|
Multiculturalism is a concept with political connotations. Despite the scholarly discourse accompanying it (e.g. Taylor 1994), a multicultural conception of politics and society is understood to denote first and foremost an agenda that is antithetical to racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. Multiculturalism is intended to counter the reality of a primarily exclusionary society, with a vision of a primarily inclusive society. Multiculturalism is meant as a response to the actual experience of a hierarchy of cultures – involving a clear ordering into higher and subordinate ranks – with the idea of a horizontal co-existence and cooperation of these cultures.
However, this political conception runs into trouble if essential features that characterize the “clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996) are overlooked, and if wishful thinking obscures the view of reality. Amongst the characteristics that define the reality of cultural difference are, notably:
- Conflicts between cultures and civilizations are exercises of power. Therefore, the opposition, co-existence, or cooperation of cultures is affected by the degree of the given imbalances or balances of power between these cultures. Cooperation between cultures with extremely unequal potentialities of power is much more difficult, and should be conceived of differently, than that between cultures that are relatively equal (in terms of power). Thus multiculturalism requires not only an adequate degree of ‘good will’ of those involved, but also an adequate political context.
- Cultures are related to identity – every culture is an expression of a certain ‘mix’ of identities. Identity is the subjective perception of objective conditions.[1] The concept of culture, especially when reduced to cultures defined in ethnic terms, can result in a simplification of the complex relationship between objective and subjective components – as when other, non-ethnic, factors of identity (e.g. gender, generation, religion, class) have their power to generate culture are disregarded.
Culture establishes or emphasizes difference. Social differences are based on a vast variety of conditions, some of which are changeable (and therefore susceptible to political influence), and some of which are unchangeable (and therefore beyond political manipulation). Among these conditions are the ‘cultural’ (changeable) differences in religion and value codes, and political preferences and economic interests, and the ‘natural’ (unchangeable) differences in sex and age – the latter of which is unchangeable in its ‘natural’ changeability.
But even those differences based on ‘natural’ distinctions are changeable in their consequences, and in this sense are susceptible to political influence: Being male is as unchangeable as being old. On the other hand, the social, political, and economic implications of being male and being old are subject to continuous change and as such, they can be politically influenced.
It is therefore a misunderstanding to proceed from a quasi-‘natural’ notion of culture. A notion of culture that is based on the – apparently – stability of ethnicity is particularly prone to such a misunderstanding. Ethnicity presupposes a community of origin.[2] And origin is politically not controllable, nor at one’s disposal: The fact of being born in Japan, to Japanese parents, is not open to interpretation.
If culture is seen exclusively, or primarily, as a function of a thus-conceived, non-controllable ethnic identity, then the notion of culture becomes rigid, confined by the straitjacket of an either-or dichotomy, and tends to disregard the flexibility, the changeability, and the political susceptibility actually immanent in every culture.
Origin is not at one’s disposal – no more than sex or age. But culture is precisely not the ‘natural’ product of ‘objective’ conditions. Rather, culture is the complex product of subjective perceptions of objective conditions. The awareness of this subjective (and, hence, inevitably political) refraction risks being lost if culture is perceived as, more or less, a natural product of origin.
Culturalism Is – Functionally – Racism
The present discourse about multiculturalism is also based on the assumption that the term “culture” is often used synonymously with the term “race”. “Culture” is often simply the (apparently) acceptable, politically correct designation for difference, which, in other contexts, the intellectual discourse termed “race”.[3]
Concerning “race”, we should bear in mind that this concept has (by the standards of natural and social sciences) no objective and inter-subjectively verifiable basis, and that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as “race”. The term “race” was and is used in very diverse and ultimately arbitrary ways to designate difference – based on differences in skin color, in height, but also in nationality (as for instance, the “British race”). “Race” is a scientifically unusable category.
