BLACKHEATH PHILOSOPHY FORUM

"Multiculturalism and Resentment "

Duncan Ivison, Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney

[**Please note: These are speaking notes and thus are a bit rough, without the usual polish of publishable prose, and lacking appropriate references etc. So it's not intended for citation without permission. Please get in touch if you would like a more complete version with appropriate references etc.: duncan.ivison@arts.usyd.edu.au]

Philosophers often distinguish between two ways of talking about a concept - descriptively and normatively. In the first case, we are basically describing something to be the case, and in the second we are recommending something, saying something should be the case. This is a useful way to start our discussion about multiculturalism, because we often talk about it in these different ways, often mixed together. On the one hand, 'multiculturalism' describes a certain state of affairs in modern liberal democratic societies, especially in light of the large migration flows occurring in different parts of the 20th and 21st century. Our societies just are multicultural - populated by individuals from many different parts of the world who identify with (in varying respects) different ethnicities, religions and nationalities. This is the multiculturalism we experience when we walk down the street in most parts of Sydney; a plethora of different faces, nationalities, cultural practices, symbols and languages all jumbled together. [Or in the novels, say, of Zadie Smith.] It's just a fact about the way we live now. On the other hand, we also talk of multiculturalism as something we ought to promote or respect; as embodying a normative commitment of some kind. This notion lies behind two pioneering attempts by Canada and Australia, in the 1970s, to actually legislate in relation to multiculturalism; to make it part of the national public policy framework in terms of how each country deals with its migrant populations, and in relation to its conception of citizenship more generally. And it is this notion that is coming under sustained scrutiny or attack these days, especially in light of the current state of global politics and especially the war on terror. Some have even suggested that, for all intents and purposes, multiculturalism - in this normative sense at least - is dead. But since it's hard to imagine that our societies will cease to be multicultural in the first sense, it's not clear what this means. So I want to spend a bit of time getting clear what motivated our normative commitment to multiculturalism in the first place, before turning to some of the challenges it now faces.

People talk as if multiculturalism was a product of the 1970's; a conservative columnist in the Australian newspaper claims it is yet another tainted product of the morally lax era of the 1960's. Although it is true that multiculturalism as a form of explicit public policy emerged in the early 1970s in Canada and Australia, in fact, I would argue that multiculturalism is a direct descendant of a much older set of arguments and phenomena. The multiculturalism worth defending, what I'll call liberal multiculturalism, ultimately emerged from the aftermath of the wars of religion in early modern Europe. It is a close kissing cousin, as it were, of toleration, and the gradual - albeit often painfully slow - detachment of the state from the active promotion of religious orthodoxy. Toleration is a complex concept, deserving of separate treatment, but at the core of the idea of liberal toleration is the idea that the state is not justified in violating people's basic rights in order to promote religious uniformity. For someone like John Locke, for example, although he made a range of different arguments defending toleration (some religious and some pragmatic), one of the most important was an appeal to something like a respect for persons: because people are free and equal they deserve to be treated in certain ways, and one way of expressing that is to respect their basic rights. Now amongst those rights, for Locke, were the freedom to practice your religion as you saw fit, as long as doing so didn't threaten the rights of others (including their religious freedom) or the viability of the state. [Note how the value justifying the practice of toleration - freedom and respect for persons - also provides a way of thinking about its limits. We'll come back to this point in a minute.] Liberal multiculturalism is a direct descendent of the emergence of toleration in both European political thought and practice. It is also directly linked to the emergence of the language of subjective rights - of individual rights - and of the various conceptions of human agency that come with these powerful notions. So when we talk about liberal democratic values - of tolerance, respect for persons, freedom, equality, the rule of law etc. - then for me, multiculturalism bears a direct relation to them. To put it more strongly: liberal multiculturalism is a direct expression of those values. [This is one aspect of the debate in Australia that has been desperately lacking. Defenders of multiculturalism have been far too defensive in not linking MC to the values of toleration, individual rights and respect for persons. MC responds, in part, to some concerns about the hierarchical nature of some forms of toleration. I've tried to say more about this theme in a forthcoming new edition of Locke's writings on toleration (Broadview Press, 2007)]

