Multiculturalism

LESSON 1

Pre-reading task

You have already read the text about cross-cultural differences for those who are aiming to visit Great Britain and the USA. But still there exists the problem not to meet all the above mentioned difficulties or to meet the new ones. The main point is that these countries are multicultural. What is your idea, is Ukraine a multicultural country? If you are hesitating in your answer, read the text about the phenomenon of multiculturalism and try to give the grounds for your point of view.

1. The following sentences have been taken out of the text. Where do you think they should go?

A) Hence, the claim that minority cultures, norms, and symbols have as much right as their hegemonic counterparts to state provision and to be in the public space, to be ‘recognized’ as groups and not just as culturally neutered individuals.

B) In France, where intellectual objections to multiculturalism have been most developed, multiculturalism is opposed across the political spectrum, for it is thought to be incompatible with a conception of a ‘transcendent’ or ‘universal’ citizenship which demands that all ‘particular’ identities, such as those of race, ethnicity, and gender, which promote part of the republic against the good of the whole, be confined to private life.

C) The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European migrants.

1_______It now means the political accommodation by the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality, or religion, the latter being groups that tend to make larger claims and so tend to resist having their claims reduced to those of immigrants.

The ethnic assertiveness associated with multiculturalism has been part of a wider current of ‘identity’ politics which has transformed the idea of equality as sameness to equality as difference. Black power, feminist, and gay pride movements challenged the ideal of equality as assimilation and contended that a positive self-definition of group difference was more liberatory. The rejection of the idea that political concepts such as equality and citizenship can be colour-blind and culture-neutral, the argument that ethnicity and culture cannot be confined to some so-called private sphere but shape political and opportunity structures in all societies, is one of the most fundamental claims made by multiculturalism and the politics of difference. It is the basis for the conclusion that allegedly ‘neutral’ liberal democracies are part of hegemonic cultures that systematically de-ethnicize or marginalize minorities. 2_____

The African-American search for dignity has contributed much to this politics, yet, ironically, it has shifted attention from socio-economic disadvantage, arguably where African-Americans’ need is greatest. For multiculturalism in the US seems to be confined to the field of education and, uniquely, to higher education, especially arguments about the curriculum in the humanities. Academic argument has, however, no less than popular feeling, been important in the formulation of multiculturalism, with the study of colonial societies and political theory being the disciplines that have most forged the terms of analysis. The ideas of cultural difference and cultural group have been central to anthropology and other related disciplines focused on ‘primitive’ and non-European societies. The arrival in the metropolitan centres of peoples studied by scholars from these disciplines has made the latter experts on migrants and their cultural needs. They also enabled critics from previously colonized societies, often themselves immigrants to the ‘North’, to challenge the expert and other representations of the culturally subordinated. These intellectual developments have been influenced by the failure of the economic ‘material base’ explanations of the cultural ‘superstructure’.

The prominence of political theory too is due to a disciplinary dynamic. John Rawls’s focus on justice in a context of value pluralism has led the next generation of political theorists to define their questions more in terms of the nature of community and minority rights than in terms of distributive justice, no less than their social theory peers define it in terms of difference and identity rather than class conflict, and in each case the intellectual framework lends itself to multiculturalism, even when the term itself is not favoured. Multiculturalism has had a less popular reception in mainland Europe. 3 ____ Its prospect has sometimes led to the success of extreme nationalist parties in local and national polls. The implosion of Yugoslavia, with its ethnic cleansing, marks the most extreme reaction to multinational statehood and plural societies, and the political status of historic minorities, including the Roma (gypsies), is a conflictual issue throughout the territories of the former Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires. Many post-colonized states in Asia and Africa are experiencing ethnonationalist and secessionist movements and some, such as India and Indonesia, are also struggling with non-territorial multiculturalism. Malaysia in particular seems to have managed ethnic conflict in a peaceful way.

Comprehension

2. Match the words, taken from the text above, with their definitions: to forge, hegemonic, ethnic assertiveness, national poll, a migrant, minority culture, to emerge, national poll.

· to appear

· tradition for small groups in a community or nation, differing from others in space, language, religion

· cultural and racial strong and confident beliefs

· controlling, leading

· to shape, to create

· a person moving from one place to go to live or work in another

· a survey of public opinion in a country

· actions aiming to become independent secessionist movement

3.Make up sentences of your own with words & phrases from Exercise 2.

LESSON 2

Read the following texts to get more information about multiculturalism. Which texts match to the following titles:

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