However, there is “racism,” as a set of prejudices linked to seemingly objective differences. Whereas “race” is a scientifically untenable concept, “racism” is a tenable, even necessary concept in the social sciences and the humanities. It is “racism” which makes “race” a politically relevant concept. It is “racism” that establishes difference by means of “racial” characteristics, and thereby constitutes “race”. “Race” is what the prejudice called “racism” terms as “race”.
In keeping with the functional parallel between “race” and “culture”, it can be presumed that it is not an objective conception of “culture” that determines cultural differences, but rather a perception of “culture” that consists of prejudice; and that this perception, “culturalism”, defines cultural difference in the same way as racism defines “racial” difference.
“Race” designates difference – and culture designates difference. Both concepts are linked to a need to distinguish between an in-group (“us”) and an out-group (“them”). “Race” and culture are constructs that must be explained through the need for inclusion and exclusion. Racism and culturalism express this social function – although both historically and presently, the term “race” designates a more acute and, a priori, a more hostile inclusion and exclusion than the term culture.
The conceptual link between racism and culturalism is a perception of culture that is (exclusively or primarily) based on ethnicity. If culture is exclusively, or at least primarily, based on ethnic (or national) categorizations; then the connection between “race” and culture becomes perfectly clear. “Race” is a category that essentially rests upon descent, usually meaning a biologically defined origin. This is not necessarily valid for culture – yet, merged with the concept of culture are nevertheless criteria of origin, i.e. descent. An ethnically conceived notion of culture, which views culture primarily as “Chinese” or “Turkish”, “Iberian-American” or “French”, and which does not also distinguish between “female” or “male”, “youth” or the “elderly”, and “global” or “particularistic”, remains incapable to distinguish itself unequivocally from the notion of “race”.
This is equally true for the avowedly pluralistic and tolerant variant of “culturalism” – multiculturalism. If multiculturalism means that there can and should be peaceful coexistence between Slovene and “German” cultures in Carinthia, between North-African and French cultures in Paris, between African-American, Iberian-American, Asian-American, Native-American, and European-American cultures in California, or between Malay, Chinese, and Indian cultures in Malaysia, then the political intention is certainly not “racist.” However, the conceptual basis of such a multiculturalism is the same as that of racism: A quality that is essentially bound to a single and seemingly objective marker of origin, (ethnicity), determines difference, and how this one-dimensional difference is approached.
To be able to bridge the difference, multiculturalism first requires precisely this difference. For multiculturalism to be consistent as a concept, it requires cultural difference – just as multi-racism requires “racial” difference. But if cultural difference is essentially or exclusively linked to ethnicity, then there is no functional difference between multiculturalism and multi-racism – and then, culturalism and racism are equivalent.
Multiculturalism needs difference – and therefore it tends to emphasize difference. A multiculturalism that relates to ethnicity is prone to accentuate ethnic difference – and to perpetuate it. Doubtlessly, the intention of multiculturalism as a political agenda is to build bridges between different cultures. Multiculturalism means to act as a bridge – but as a bridge it needs different banks, and it needs them permanently. Hence, an ethnically conceived multiculturalism tends to become a (well-intended) guarantee for the continuity of ethnic difference.
“Ethnicism” and Racism are founded upon the criterion of origin: Being African-American depends as little on individual decision as being “ethnically German”. This “objectivity” of individual classification is also and essentially a fiction; it ignores the inevitable subjective component, which offers to the “mixed” descendents of “Native Americans” and “Whites” – and to the descendents of Roma and Sinti – the option to choose a particular identity.
This individual possibility of choice – of a “White” or “Indian”, and a Roma or non-Roma identity – is obviously limited, especially when the intensity of difference is elevated by social reasons.
For example, anti-Semitism: The secularization of anti-Semitism, at first religiously motivated, turned the category “Jew” into an issue of “blood”, in which the Holocaust was inherent as a logical idea – regardless of the individual choices of those human beings whom the Nuremberg Racial Laws (of Nazi-Germany) declared “objectively” as Jews.