Here is another way to look at it: The American political philosopher John Rawls, probably one of the most important philosophers of the 20th C, talked about something he called the 'fact of reasonable pluralism'. He saw this as a direct result of the aftermath of the wars of religion in early modern Europe, and as a result saw toleration as central to liberal political thought in general. For him, the fact of reasonable pluralism was the unavoidable product of a society in which people were free to think for themselves, associate with whom they chose and practice whatever faith or beliefs they wanted to practice (consistent with the freedom of others to do likewise). That is, people will develop a range of different beliefs about the nature of justice, for example, that are 'reasonable' but pluralistic. I might think that justice is ultimately grounded in scripture, and you in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. Both are 'reasonable' views in Rawls's terms, meaning that they aren't obviously wrong and are a plausible way of conceiving of what justice ultimately consists in. But Rawls didn't infer from the fact of reasonable pluralism that justice was therefore impossible to realize. Instead he argued that we needed to find a way of thinking about it that didn't rely on our agreeing on the deep structure of justice but only on what he called a 'political conception' of justice. The details of this controversial view need not detain us here. For our purposes what is important are the implications for thinking about the state in all of this. Rawls thinks that just because of reasonable pluralism, the exercise of political power has to be justified in terms that reasonable people can accept. And that means that it can't be justified on the basis of sectarian doctrine. I might well think that 'because Jesus said….' is as good a justification for coercing someone to pay their taxes (or be punished etc.) as one can offer. But you, as good Kantian, or as an atheist, would rightfully find it deeply problematic. To coerce someone on the basis of such a justification is for Rawls to fail to treat them as free and equal - to fail to show them adequate respect. Figuring out exactly what it means to treat someone with equal respect is a tricky philosophical issue. It isn't quite equivalent to giving someone a veto over any possible action that might affect him adversely. Some can be treated with equal respect even if, in the end, they end up having to do something they didn't necessarily want to do. For example, some someone who is a devout Jehovah Witness might insist that their children should not receive a blood transfusion, without which they may die. The idea here is that the state could arguably be justified in insisting that the transfusion occur, all the while respecting the fact that the parents hold their beliefs sincerely. We might look for reasons for doing so that both of us can share, independent of any particular religious belief (we both want our children to be healthy etc.) [But this won't work probably, since the JW's point is that be that as it may, in this case the religious reason take priority.] Or we might say that many policies can't help but burden some people more than others, and as long as we haven't targeted one particular group unjustly on the basis of their beliefs, and there aren't other less invasive ways of achieving the interest at stake, the burden is justified. As you can see, it can be complicated. But the idea of equal respect does not mean simply giving people a veto, or withholding all judgement about the interests and beliefs at stake.

