Multiculturalism

12 Key excerpts on "Multiculturalism"

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  The Twilight of Britain

  Cultural Nationalism, Multi-Culturalism and the Politics of Toleration

  • G. Gordon Betts(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  5 Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity Multiculturalism can become a feature of the politics of polarisation and difference, but one that may be presented in terms of the moral imperatives of equality and rights. A philosophical question is: what, if anything, should elevate the toleration of Multiculturalism from being a political and sociological issue into a moral obligation? Multiculturalism is a general term that can mean different things to different people who understandably have a preference which particular version they envisage. A culturally pluralist society could co-exist stably, provided that the toleration is both received and offered by all its component groups, not just by the mainstream society. If this reciprocity is withheld whilst more toleration and rights are demanded, then public practices and political influence of minority cultures should not be automatically acquiesced to by the state. The term Multiculturalism is a neologism that did not appear in the American press until about 1989. Politicians and most writers on the subject do not define it or assume that everyone knows what it means. It is an umbrella term that covers different types of cultural pluralism—a multicultural society is one made up of diverse ethno-national cultures. The exact form it takes differs from country to country depending on the origin, history, and nature of its particular cultural pluralism. The term multicultural as used in this discussion refers to significant sectarian cultural diversity and difference arising from race, ethnicity, and/or religion. There is no single global model of a multicultural society, and it is unlikely that any particular experience can be translated, at least in its entirety, to other situations in the world, so generalisations have to be considered with this in mind. Michael Walzer [1992:168 and 170] observes on the ‘“new tribalism’…

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  Governance in Multicultural Societies

  • Gurharpal Singh, John Rex, John Rex(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3 Multiculturalism and Political Integration in the Modern Nation-State John Rex      

  The question of Multiculturalism has been a central one in the political concerns of European countries since 1945. It covers a number of different issues however and which of them predominates has varied with differing political circumstances. It reflected concern about immigration and the ways in which immigrants might settle in Western Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. After the break-up of the Eastern Block in 1989 and the resurgence of ethnic nationalism in the East it centred around questions of devolution of power from central national governments to regionally based sub-national groups and the possibilities of power sharing at the centre. Thirdly, it has had to deal with the growing numbers of political refugees and asylum seekers in Western Europe. Fourthly, and most recently, in the wake of terrorist attacks on America and the subsequent assertion of American power in the world at large, it has been concerned with the dangers posed by unassimilated immigrant groups.

  It is not the intention of this chapter to deal in detail with each of the structures and processes in all the different political situations to which reference will be made. Rather it seeks to place these situations within an overall conceptual framework and, in doing so, to produce a general theory of Multiculturalism.

  Multiculturalism in Popular Discourse

  There are few terms used more widely in popular discourse in the media and in politics than Multiculturalism. Until recently it was discussed as a positive feature of national societies and cities. Politicians and even monarchs would say ‘We now live in a multicultural society’ and cities would boast that they were now multicultural or, sometimes, cosmopolitan.

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  Multiculturalism in Contemporary Britain

  Policy, Law and Theory

  • Richard T. Ashcroft, Mark Bevir(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In the Editors’ view, contemporary Britain is committed to being a ‘multicultural’ country. This Multiculturalism is, however, understood primarily in terms of race relations rather than cultural difference. This may be problematic. The ‘social cohesion’ recently promoted by government is articulated through traditions, institutions and imagery developed and rooted in prewar Britain, which means the current bipartisan appeal to ‘British values’ is arguably monocultural in orientation even if it is multiracial in application. Widening ‘Britishness’ to include non-whites via a historically conditioned form of civic nationalism seems to grant racial inclusiveness at the price of cultural assimilation; or at least it must do if British national identity is to have any more substantive content than a pastiche of generic liberal-democratic values. In any event, even those more abstract values will clash with some minority cultural beliefs and practices. Contemporary British Multiculturalism is, therefore, in our view not so much ‘Janus-faced’ as caught in two minds. Fears over the perceived threat of immigration to aspects of British national identity seem to have reinforced public resistance against the idea of Multiculturalism (Ashcroft & Bevir, 2016) even as the detail of much multicultural policy remains popular amongst political and intellectual elites (Uberoi & Modood, 2013). Even then, political actors simultaneously reject and affirm ‘Multiculturalism’ as a policy goal and set of practices, employing the rhetoric of an inclusive British Multiculturalism alongside a ‘muscular liberalism’ that implicitly excludes some members of minority cultures. These tensions have rarely been acknowledged, let alone resolved.

