As I continue to address that Jake made on a previous post, today I will tackle multiculturalism.
Jake is in blue, I am in green:
I like your post on multiculturalism. However, I found myself wondering when I was done reading it, it is obvious that you don’t like multiculturalism, but you seem to assume it is bad as opposed to posting a substantive argument as to why this should be the case. Surely for conservative readers of your blog this is not a large assumption to make and will likely go unnoticed, but as an anthropologist (and one who claims to know a few things about culture), I still found myself scratching my head and thinking, why is this message to Iranian citizens such a bad thing, because it was phony and contrived. How should the avowed disciple of multiculturalism engage the other who doesn’t share the same multicultural paradigm? Where multiculturalism is a useful, historically located social construct for Western academics in the liberal arts to gain their fair share of grant money, since they can politicize an otherwise apolitical field of inquiry, unfortunately not all cultures have the same social constructs to encourage them to participate in this cult. Despite its best intentions, multiculturalism is a very one-sided engagement with the other, and is therefore inherently and irreparably flawed. and more so why is multiculturalism such a bad thing? because of its strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest (notice the lack of pluralization on the word interest). And why is it such a bad thing particularly in a country as diverse as ours, where just about everyone who claims to have a culture disagrees fundamentally with at least someone else’s view from their “culture” why would we want to encourage a recipe for a melting pot of whiners? Multiculturalism inflates the value of the cultural currency of minority groups and creates value where there is none., Mormons With what essentializing compass do you reductively circumscribe Mormonism as a monocultural phenomenon? certainly not being the most popular of these groups. Many southerners still talk about “the war of northern aggression,” for example. I am assuming you have some field research to back this up, because it feels like a stereotype to me. Honestly, if identifying a monocultural identity is so difficult how is drawing ever smaller circles around multiple cultures in any way a redemptive alternative? At what point do you stop drawing smaller circles? Ultimately, doesn’t the whole multicultural project become an exercise in arbitrary capriciousness? Is this not cultural difference? Cogito ergo sum. Are not two individuals islands of cultural difference? If you don’t think so, many of them certainly tend to think so, and also many of them don’t. When we look to such a rich history of immigration from diverse places of the world that populated this country not to mention the dynamics of time, history, syncretism, adaptation, it seems difficult for me to even begin to imagine whose monocultural stance we are going to adopt as “American.” I would have to begin to imagine that that there is a monocultural American identity that these diverse immigrants are adopting either through a process of assimilation or accommodation. I would also have to begin to imagine that this monocultural American identity is largely the product of cultural discourses and narratives that are mostly rooted if not exemplified by the founding texts of America. My short list of the founding texts of American culture are 1. The Constitution 2. The Bill of Rights 3. The Bible and 4. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I will grant that to their benefit these founding documents do create a space for multicultural exchange. However, I would hesitate to essentialize America as a multicultural country. In other words, I wouldn’t adopt the monocultural stance that we are a multicultural society. This is a small part of American cultural identity usually made more important by liberals who exploit it for political purposes. I am going to take a wild guess that, if this is ever going to happen I don’t think of cultural identity as an event, it is most likely not to be that of the average person in Utah valley however, your average person in Utah Valley probably has no problem adapting their multicultural proclivities to the hegemonic American culture that is rooted in America’s founding texts. Also on another note, your average person in Utah Valley is probably more “multicultural” than your average American. Most Americans haven’t immersed themselves in a foreign culture to the extent that the majority of average Utahns have. So for you to essentialize America as multicultural and then use one of its most multicultural sub-cultures as an antithesis to your claim seems to be something of a paradox. So, again, I ask, why not multiculturalism? On further reflection, I am not opposed to multiculturalism, but I am opposed to the phony, half-assed multiculturalism that liberals use to advance questionable political agendas. What is so bad about it? What parts of multiculturalism (as vague of a concept as it may be so framed) don’t you care for? And why is it so bad that our president should be considerate of the diversity of religious and cultural perspectives not only in our country but among the nations with whom we hope to engage diplomatically? I guess I don’t see engaging someone self-righteously through your own social constructs as considerate. I also don’t overestimate the value of “being considerate” when it comes to international foreign policy. Really, honestly, I can’t seem to figure out why you think multiculturalism is such a bad thing I can’t argue that it is a bad thing, but it certainly isn’t a good or viable or just solution to the world’s problems, except perhaps form a perspective of some type of massive group identity threat, which I don’t think to be the case.
