Immigrants carry with them the foundations of their cultural identity: The cultural patterns of an immigrant's indigenous community or country of origin can sometimes conflict with social customs and laws of their new county.
See Article History Multiculturalism, the view that culturesraces, and ethnicitiesparticularly those of minority groups, deserve special acknowledgement of their differences within a dominant political culture. That acknowledgement can take the forms of recognition of contributions to the cultural life of the political community as a whole, a demand for special protection under the law for certain cultural groups, or autonomous rights of governance for certain cultures.
Multiculturalism is both a response to the fact of cultural pluralism in modern democracies and a way of compensating cultural groups for past exclusion, discriminationand oppression. Most modern democracies comprise members with diverse cultural viewpoints, practices, and contributions. Many minority cultural groups have experienced exclusion or the denigration of their contributions and identities in the past.
Multiculturalism seeks the inclusion of the views and contributions of diverse members of society while maintaining respect for their differences and withholding the demand for their assimilation into the dominant culture.
Multiculturalism as a challenge to traditional liberalism Multiculturalism stands as a challenge to liberal democracy. That leads to a tendency to homogenize the collective of citizens and assume a common political culture that all participate in.
However, that abstract view ignores other politically salient features of the identities of political subjects that exceed the category of citizen, such as race, religion, class, and sex.
Although claiming the formal equality of citizens, the liberal democratic view tends to underemphasize ways in which citizens are not in fact equal in society. Rather than embracing the traditional liberal image of the melting pot into which people of different cultures are assimilated into a unified national culture, multiculturalism generally holds the image of a tossed salad to be more appropriate.
Although being an integral and recognizable part of the whole, diverse members of society can maintain their particular identities while residing in the collective.
Some more-radical multicultural theorists have claimed that some cultural groups need more than recognition to ensure the integrity and maintenance of their distinct identities and contributions. In addition to individual equal rights, some have advocated for special group rights and autonomous governance for certain cultural groups.
Because the continued existence of protected minority cultures ultimately contributes to the good of all and the enrichment of the dominant culture, those theorists have argued that the preserving of cultures that cannot withstand the pressures to assimilate into a dominant culture can be given preference over the usual norm of equal rights for all.
Curricula from the elementary to the university levels were revised and expanded to include the contributions of minority and neglected cultural groups.
That revision was designed to correct what is perceived to be a falsely Eurocentric perspective that overemphasizes the contributions of white European colonial powers and underemphasizes the contributions made by indigenous people and people of colour.
In addition to that correction, the contributions that cultural groups have made in a variety of fields have been added to curricula to give special recognition for contributions that were previously ignored.
The addition of works by members of minority cultural groups to the canons of literary, historical, philosophical, and artistic works further reflects the desire to recognize and include multicultural contributions to the broader culture as a whole.
Challenges to multiculturalism There are two primary objections to multiculturalism. One is that multiculturalism privileges the good of the certain groups over the common goodthereby potentially eroding the common good in favour of a minority interest. The second is that multiculturalism undermines the notion of equal individual rights, thereby weakening the political value of equal treatment.
Multiculturalism raises other questions. There is the question of which cultures will be recognized. Some theorists have worried that multiculturalism can lead to a competition between cultural groups all vying for recognition and that this will further reinforce the dominance of the dominant culture.
Further, the focus on cultural group identity may reduce the capacity for coalitional political movements that might develop across differences. Some Marxist and feminist theorists have expressed worry about the dilution of other important differences shared by members of a society that do not necessarily entail a shared culture, such as class and sex.
Multicultural politics Multiculturalism is closely associated with identity politicsor political and social movements that have group identity as the basis of their formation and the focus of their political action. Those movements attempt to further the interests of their group members and force issues important to their group members into the public sphere.
In contrast to multiculturalism, identity politics movements are based on the shared identities of participants rather than on a specifically shared culture. However, both identity politics and multiculturalism have in common the demand for recognition and a redress for past inequities.
Multiculturalism raises important questions for citizens, public administrators, and political leaders. By asking for recognition of and respect for cultural differences, multiculturalism provides one possible response to the question of how to increase the participation of previously oppressed groups.Introduction to MulticulturalismImmigration involves not only the movement of peoples, but also the movement of cultures.
Immigrants carry with them the foundations of their cultural identity: language, food, religion, traditions, social patterns, leisure activities, and .
Jul 30, · Our definition was developed for the Strategic Review of Professional Ministry Report (PDF, 64 pages), a deeply important document that was created through the dedication of many staff members.
1. The claims of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is closely associated with “identity politics,” “the politics of difference,” and “the politics of recognition,” all of which share a commitment to revaluing disrespected identities and changing dominant patterns of representation and communication that marginalize certain groups (Gutmann , .
Introduction to Multiculturalism. Immigration involves not only the movement of peoples, but also the movement of cultures. Immigrants carry with them the foundations of their cultural identity: language, food, religion, traditions, social patterns, leisure activities, and family structures.
Multiculturalism in Sociology: Definition, Examples & Criticism. That is what Sonya from the introduction saw as multiculturalism, but that definition, the demographic side, is only one type.
Multiculturalism. Cultural diversity has been present in societies for a very long time. In Ancient Greece, there were various small regions with different costumes, traditions, dialects and identities, for example, those from Aetolia, Locris, Doris and Epirus.