  Multiculturalism as policy, law and theory

  The above historical survey of postwar British Multiculturalism helps to contextualize current debates. These debates are comprised, however, of interrelated strands of policy, law and theory. Here we sketch these different aspects of Multiculturalism in the UK and place them against related international discourses.

  Policies addressing Multiculturalism in Britain and elsewhere are necessarily entangled with the detail of legal and normative debates, but public discourse regarding policy towards cultural minorities is often conducted in narrower terms than in law or political theory. In contemporary Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Multiculturalism has become primarily linked in the public mind to issues of race, immigration, national identity and – more recently – security and Islam (Ashcroft & Bevir, in press). The term ‘Multiculturalism’ is usually used in public debates to refer to both the social fact of cultural diversity and also multicultural policies, particularly those aimed at accommodating and integrating long-term minority ethnic immigrants. These policies include education, language, welfare and citizenship rights or requirements. In Britain the dominant conceptualisation of multicultural policy in terms of immigrant integration inevitably taps into anxieties regarding the UK’s role in a globalised world, and fears that the nature of ‘Britishness’ is under threat. Multiculturalism in policy debates is, therefore, entangled with public contests over national identity, even if the implicit role of Empire in ‘Britishness’ is rarely acknowledged.

  We suggest that this narrow conceptualisation of British Multiculturalism in terms of immigrant integration obscures important connections between Multiculturalism and more fundamental issues in law and political theory. In order to flesh out this claim we will examine the legal and philosophical discourses relating to Multiculturalism. An examination of the broader legal context reinforces our analysis of the importance of decolonisation for understanding British Multiculturalism. This in turn highlights that the political theory literature, which on the surface has limited traction on the British case, will in fact help us engage key normative questions. In doing so, we will be forced to reconsider not only the ‘traditional’ policy boundaries of British Multiculturalism, but also prominent ways of framing Multiculturalism as a philosophical issue.

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  Ethnocentric Political Theory

  The Pursuit of Flawed Universals

  • Bhikhu Parekh(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  © The Author(s) 2019 Bhikhu Parekh Ethnocentric Political Theory International Political Theory https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11708-5_10

  Begin Abstract

  10. Reflections on Multiculturalism

  Bhikhu Parekh

  1   

  (1) Politics and International Relations, University of Hull, Hull, UK

   

    Bhikhu Parekh

  Keywords

  Culture Integration Social cohesion

  End Abstract

  In recent years Multiculturalism has been subjected to considerable criticism and held responsible for all sorts of ills such as social fragmentation, ghettoisation, lack of patriotism and even terrorism. The criticism is deeply misguided. It homogenises its target and ignores its internal diversity . Secondly, it gives a misleading account of Multiculturalism and virtually borders on a caricature. I shall take each in turn.

  Multiculturalism appeared on the political and philosophical agenda of the West in the 1960s in response to the cultural diversity introduced by assertive national minorities, indigenous peoples, and the badly needed immigrants from the developing countries. Various views were canvassed about the proper response to diversity , Multiculturalism being one of them. Multiculturalism developed, among other things, against the background of colonialism and the underlying ideology of a cultural hierarchy. It represented a reaction against and a rejection of cultural hierarchy, and implicitly or explicitly advocated cultural equality , meaning not so much the substantive equality of different cultures as their equal right to exist and flourish.

  Multiculturalism holds that the liberal society’s response to cultural diversity should be guided by three values that are central to it, namely liberty , equality and national unity. Minorities should not be subjected to coercive assimilation and should be free within the limits of the law to maintain their identity . They are entitled to equal treatment, and should not be subjected to discrimination and disadvantages on cultural grounds. Finally cohesion and stability of the receiving society requires that minorities should be integrated into it, become its valuable members like the rest and play their full part in it. The central concern or problematic of Multiculturalism was how to combine diversity and unity without violating the liberty and equality of minorities. It was not about creating unity out of diversity because the wider society was already united, but rather about how to accommodate the new diversity within the existing unity. Although Multiculturalism was initially conceived within the liberal framework, it acquired over time several new features drawn from other traditions, such as affirmative action and differentiated rights

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  Rethinking Nationalism and Ethnicity

  The Struggle for Meaning and Order in Europe

  • Hans-Rudolf Wicker(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6 Multiculturalism and Political Integration: The Need for a Differentiated Citizenship? Matteo Gianni