For example, “visible minorities”: This term, used in the British discourse, points to the inevitability of ethnic (“racial”) categorization on the basis of physiological features. Britons who are “recognizable” as “Black” or “Indian” cannot escape this labeling by means of individual choice.
Notwithstanding these and other examples of the inevitability of ethnic categorization, it must be acknowledged that, in many cases, the subjective component of ethnic identity does indeed offer choices, and that societal developments can increase or diminish these choices.
This is strongly corroborated in the example cited by Robert Dahl in his study on “New Haven” (Dahl 1961, 44-51). In an immigrant society like the US, the inevitability of a primarily (or exclusively) ethnically determined identity decreases with the degree of integration. In the US, German and Irish, Italian and Russian immigrants were (are) primarily Germans and Irish, Italians and Russians in the beginning. Politically, they displayed an ethnically determined electoral behavior – they voted almost exclusively for representatives of “their” ethnic group. But within the group of the Italian-Americans, for instance, the identity shifted increasingly – as a result of the process of integration – from “Italian” to “American”. The outcome is a decrease and ultimately, the end, of an ethnic electoral behavior: Eventually, Italian-Americans no longer vote according to their ethnic origin, but instead according to their perceived class, gender or generation-specific interests. The specific identity disintegrates politically.
In the example offered by Robert Dahl, the exception to this process of integration, continuing through two or three generations, are the African-Americans; the process of the integration of “Black” and “White” proceeds at a significantly slower pace. Even after several generations, African-Americans – in New Haven and elsewhere – continue to vote mainly along ethnic (or “racial”) lines of conflict. Their identity is an expression of their very strongly felt exclusion, both historical and current; their identity remains primarily related to origin.
(Multi)Culturalism as a Question of Power
Dahl’s example of New Haven demonstrates that the different concepts of integration, fusion, or coexistence of single ethnic groups and their cultures cannot be considered independently from the question of power in society. For African-Americans, access to power in society is, after all, more difficult than for Americans of various European ethnic identities. As such, the specific identity of African-Americans, which is also politically measurable, is more resilient than the identity of Italian- or German- or Irish-Americans.
This resilience is a consequence of relative powerlessness – African-Americans tend to be isolated in a dominantly “white” environment”.[4] They feel more excluded than “white” Americans of European origin. This exclusion and demarcation signifies a lack of economic potential – “black” capital is underdeveloped. Market forces stabilize the exclusion of the – relatively – powerless African-Americans. Their specific culture is isolated as well: The result is not a cooperation (with equal rights), but an isolated juxtaposition of two relatively distinct cultures – the culture of the “Whites” (with some few “token Blacks”) and the culture of the “Blacks”.
This isolation contrasts with the coexistence and cooperation of those ethnic cultures which – in an economically measurable manner – enjoy an approximate equality of power: Italian culinary culture is accepted by Americans of every origin, as much as Irish drinking culture. Liking French wines doesn’t identify anyone as an American of French origin.
Multiculturalism presupposes the empowerment of the relatively weaker cultures to participate in a concrete program of multiculturalism. If Turkish subculture in Berlin is to become a part of an urban culture that considers itself multicultural then, first of all, the positioning of the members of this subculture in the city’s power structure must be analyzed: A German-Turkish multiculturalism that extends beyond festive occasions and shapes everyday life in society must be based on an approximate economic and political equilibrium between the members of the German and the Turkish subcultures, respectively.
That is why societies with an internalized tradition of immigration enable multiculturalism, rather than societies without such an internalized tradition. In the US and Canada, the acceptance of the ethnically or culturally “other” is more likely than in (European and Asian) societies that are based on the fiction of an ethnic, and hence also cultural, homogeneity.
In the US, however, this must also be understood within the context of the various stages in the development of the understanding of a US-American identity. The “First American Nation” was Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and White. The “Second American Nation” was European, Christian-Jewish, and still White. A – potential – “Third American Nation” would renounce all these characteristics in favor of a global multi-culturality, encompassing all identities in general (Lind 1995).
