Critical multiculturalism links culture to power while retaining group-based emancipatory politics

Evidence

Critical multiculturalism combines both structural and culturalist concerns - linking culture to power, and multiculturalism to antiracism - in its deconstruction and critique of the organization of modern nation-states. Critical multiculturalism also engages actively with postmodernist conceptions and analyses of identity, while holding onto the possibility of an emancipatory, group-based politics. And, perhaps most importantly, critical multiculturalism provides a defensible, credible, and critical multiculturalist paradigm which can act as a template for a more plural, inclusive, and democratic approach to nation-state organization in this new century. Glazer, as much as he might not have wished it, may actually be proved right after all - it looks like multiculturalism, and its social and political consequences, are here to stay. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 953 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The durability of multiculturalism, despite heightened suspicion of Muslims and an increasingly integrationist official discourse, draws our attention to its protean qualities. We might almost say that another kind of multiculturalism has come into being, bypassing the socially liberal political and experiential varieties—a multiculturalism that can be reconciled to the market orientation of the modern liberal nation. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 184 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Will Kymlicka suggests a mutually transformative relationship between neoliberalism and the multicultural contexts in which it operates, what he calls “a dense field of social relationships” that condition neoliberalism’s impact. He records how multiculturalism began with the increasing incorporation of minority rights by liberal states in the West, enshrining recognition of difference within a system where state regulation and intervention were recognized tools used to curb the effects of markets’ cyclical flux. With the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, multiculturalism was initially seen as “unjustified interference in the market in response to ‘special interests,’ ” a sort of extension of the welfare system neoliberals opposed and a misuse of government funds. Yet the survival of multiculturalism in the teeth of this attack has to do less with its own politically compromised nature than with a new attitude among neoliberals, who gradually came to see the market potential of multiculturalism. If interventionist social liberalism could use multiculturalism as a way to better integrate minorities into nations, surely it was possible to use the same identitarian impulses to integrate them into global markets. Thus, according to Kymlicka, the aim became to draw on the unique, saleable characteristics of minorities to create commodities for markets and to extend the reach of such markets using the cultural knowledge minorities could bring to the table. In short, the idea was to create “not a tolerant national citizen who is concerned for the disadvantaged in her own society, but a cosmopolitan market actor who can compete effectively across state boundaries.” Leonie Sandercock explains his kind of business-friendly multiculturalism, sometimes known as “commercial multiculturalism,” as assuming “that if the diversity of individuals from different communities is recognized in the marketplace, then the problems of cultural difference will be dissolved through private consumption, without any need for a redistribution of power and resources.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 185 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Critical multiculturalism links culture to power and antiracism — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 953; Neoliberal multiculturalism masks racist imperial policy under Biden; Culturalization treats culture as frozen and divorced from power structures (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Critical multiculturalism pairs culture critique with group-based democratic politics #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 953
• Multiculturalism has mutated into a market-friendly form bypassing social liberalism #complicates (0.76) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 184
• Neoliberalism survived by co-opting multiculturalism into marketable identity commodities #complicates (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 185
• Corporate multiculturalism can function as appeasement for the marginalized #complicates (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 108