  Although Multiculturalism cannot be considered a new phenomenon, its political relevance in the western democracies seems to be increasing. The problems posed by immigration, the resurgence of nationalist movements and the claims of disadvantaged sociocultural groups most likely represent, ‘the greatest challenge facing democracies today’ (K ymlicka, 1995b: 1). Multiculturalism poses a very large range of political, economic, social and anthropological questions. In this paper, I will primarily focus my attention upon those questions which are political in nature. More precisely, I will examine the theoretical relationship between Multiculturalism and citizenship. After having established the descriptive characteristics of the phenomenon, I intend to discuss the relevance of certain procedural and substantial principles which could (or should) govern liberal and democratic multicultural societies. My analysis aims to propose answers to two basic questions: does Multiculturalism implicate theoretical changes in the normative construction of citizenship? How can a political community preserve its integration and social unity while acknowledging the claims of the ethnic, national, religious and other cultural groups which are a part of it?

  According to Taylor, one important way to take the claims of cultural minorities seriously is to offer political recognition to these minorities. For him, multicultural societies ‘can break up, in large part because of a lack of (perceived) recognition of the equal worth of one group by another’ (1994: 64). The politics of difference represent a new way of understanding citizenship. The claim for recognition by the liberal state of the groups’ cultural specificity involves a reappraisal of the universalistic categories underlying the liberal conception of citizenship. As Taylor puts it, the politics of difference ‘asks that we give acknowledgement and status to something that is not universally shared’ (1994: 39). Therefore, the politics of difference propose an alternative conception of political integration. This form of integration is not based upon a model of citizenship and equality blind to the cultural attributes of individuals, but rather takes these differences into account. Such is the notion of ‘differentiated citizenship’. It expresses the idea that persons have to be integrated into the political community not only as individuals, but also as members of a cultural group. In such a case, citizenship would depend, in part, upon cultural identity. According to Young (1990: 17 4), ‘a culturally pluralist democratic ideal supports group-conscious policies not only as means to the end of equality, but also as intrinsic to the ideal of social equality itsel(Groups cannot be socially equal unless their specific experience, culture and social contributions are publicly affirmed and recognized’. According to this perspective, it is possible to define a complex model of citizenship based upon a dual system of rights, namely ‘a general system of rights which are the same for all, and a more specific system of group-conscious policies and rights’.

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  Rethinking National Identity in the Age of Migration

  The Transatlantic Council on Migration

  • (Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Bertelsmann Stiftung

    (Publisher)

  6

  The social democratic discourse of civic integration differs from the radical-right discourse in emphasizing the need to develop a more inclusive national identity and to fight racism and discrimination, but it nonetheless distances itself from the rhetoric and policies of Multiculturalism. The term post-Multiculturalism has often been invoked to signal this new approach, which seeks to overcome the limits of a naïve or misguided Multiculturalism while avoiding the oppressive reassertion of homogenizing nationalist ideologies.7

  What Is Multiculturalism?

  A Misleading Model

  In much of the post-multiculturalist literature, Multiculturalism is characterized as a feel-good celebration of ethnocultural diversity, encouraging citizens to acknowledge and embrace the panoply of customs, traditions, music, and cuisine that exist in a multiethnic society. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown calls this the “3S” model of Multiculturalism in Britain – saris, samosas, and steel drums (Alibhai-Brown 2000).

  Multiculturalism takes these familiar cultural markers of ethnic groups – clothing, cuisine, and music – and treats them as authentic practices to be preserved by their members and safely consumed by others. Under the banner of Multiculturalism, they are taught in school, performed in festivals, displayed in media and museums, and so on. This celebratory model of Multiculturalism has been the focus of many critiques, including the following:

  – It ignores issues of economic and political inequality. Even if all Britons come to enjoy Jamaican steel-drum music or Indian samosas, this would do nothing to address the real problems facing Caribbean and South Asian communities in Britain – problems of unemployment, poor educational outcomes, residential segregation, poor English language skills, and political marginalization. These economic and political issues cannot be solved simply by celebrating cultural differences.