Underlying such a transformation of the idea of the nation – and underlying this partly current, partly potential increase of inclusion – there is, on the one hand, a de-ethnicized notion of nation. In a potential “Third American Nation”, US-American identity is seen less and less in connection with ethnic (“racial”) origin. Identity becomes a product of regional belonging – i.e. life in a specific political system – and of political consensus – i.e. a community of values or, “constitutional patriotism” (Habermas, in Taylor 1994, 107-148).
But accompanying this transformation of the idea of the nation there is, on the other hand, a shift in power relations as well. The “First American Republic” of the 18th and early 19th centuries was also the arrangement of power by white, property-owning men of Protestant belief and British origin. Only when this power arrangement was expanded to include white, but not necessarily property-owning, men of different confessions and various European origins, could the “Second American Republic” of the later 19th and 20th centuries come into being. And the emerging possibility of a “Third American Republic”, which is as much gender-blind as it is color-blind, in which a non-Christian (and non-Jewish) confession is no longer a criterion of exclusion from an all-integrating identity, also requires a significant expansion of the power arrangement.
Until 1960, it was at issue in the US whether a Catholic could become president – the election of Kennedy signaled the ultimate end of the “First American Republic”. The real possibility of electing a woman or an American of non-European origin into the office of the presidency would symbolize the end of the “Second American Republic”. Access to the presidency is only one indicator of a societal arrangement of power. A non-“white” president doesn’t indicate anything directly about the social structure in which “Whites” and non-“Whites” live together – indirectly, though, it would be clear that the (cultural, political) acceptance of non-“Whites” and the underlying power relations had decisively changed towards a new ethnic balance. A woman as president doesn’t prove anything directly about the social position of women – indirectly, though, a female president would be an expression of a changed perception of roles, supported by changing power relations.
This, however, also points to a dilemma of multiculturalism: Without an arrangement of power which guarantees a minimum of equilibrium between those cultures that are invited to participate, the weaker cultures are condemned to a ghettoized existence. But a power arrangement that creates equilibrium also tends to dissolve difference – the precise difference that is a prerequisite for the concept of multiculturalism. Role models become porous, cultural differences become relative. Cultural integration, not multiculturalism, is the outcome.
In peace studies,[5] there is the concept of “associative conflict resolution”. It stands for integration, for the dissolution of the conflict-generating opposition – that is, for the elimination of difference. The counter concept is “dissociative conflict resolution”. It signifies the deepening of difference – the parties in conflict distance themselves from each other; their communication is reduced or cut off.
Multiculturalism represents an “associative conflict resolution” in the domain of cultural conflicts. However, the consequence is not coexistence and cooperation between clearly distinct cultures, but rather the gradual merging of cultures – a process of convergence at the end of which lies a new culture, fed by the hitherto autonomously defined (sub)cultures. A strategy striving to avoid this consequence opts for “dissociative conflict resolution”, which implies an increase of difference, ghettoization, and divergence. Such an increase of difference, though, is not the objective of multiculturalism.
To return to the image of the bridge: Multiculturalism builds a bridge between different cultures. Bridging the differences presupposes a minimum of balance between the banks, the cultures. But as soon as the different cultures use the bridge, they approach one other – tending towards integration. Difference, the existence of which is the prerequisite for the bridge, dissolves gradually. Thus the bridge renders itself superfluous. As such, this is exactly why the builders of the bridge can be inclined, against their ‘conciliatory’ intentions, to preserve the difference and thereby multiculturalism.
If multiculturalism aims at reconciliation, then it must be considered as a tool, as a means to an end – and not as an end in itself. In order not to strengthen what it claims to overcome – namely, the emphasis of difference – multiculturalism must aim at rendering itself superfluous. In order to do justice to its agenda of reconciliation, multiculturalism must have the possibility of integration – not of assimilation – as its real goal: social conditions and relations, in which human beings are ‘empowered’ to define their identity themselves, and to determine their culture themselves.
