Nation-states must balance social cohesion against recognizing diversity.

Evidence

Universal citizenship and the cultural neutrality of the state are two cornerstones of Western liberal universalism. Of course, citizenship rights have never been universally applicable—either to African Americans at the hands of the founding fathers or to colonial subjects at the dispensation of imperial rule. This gap between ideal and practice, between formal and substantive equality, between negative and positive freedom, has haunted liberalism’s conception of citizenship from its inception. As to the cultural neutrality of the liberal state, its achievements are not to be lightly discarded. Religious toleration, free speech, the rule of law, formal equality, and procedural legality, a universal franchise—though seriously contested—are positive achievements. However, the neutrality of the state only works when a broad cultural homogeneity among the governed can be assumed. This assumption has indeed underpinned Western liberal democracies until recently. Under the new multicultural conditions, however, this premise seems less and less valid. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 358 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Religious interest groups in Israel and other supporters elsewhere of a restrictively ethnohomogeneous Israel consequently are concerned to control the conception and administration of “the true and pure Jew.” This is a commitment not that logically far removed in the end from the likes of the “one drop rule.” This idea of Israel requires “the Palestinian problem” to justify itself as the Jewish state, much as Germans required the racial logics of “the Jewish problem” and America “the Negro problem” to constitute themselves in earlier moments as self-projectedly homogeneous. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 585 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Baumann stresses that he does not ‘call one discourse true and the other false’ (11), instead of exploring how different discourses emerge and circulate within different structural and interactional contexts. He attributes the continuing dominance of bounded ideas of culture to the incentives and pressures of a multicultural policy regime, which requires minorities to present themselves as members of authentic and distinct cultures, while he associates the latter discourse with everyday interactions and mixing. He thus argues that absent state-driven ‘competition predicated on ethnic or religious … criteria … Southallians’ definition of culture might well come to parallel anthropologists’ definitions of culture’, as something fluid, contingent, and performative (197; for Baumann’s elaboration of this anthropological definition, 11–13). — Farhan Samanani, Conviviality and its others, 22 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Nation-states require racialized others to justify their claimed homogeneity — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 585; Multicultural coexistence requires simultaneously pursuing equality and the recognition of difference. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 155; Liberal citizenship theory excludes communal identity from public recognition because diversity complicates state mediation — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 880 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Nation-states require racialized others to justify their claimed homogeneity #complicates (0.78) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 585
• Liberal state neutrality presupposes cultural homogeneity among the governed #complicates (0.78) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 358
• Multicultural policy regimes pressure minorities into presenting themselves as bounded distinct cultures. #complicates (0.74) — Farhan Samanani, Conviviality and its others, 22