  – Even with respect to the (legitimate) goal of promoting greater understanding of cultural differences, the focus on celebrating “authentic” cultural practices that are “unique” to each group is potentially dangerous. First, not all customs that may be traditionally practiced within a particular group are worthy of being celebrated or even of being legally tolerated, such as forced marriage. To avoid stirring up controversy, there’s a tendency to choose as the focus of multicultural celebrations safely inoffensive practices (e.g., cuisine or music) that can be enjoyably consumed by members of the larger society. But this runs the opposite risk, of the trivialization or Disney-fication of cultural differences (Bissoondath 1994), ignoring the real challenges that differences in cultural and religious values can raise.

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  On Not Speaking Chinese

  Living Between Asia and the West

  • Ien Ang(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The new politics of race and national identity in Australia With Jon Stratton

  DOI: 10.4324/9780203996492-8

  Multiculturalism is a centrepiece of official government policy in Australia. It is a top–bottom political strategy implemented by the state to accommodate the inclusion of ethnic minorities within the national culture and to ‘manage cultural diversity’. This policy has been in place since the early 1970s – a few years later than Canada, where the term ‘Multiculturalism’ was first introduced into state discourse – and it has been widely touted as a repudiation of an exclusionary, homogenizing, even racist past, in favour of an inclusionary, pluralist and equitable recognition of the diverse ethnic groups living within the boundaries of the nation. In this sense, Multiculturalism in Australia can be seen, to an important extent, as a form of symbolic politics aimed at redefining national identity. By the early 1990s, the description of Australia as a ‘multicultural nation’ had become commonplace in public discourse, and then Prime Minister Paul Keating could characterize the country fondly as ‘a multicultural nation in Asia’. This official discourse of Multiculturalism revels in the ‘enrichment’, both economic and cultural, provided by the presence of a plurality of cultures within the nation, and appeals to the citizenry by asking them to join in the chorus of ‘celebrating our cultural diversity’ (Hage 1994) . Multiculturalism, in this sense, is ideologically inscribed in the very core of the ‘new Australia’, a key element of national cultural policy which could draw active support from Liberal and Labor governments alike from the early 1970s onwards.1

  In the late 1990s, however, a backlash against Multiculturalism gathered pace, coming mainly from conservative circles. During the 1996 elections, Keating's Labor Government suffered a crushing defeat. Keating's exuberant extolling of the virtues of Multiculturalism – together with his enthusiasm for Australia's integration with Asia and his high-minded commitment to reconciliation with Aboriginal people – was widely cited as one major explanation for the defeat. These same elections brought to the fore reactionary populist forces which explicitly denounced Multiculturalism. A fish-and-chip shop owner-turned-politician, Pauline Hanson, gained a seat in Parliament as an Independent, on an election campaign which attacked the core of Keating's political agenda on the grounds that it did not represent the interests of ordinary, white Australians like herself. She slammed the special treatment of Aboriginal people (whom she considered were getting privileges not accessible to people like herself) and condemned Asian immigration because, as she put it, ‘they don't assimilate and form ghettos’. On top of this, she wanted the policy of Multiculturalism ‘abolished’ (Hanson 1997a) .2

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  Multiculturalism

  A Critical Introduction

  • Michael Murphy(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  This process of assimilation and absorption, which Walker Connor describes as majority nation-building through minority nation-destroying, would eventually become a standard feature of political development and state formation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Connor 1999: 29–66; Kymlicka 2001: 229–34). A generation of liberal modernization theorists writing in the 1950s and 1960s also welcomed the assimilation of ethnocultural and ethnonational minorities as a necessary by-product of the forward march of economic development and democratic consolidation, as did the architects of the post-second world war liberal international order, who viewed minority rights and strong minority identities as a threat to peace and stability both within and between states (Moreno 2001: 201–2; Anaya 2004; Harty and Murphy 2005: 41–3). Minority claims, it was hoped, could be satisfied by the extension of universal individual human rights and the benefits of equal citizenship within the bounds of an indivisible sovereign state.

  However, as we know already from the discussion in Chapter 4 , many nationalizing states have not been able to effect the total erasure of minority identities, or to prevent individuals or groups from mobilizing around these identities politically. Indeed, multicultural political philosophy was in many ways a response to the limited success of majority nation-building in practice. Initially, multiculturalists advanced their case almost exclusively in moral terms, and spent the bulk of their energies arguing against the perceived injustices of the liberal-assimilationist model of nation-building. In contrast, the potential impact of minority rights and group-differentiated citizenship regimes on things like stability, societal integration and national unity received hardly a mention in this early literature (see e.g. Kymlicka 1989; Young 1990; and Taylor 1992).4 Nevertheless, this period of inattention proved to be fairly short-lived, and the champions of Multiculturalism were soon called upon to respond to a very powerful critique of multicultural policies that focused precisely on the threat they posed to the social bases of citizen solidarity in a democratic society. It is to this critique that I now turn.