Ethnic Culturalism Tends towards Simplifying Perceptions
There are not only the cultures of the Turks and the Germans in Berlin – just as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are not only the cultures of the Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats. Alongside these ethnically defined cultures, there are the cultures of women and those of men; there are the cultures of the elderly and those of the youth; there are the cultures of the intellectuals, the peasants, the workers; there are the cultures of the believers and of the non-believers; there are the cultures of the poor and those of the rich.
If one overlooks this diversity of cultures, one also overlooks the most important possibility of counteracting the most massive, extreme forms of culturally motivated exclusion. If culture is only perceived ethnically, then no politically feasible recipe can be identified between the propagated conception of multiculturalism, often well-meaning, and the reality of ethnic exclusion, ethnic cleansing and ethnic killing. If one subscribes to exclusively ethnic attributions of identity and culture, then the failure of the program of a multicultural Kosovo logically implies, in an inevitable way, ethnic expulsion: A Kosovo that is (ethnically) defined as Albanian leaves literally no space for (ethnically defined) Serbian Kosovars.
Such consequences of a fixation on ethnicity are always suffered primarily by those whose ethnic identity cannot be grouped with that of the ‘large’ parties in conflict – i.e., in Central, East and Southeast Europe, the Jews and the Roma. They are the first victims; their flight and expulsion is the first logical consequence of a restricted notion of culture, which knows nothing but Serbian or Croatian or Bosnian or Albanian cultures, nothing but Slovakian or Hungarian or Romanian cultures.
Such an ethnicity-centered notion of culture also obfuscates the possibilities found in “cross-cutting cultures” – in the mixture of gender-specific, education-specific, class-specific, and confessionally specific cultures: Serbian and Albanian women share a common cultural ground which can relativize and undermine a divisive ethnical notion of culture, and eliminate ethnic differences. Slovakian and Hungarian intellectuals, Hungarian and Romanian Christians, Croatian and Bosnian workers – all share a cultural common ground and potentially a common culture, which is precisely not based on ethnicity, stretching across the ethnic cultures that divide them.[6]
Including cultures that are not ethnically defined lends a complexity to the concept of multiculturalism that makes it more stable and less dependent on a single line of conflict: Multiculturalism is then not only the diversity of ethnic (national) cultures with equal rights, but also the diversity of gender and generation-specific, education, class and confessionally specific cultures with equal rights.
Ethnicity is one of several lines of conflict (“cleavages”) that cut across every society (Lipset 1981, esp. 230-278) with which ethnicity engages in a complementary and competitive fashion. What all lines of conflict have in common is that they – potentially – generate identity, and thus culture.
These lines of conflict are – independently from their socially measurable existence – effective in different ways and degrees: Religious differences, for instance, can lead to explosive conflicts in one society (e.g. in Kashmir or Northern Ireland), whereas in other societies, the intensity of their conflict can be decisively diminished (e.g. in Switzerland and in the Netherlands). Differences between the sexes might exist in a measurable degree in certain societies (e.g. in the form of significant differences in life opportunities), and yet be politically irrelevant – whereas in other societies, equally measurable and “objective” contradictions are highly relevant for political conflicts. “Cleavages” can exist in a whole range of forms, from only ‘latent’ to ‘potential’ and ‘manifest’ to ‘acute’ – similar to social fault lines, which indicate possible shockwaves, but do not imply that earthquakes will necessarily have to take place.
The more one single line of conflict dominates at a certain point in time, and the more other lines of conflict appear subordinated to it, the more a conflict takes the character of a dichotomous and ‘fundamentalist’ clash. The more, for instance, gender and religion, class and generation, are subordinated to ethnicity as their defining factor, the more difficult it becomes to deal with the social reality of difference in a peaceful manner.