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Quite interesting, in your critique of the essentialism inherent in multiculturalism, you have successfully taken an essentialist stance on those would-be multiculturalists, which conveniently places them in a fairly easy position to critique. Let me defend the concept (or my version of it) from the perspective of one who is equally critical of cultural essentialism.
Your opening comment, in further irony, takes an essentialist stance on Iranians, assuming that all Iranians are hard-line fundamentalists that genuinely could care less about other people that have other outlooks on the world. I assert that this is certainly not the case, but Iran is not necessarily central to this discussion. I also find it interesting that you locate multiculturalism primarily within the academy, which seems to be equated with the politicized movement of multiculturalism. I am not naïve enough to say that multiculturalism has never been used to enhance or perhaps as the basis of a grant application, but the grant money as a sole end of espousing the ideal? Really?!?
You said: “Despite its best intentions, multiculturalism is a very one-sided engagement with the other, and is therefore inherently and irreparably flawed. …because of its strategic use of positivist essentialism in a scrupulously visible political interest (notice the lack of pluralization on the word interest).”
Please tell me, what is this inherently power-seeking and un-noble interest? To breed more multiculturalism? Or just to win grant money? Again, notice that your placement of essentialist assumptions into the paradigm makes it much easier to attack, and I must say there is a bit of a straw man characteristic to this argument. Speaking purely from an anthropological perspective, for example, anthropologists have been writing vehemently against essentialism for over 20 years. You don’t often hear the word “multicultural” from anthropologists, since we tend to use terms such as “cultural relativism,” which certainly have their own philosophical issues and connotational pitfalls. You certainly nod to some of these issues, such as where to draw the culture circle, or where does relativism begin and end. If you would like to have that discussion, I would find it interesting. However, to say that multiculturalism is useless because some cultural perspectives (or even most) don’t value multiculturalism the same way is really an unproductive observation in the first place. I would argue that the multicultural stance that should be advocated for is one that allows for the space for different groups and competing identities to work together or in parallel to one another in allowing maximum space for everyone to seek their conception of what is good in life. I actually tend to prefer the word “cultural pluralism,” but used “multiculturalism” to speak to your original post. However, I think that the type of multiculturalism you are critiquing is not really multiculturalism (even in its original or stated intent), but closer to “liberal imperialism” (see below).
You state: “Multiculturalism inflates the value of the cultural currency of minority groups and creates value where there is none.” To this I would respond that extensive ethnographic work with minority groups, let alone regional variation of “majority groups” has shown significant variation in beliefs and practices that span a diversity and divergent core philosophies such that it would be naïve and nearsighted to say they are all thinking through a singular cultural perspective, unless one’s definition of culture is simply all people living within a defined geographical area. For example, there is a reason they used to call them, “the culture wars.”
Responding to some of your points, I certainly don’t essentialize Mormon “culture,” although I have lived in Utah County long enough to know that there is certainly a salient and perhaps even normative perspective that does so in certain regions of Mormondom. For example, as one who does not espouse ultra-conservative beliefs, my political views are often viewed as outside the realm of the acceptable and perceived-to-be monolithic “Mormon” culture, and criticized as such. If you don’t believe it, I can give you some links to discussions I have had where this very phenomenon has occurred, although the pervasiveness of this stance stretches far beyond blogging. To this I would add that cultural essentialism, in my view, tends to be the norm among humans in general. As an anthropologist who talks to people about culture nearly every place I have lived, it strikes me from my experience (in various places in the U.S., Guatemala, and Thailand, as well as having read ethnographic work done elsewhere) that the default stance is to have an essentialist view of culture. Cognitive processing itself is more amenable to seeing the world and different groups of people in this way, as it is a more efficient way to process information neurologically. However, cultural essentialism is not insurmountable, and it certainly does not preclude making space for other cultural perspectives within one’s political realm, as your post seems to suggest.