  According to the critics, multicultural policies are corrosive of social solidarity in several different ways, and they work their effect on the dispositions of members of both minority and majority cultures. One argument is that multicultural policies promote a form of ethnic ghettoization that encourages the members of different cultural groups to retreat behind the boundaries of their own group based identities, to focus on what divides them from their fellow citizens rather than on what they have in common, and to orient their interests and their allegiances inward towards the group rather than outward towards the broader national community of which they are a part (Cairns 1993: 200; Miller 1995: 153–4; Beiner 1995: 6, 192–3, 2003: 211; Barry 2001: 79–80).5

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  The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity

  National Contexts, Global Issues

  • Andrew Dawson, Andrew Dawson(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Beaman, 2012 ). Such religio-cultural provisions and accommodations pertain to various aspects of public life and include, for example, education (e.g. curricula content and faith schools), employment (e.g. working schedules and task allocation), regulatory frameworks (e.g. ritual slaughter and building construction), and institutional contexts (e.g. diet, dress, and rites). Subsequent chapters by Kim and Singh (India), Burchardt (South Africa), Castro (Brazil), and Halafoff (Australia) treat some of these matters as they relate to immigrant communities or minority groups in their respective contexts of concern.

  The processes and dynamics allied with immigration, religious juridification, and multiculturalist identity politics combine to problematize the Western liberal paradigm and its conventional differentiation between public secular (political-social) and private religious (familial-individual) spheres. Though by no means the only protagonist, Jürgen Habermas has been the most prominent exponent of liberalism to reappraise its secularist foundations in light of religion’s new-found prominence within increasingly diverse ‘post-secular’ Western societies. Whereas Habermas steadfastly refuses to compromise on ‘the requisite institutional separation of religion and politics’ (i.e. ‘that only secular reasons count beyond the institutional threshold that divides the informal public sphere from parliaments, courts, ministries and administrations’), he nevertheless accepts that post-secular conditions require both the ‘neutral state’ and its ‘secular citizens’ to recognize religion’s legitimate place within the ‘polyphonic complexity’ of modern society’s ‘diverse public voices’ (2006: 9; 2008: 29). As Bouma et al., maintain, such recognition of religion’s legitimate public presence constitutes a ‘significant change’ to the ‘secular contract’ in which ‘old modes of construing religion vis-à-vis wider society and governance are being rethought’ and by which states are increasingly ‘taking notice of their religious dimension in a quite new way’ (2010: 256). The relationship between governance and religion to which Bouma et al.

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  Multiculturalism Question

  Debating Identity in 21st Century Canada

  • Jack Jedwab(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • McGill-Queen's University Press

    (Publisher)

  Whether it is minority businesses being successful, minority kids doing well in school, or even Ujjal Dosanjh becoming the first South Asian–immigrant premier of British Columbia – all of these are possible because Multiculturalism encourages a sense of belonging among minorities and the confidence to realize their full potential in a diverse society. Citing such positive experiences, Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka, internationally renowned theoretician of Multiculturalism and its recognition of minority cultures, announced in his 1998 book, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada, “The Multiculturalism program is working.” 5 The international context has influenced this Canadian debate only slightly. The initial international reception of Canada’s Multiculturalism, adopted as policy in 1971, was quite warm. A Multiculturalism policy was adopted in 1978 by Australia and in the 1980s and 1990s by a number of European countries, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In 1997, an international consensus was proclaimed by American sociologist Nathan Glazer in his book We Are All Multiculturalists Now. 6 But if there was an international consensus, it was upended by the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the war on terrorism, and various related events, including the 2004 Madrid bombing, the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, more bombings in London, and widespread disturbances in Maghreb communities in France. Suspicion focused on Muslim immigrants generally, fuelled by criticism of Islamic attitudes toward women, as symbolized by head scarves and veils. Doubts were raised about the whole idea of support for minority cultures. US and British academic critics, including Brian Barry, Samuel Huntington, and Amartya Sen, 7 added weight to the backlash

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  Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism

  • Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Geoffrey Brahm Levey(Authors)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  If comparison and contrast are essential to the quest for understanding, as they surely are, then it is appropriate that the Australian case also be included in our store of political thinking on Multiculturalism. Australia has had a generally successful experience with creating and managing a culturally diverse society based on liberal democratic norms. It also occupies an intermediate position—politically, institutionally, and culturally—between the dominant Western spheres of “Old World” Europe and the “New World” of North America, and thus affords a unique vantage point for considering wider debates on Multiculturalism.

