for multiculturalist thinking. Political philosopher Charles Taylor (1997), for instance, connects multiculturalism to 18th-century notions of humans' individual moral worth and uniqueness. Conceptions of individual worth, Taylor argues, make equal recognition an essential feature of democratic culture; a lack of recognition and respect is a form of oppression. Taylor advocates multiculturalism as a means of achieving equal recognition.