As a result the subordination, or categorization, of other culture-generating factors into an exclusively ethno-national notion of culture neglects the pacifying potential inherent to the “cross-cutting” of lines of conflict and of cultures: Women of different ethnicities feel bound to each other by a specific female culture, intellectuals of different ethnicities by a specific culture of intellectuals, and Christians by a specific Christian culture. Therefore, in their understanding of culture, they are no longer exclusively or primarily determined by ethnic difference. Different circles of identity, of sentiments of “us”, overlap each other – and thus prevent one single sentiment of “us” from becoming dominant.
It is the unequivocal picture drawn by Huntington (Huntington 1996, esp. 26-27) that makes the image of the clash of cultures and civilizations appear so pessimistic. It is the clarity of the borders, which do not seem to allow any relativity or mixture of civilizations, that makes the “clash of civilizations” a prophecy of an inevitable, and inevitably violent, conflict between fundamentalist cultures – exactly because they are so clear-cut. Any ambiguity of cultures and cultural environments implies the relativity of each singular difference – and thus a step towards the falsification of this prophecy.
It is only the understanding that the social circle – which determines affiliation to an ethnic culture – is but one of several circles, and that a person or a social group inevitably belongs to several cultural milieus, gives multiculturalism a pacifying quality.
Conclusion
Multiculturalism is neither a neutral concept, nor one free of interest. It indicates a concern informed by the ideas of human rights, equality, and universalism. But this interest should not lead to a disregard of the functions of culture – culture names differences and, in doing so, creates these differences in the first place and renders them politically relevant. Culture functions, therefore, to establish the differences between “us” and “them”. In the framework of these functions, the concept of culture competes with the concept of “race” – and just as in any competitive relationship, convergence is a possible, even probable, result: Culture expresses in a politically acceptable manner what “race” no longer acceptably, politically expresses.
Multiculturalism is primarily seen in the context of ethno-national conflicts, and against the backdrop of migration. As such, the conception of multiculturalism tends to identify ethnicity as the primary, or exclusive, source of identity and its product, culture – and tends to overlook how greatly identity (and thus, culture) draws from a mixture of social sources; it tends to overlook that ethnicity does not exist alone, but instead always exists in various combinations with the conditions of, for instance, age and gender, religion and education, class and status.
The social mesh consisting of the most diverse, overlapping identities and cultures is inevitably determined by the aspect of power. It is not coincidental that there are expressions like “hegemonic” cultures, “high cultures” and “subcultures”. Cultures are placed in a hierarchical relationship to each other, a relationship that distinguishes between ‘high’ and ‘low’. The depth of hierarchy can be changed; there can be less or more equality (of power) between different cultures. A multicultural concept that wants to serve the socially weak cultures has to first invest them with power – otherwise, these cultures will either disappear (assimilation) or be forced into niches (ghettoization).
Multiculturalism needs differences to channel, in a peaceful way, the potentially destructive energies springing from difference. The ultimate aim of a “positive peace” between conflicting cultures, however, is the elimination of the root of the conflict – i.e., precisely, difference. Therefore, the ultimate aim of multiculturalism as a political program of reconciliation must be the possibility of integration – and, thus, the elimination of the differences that concretely exist (as well as itself). Multiculturalism, to avoid contradicting itself, has to be a ‘self-destroying prophecy’.
If multiculturalism wants to honor its claim, then it must follow a particular program of ‘secularization’ of ethnicity – relativizing the linkage between ethnicity and culture in a policy of emphasizing those other culture-generating identities that exist and compete with ethnicity. Thus multiculturalism also partly frees itself from its functional parallelism with racism – whereas racism indicates a rigid, insurmountable difference in principle, a notion of culture which emphasizes the existing mixture of identities, and is not simply based on origin (ethnicity), makes it possible to live difference peacefully – by means of relativity.
The term multiculturalism designates primarily a political program. This program must not limit itself to the formulation of what should be. In order to be effective, it needs to have a clear picture of what is. Multiculturalism must have a clearer picture of the functions of culture, of the linkage between culture and power, and of the diversity of factors – beyond ethnicity – that generate identity and culture. |
