Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political TheoryBhikhu Parekh argues for a pluralist perspective on cultural diversity. Writing from both within the liberal tradition and outside of it as a critic, he challenges what he calls the "moral monism" of much of traditional moral philosophy, including contemporary liberalism--its tendency to assert that only one way of life or set of values is worthwhile and to dismiss the rest as misguided or false. He defends his pluralist perspective both at the level of theory and in subtle nuanced analyses of recent controversies. Thus, he offers careful and clear accounts of why cultural differences should be respected and publicly affirmed, why the separation of church and state cannot be used to justify the separation of religion and politics, and why the initial critique of Salman Rushdie (before a Fatwa threatened his life) deserved more serious attention than it received. Rejecting naturalism, which posits that humans have a relatively fixed nature and that culture is an incidental, and "culturalism," which posits that they are socially and culturally constructed with only a minimal set of features in common, he argues for a dialogic interplay between human commonalities and cultural differences. This will allow, Parekh argues, genuinely balanced and thoughtful compromises on even the most controversial cultural issues in the new multicultural world in which we live. |
Contents
Moral Monism | 16 |
Greek monism | 19 |
Christian monism | 23 |
Monism of classical liberalism | 33 |
Locke | 36 |
J S Mill | 40 |
Critique of Monism | 47 |
Forms of Pluralism | 50 |
The Indian debate | 191 |
The search for new political formations | 193 |
The Political Structure of Multicultural Society | 196 |
Modes of political integration | 199 |
Common culture | 219 |
Multicultural education | 224 |
National identity | 230 |
Conditions of success | 236 |
Montesquieu | 55 |
Herder | 67 |
Misunderstanding culture | 76 |
Contemporary Liberal Responses to Diversity | 80 |
Rawls | 81 |
Raz | 90 |
Kymlicka | 99 |
General comments | 109 |
Conceptualizing Human Beings | 114 |
Basis of cultural diversity | 123 |
Pluralist universalism | 126 |
Asian values | 136 |
Understanding Culture | 142 |
The dynamics of culture | 151 |
Cultural community | 154 |
Loyalty to culture | 158 |
Cultural interaction | 163 |
Cultural diversity | 165 |
Evaluating cultures | 172 |
Respecting cultures | 176 |
Reconstituting the Modern State | 179 |
The Canadian debate | 185 |
Equality in a Multicultural Society | 239 |
Equality of difference | 243 |
Equal treatment | 248 |
Contextualizing equality | 249 |
Limits of equality | 257 |
Implications | 261 |
Logic of Intercultural Evaluation | 264 |
Intercultural dialogue | 268 |
Female circumcision and other practices | 273 |
Polygamy | 282 |
General observations | 292 |
Politics Religion and Free Speech The Satanic Verses | 295 |
Responses to Muslim protests | 298 |
Logic of political discourse | 304 |
Communal libel or group defamation | 313 |
Free speech | 317 |
Religion and public life | 321 |
Conclusion | 336 |
Notes | 345 |
Bibliography | 356 |
368 | |
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Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory Bhikhu C. Parekh No preview available - 2000 |