  This book, then, seeks to bring the Australian context into the discussion of Multiculturalism in contemporary political theory. It critically examines the challenges, possibilities, and limits of Multiculturalism as a governing idea in liberal democracies, with special attention to the Australian case. Some contributors draw on Australian examples to make or evaluate general arguments, some consider the implications of a particular philosophical argument for Australian democracy, while others evaluate official Australian Multiculturalism directly. All, however, are concerned with the theoretical implications of Australia’s attempt to manage an immigrant-rich, culturally diverse population and thus address some of the central questions of concern to political theorists and liberal democracies today.

  In the remainder of this chapter, I will briefly profile Australia’s multi-cultural society and move to adopt Multiculturalism as official policy; identify some normative features of the Australian policy; consider the Howard government’s apparent retreat from Multiculturalism in its final year in office; and outline the contents of the book.

  Multiculturalism FOR A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

  Australia was home to a culturally diverse population even before European settlement. Indigenous Australians comprised hundreds of distinct tribal groups and languages. The First Fleet of European settlement in 1788 also included a variety of ethnic backgrounds among its assortment of officers and convicts. The gold rushes of the nineteenth century along with the opportunities of a new society attracted Chinese, Afghanis, and Italians, among others, in search of better lives. Religious intolerance at home saw German Old Lutherans establish a significant presence—and one of Australia’s renowned wine-growing regions—in South Australia from 1838. Nevertheless, multiculturalism as a political idea and public policy regime is a latter twentieth-century development. The term Multiculturalism entered Australian parlance in 1973 following its introduction some years earlier in Canada.2

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  The Social Psychology of Everyday Politics

  • Caroline Howarth, Eleni Andreouli(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  One of the issues that the chapters raise, although in some it is implicit, is the new societal order implied by the presence of multicultural societies. Is this representation antagonistic to a monocultural nation? Do different global identities presume different representations of the social order? Have we moved from race to social diversity? In this new era, how can one avoid being considered nationalist or racist? What is the “allowed” content of the different categories one can affiliate with? Are minorities in power and, if so, how can they negotiate their positions? Has Multiculturalism succeeded or failed? All these are questions asked in the chapters, and I am sure that the reader will find food for thought about the processes in action in current societies. These are questions of concern for every citizen, and in that respect, they constitute questions of everyday politics. It is not a matter of specialists like us, social psychologists and other social scientists, to say, for example, whether Multiculturalism has failed or not. The answer to this question for politicians and citizens alike is strategic and ideological and thus political.

  As Howarth rightly observes, Multiculturalism enters the political arena because it challenges the hegemonic view that only monocultural societies are cohesive. Is this idea a social psychological fact? Inasmuch as it is the outcome of anchoring and objectification processes that translate social regulations into ways of thinking, I would say that we are in the presence of a social representational mechanism. Can we imagine that another social psychological outcome is possible? The answer is definitively positive, but this could happen in the presence of other social regulations.

  It is important, in my view, to take into consideration that we are studying social psychological phenomena in a context where neoliberal capitalism prevails. In that respect, the social regulations that guide, at the level of the metasystem (Doise, 2012; Doise & Valentim, 2015; Moscovici, 1976), the way people give meaning to their identities and social environments are those of the capitalistic system. We therefore need to investigate the hegemonic and polemical representations (Moscovici, 1988) that fight each other today and understand who is producing them and for what purpose. The choice of the nation or of a global sphere as the arena of politics depends on the constraints that the system imposes and the interests of the different social agents.

  Within the approach developed here, embracing a consensual universe, social categories cannot be treated in their cognitive aspect without embedding them into the social system and the ideologies that emerge. Thus, talking about less or more inclusive, superordinate categories corresponds to the projects that social agents have and the opportunities offered to pursue them. Different superordinate categories might refer to different representations of the social order and therefore might have different social psychological consequences and societal implications. As it is discussed in the chapter by Gleibs and Reddy, both anticapitalistic and Muslim identities make reference to supranational categories, but they have different societal implications. I would argue that this is because they refer to different representations of the social order.

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