Multiculturalism

Conceptual Overview

As a concept, multiculturalism defies easy definitions, because it can simultaneously refer to a movement, a theoretical position, a social policy, and a descriptive condition (e.g., multicultural societies or multicultural organizations). Multiculturalism is best understood as a by-product of the countercultural movement of the 1960s that swept through parts of North America and Western Europe, mobilizing considerable opposition to the white/Western cultural value system that was quite firmly entrenched at that time.

The roots of multiculturalism are to be found substantially in the Anglo-American contexts of postcolonial hybrid societies, where institutions continued to operate along principles of monoculturalism. Early discussions of multiculturalism took place primarily in educational circles with the intent of revitalizing the existing curriculum by including multiple and different voices that more adequately represented a spectrum of diverse social identity groups along gender, race, and ethnic lines. These tenets of multiculturalism swiftly spread to other institutions such as government, business, and the media, where similar discussions began to take place.

At its core, multiculturalism is mainly concerned with the inclusion of cultural differences over and above the formal admittance of individuals from diverse social groups into a range of organizations. Multiculturalism is therefore explicitly committed to going beyond tokenism by spurring fundamental cultural changes at an institutional level. In the field of education, this took the form of advocating the replacement of certain classic or canonical literary texts with texts that represented hitherto excluded identity groups (e.g., the works of Toni Morrison or Gabriel Garcia Marquez). In organization studies, multiculturalism implies the need for deep-seated changes in organizational culture in addition to the demographic changes that are taking place through more inclusive hiring and promotion practices.

Charles Taylor (who is often credited with being one of the leading philosophers of multiculturalism) asserts that the roots of multiculturalism can be found in the growing preoccupation with identity that characterizes much of late Enlightenment thinking. The increased salience of identity in Western consciousness has resulted in vociferous demands that societies both accept and recognize multiple identity groups. Taylor explicitly sees this as a shift from requiring tolerance of difference to requiring a recognition and even celebration of difference. Multiculturalism thus grew out of and continues to be closely intertwined with a range of identity politics, or what Taylor refers to as a “politics of recognition.” As a concept, multiculturalism derives some of its significance from its divergence from cultural assimilation—a model that has had sustained popularity in hybrid societies since the mid-20th century. Cultural assimilation, best characterized by the metaphor of the melting pot, is committed to the principle of cultural [Page 927]absorption, whereby newcomers and outsiders are required to relinquish substantial segments of their own cultural identities in order to blend into the dominant culture. By contrast, multiculturalism is built on cultural pluralism—a position that holds that harmonious coexistence and repeated interactions between diverse identity groups is more effective and ethical. The metaphors most commonly used to describe cultural pluralism are the mosaic and the salad bowl—both signifying the ability of different groups to retain their distinctive identities while still belonging to a larger collective. In essence, at both policy and rhetorical levels, multiculturalism supports the principle of cultural heterogeneity within any social entity or institution.

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