As far as your average Utah Valley person being more multicultural than your average American, I would argue that this is not necessarily the case. Living in another country as a missionary is a completely different way of “being” in another country, and indeed any mission certainly develops a culture of its own among those doing the missionary work.
War of Northern Aggression: I am not stating this as a normative view (note the word, “some”) although this stance has been documented as one important identity marker for southern masculinity. And yes, I have spoken with and read other’s empirical fieldwork on this topic, and one professor I know received death threats for his publications on the topic.
As far as your beginning of a description of a singular American cultural identity, when you recognize the breadth of interpretations about these founding documents, you soon begin to see that the resulting identities that result from these variegated interpretations will themselves span a broad spectrum of, dare I say, “diversity.” So then, whose interpretation should I favor? There are certainly diametrically opposing views on the nature of the constitution (e.g., original meaning vs. living document), let alone the Bible. Does your definition suggest that if one doesn’t believe in the Bible, than one is not American? If so, then many Evangelicals will argue that you and I, to some extent, are not American, since we do not believe in the Bible the WAY they do. What about very nationalistic atheists? You allow some room for this (at least nodding to the fact that this will inevitably be the case), but I would suggest that (essentializing assumptions aside, since you injected those into the definition of multiculturalism here), this necessitates a multicultural perspective in government, unless we are willing to let one singular stance on these documents, history, identity, and national goals reign over all others. And, while there are certainly groups who would love to see this happen, I think that a well-thought (e.g. as you would argue, non-essentialist) multicultural approach will allow for the most freedom for diverse groups of people who have diverse conceptions of the good. I would suspect that this brand of multiculturalism might more closely represent the type that you say you are “not opposed to.”
Now, let me surprise you by agreeing with you a bit. First, as a matter of disclosure, I have surely been influenced by the ideas of my adviser and the chair of my committee (Rick Shweder), who has written extensively against what he calls “liberal imperialism.” Perhaps one of the most clear examples of this phenomena would be the fervor and extensive effort that institutions, more often that not liberal ones, have taken against the practice of female circumcision. People who often espouse very liberal values have been adamant in attacking this practice as a vicious form of torture and subjugation, with little consideration of the views of people who actually engage in the practice. Their essentialization and largely un-thought persistence with which people have been willing to force liberal values (to the extent of advocating World Bank policies that refuse investment in countries that don’t pass blanket legislation prohibiting the practice) on people who are operating from a different conception of the good is both surprising and ironic. I won’t engage in the whole debate here, but suffice it to say that when you take into account the views of both those performing and those receiving circumcisions, the stories told by NGOs dedicated to the eradication of the practice don’t seem to cohere with reality, and one can easily be led to question the motives of such NGOs and activists. If you would like to see some of these arguments, try the NY Times’s Tierney Blog, who did a series of blogs on the issues. My point, however, is that this type of liberal imperialism I think better embodies what you are arguing against. Further, it represents a movement that, both in structure and in objectives, is quite similar to the types of conservative imperialism that these same liberals so love to critique.
p.s. for those that don’t know, that comment by the “Interdependent Bloghorn,” is me, Jacob. Perhaps it is relevant to explain here that I chose the name “interdependent…” not simply to juxtapose Ben’s, but because I think I am funny, and appropriated the term from one of the prominent psychological theories of self (which itself has been criticized as quite essentialist) that poses “independent” and “interdependent” as different conceptions of the self that tend to be more prominent in either Western or Asian cultural contexts, respectively.
By the way Ben, what does the “independent” in Independent Bloghorn signify?
We have Deconstructionalism to thank for multiculturalism. I think you have it right when it is stated it is an attempt to politisize apolitical subjects or, more simply, a way to have your sociological cake and eat it too.
Harrison’s last blog post..Sotomayor and Estrada – A Tale of Two Hispanics
Harrison, your connection between deconstructionism and multiculturalism is not at all apparent. Can you elaborate?