This brings us then to the relation between the state and the kind of ethno-national groups at the heart of debates about multiculturalism. Let me first make a distinction that I borrow from Will Kymlicka, perhaps the leading political theorist on multiculturalism in our time. We need to (try) and distinguish between migrant groups - those people who identify with a particular nation or culture but who come as migrants to a country, and 'national minorities', those groups that identify as a group and who share (or shared) a distinct territory that was incorporated into the larger political over time. This distinction is, in many ways, problematic, and Kymlicka has been criticized about how he draws it, but I want to leave these criticism aside for now. The important thing is to try and make sense of the different claims that different groups and individuals make. So, on this basis, Lebanese Australians are an example of the first, indigenous people (or the Quebecois, or the Scottish) the example of the latter. [Kymlicka thinks this has important implications of the kinds of rights we might grant in relation to them , and we'll come to this in a moment.] Now multiculturalism is often described as a set of demands made by ethnocultural groups on the state. In one sense this is true. The policy emerged at a time when older assimilationist policies were being rejected because the perception was that they licensed often racist or harmful attitudes and policies towards new arrivals, especially non-white migrants, and national minorities, like indigenous peoples. But on the other hand, and I think this is a really important perspective shift, multiculturalism can also be understood as a response by ethnocultural groups to the demands made by the state in efforts to promote integration. In other words, that liberal multiculturalism has been as much about integration as it has been about differentiated citizenship. [And is precisely for this reason that my colleague Ghassan Hage, for example, has complained about the emergence of a form of bad faith multicultural nationalism - a phoney celebration of officially sanctioned difference that in fact leaves various racist attitudes and practices in place. This is an important criticism, although overplayed to some extent.] Recall our discussion of Rawls above and the need to justify the exercise of state power in a non-sectarian way. Well, one familiar response to the worries about assimilation and discrimination on the part of the state towards immigrants and national minorities is to say that the state should be more neutral with respect to ethnocultural identities. But the problem with this is that it is just very hard to do so. There has to be an official language (or languages). The working week has to be organized in a consistent fashion. There will be embedded national symbols and rituals that embody particular historical narratives and cultural norms. And so on. None of these things are bad in themselves, but they will inevitably express a particular set of cultural viewpoints. States embody what Kymlicka calls a distinctive societal culture - a common language and set of social institutions. In a liberal democratic society this culture is pluralistic to be sure, but it still represents a distinctive assemblage of sorts. It is this into which migrants seek to be and are encouraged to be integrated. Now there are good reasons for encouraging this kind of a societal culture. It's part of nation-building, and is crucial to the well-functioning of economies and support for broadly based social programs. And there are better and worse ways of doing it. The multiculturalism policies of the 1970s in Australia and Canada were, I think, an attempt to make the integration process less racially charged and insensitive and to incorporate newly emerging norms of non-discrimination and human rights into public policy. For national minorities like the Quebecois and indigenous peoples, on the other hand, it is less clear. They have usually resisted this kind of integration, and instead fought for different forms of self-government rights and special protections for their societal cultures. They have seen the protection of their language and land rights, for example, as crucial to preserving their societal culture. In the case of both Canada and Australia, especially given that they are federal systems, and given their histories, there should be room for complex types of forms of multiple affiliation that take into account these different forms of identification.

So the upshot then is that multiculturalism has been as much about integrating migrants into the societal culture of Australia or Canada as it is about migrants demanding special privileges. The claims of indigenous peoples or other national minorities are different and shouldn't be simply rolled into the case of migrants. It is often said that multiculturalism is about promoting separatism, and maybe some aspects of it does sometime, but as a general claim it is implausible. What would it mean for a migrant group to separate from mainstream society and attempt to sustain or create its own societal culture? Except in very rare cases - for example, the special situation of the Amish or Hutterites in Canada - it is not only very difficult to do but not really the aim of most migrants. [Compare the efforts of the Quebecois, or some indigenous groups to develop and sustain their societal cultures]. There might well be particular problems with some migrant communities who seek to cut themselves off from mainstream institutions and norms, although this is usually for a variety of reasons, only some of which have to do with multiculturalism. And if we look at what multiculturalism policies actually aim to do, or try to do, then it's clear they aren't usually trying to help migrants create self-governing territories, distinct language ghettoes, or engage in internal 'nation-building' at all. Broadening school curricula, promoting awareness of cultural differences, supporting community events, providing diversity training for police officers etc., are not policies aimed at enabling migrant groups to nation-build.

Having said all this, there are, of course, problems. And it is remarkable the extent to which multiculturalism has come under attack in recent years. Some of this is just plain misunderstanding and mischief making, I think, especially if you accept the link I made between liberal multiculturalism and a set of values to do with individual freedom and equality, toleration, respect for persons and the fact of pluralism. The values that multiculturalism appeals to also provide a way of thinking about its limits. Some critics argue that accepting multiculturalism means being committed to tolerating anything in the name of 'culture'. But this is absurd. The demand that Sikhs be allowed to wear their turbans with police uniforms is not equivalent to a demand that girls be prevented from continuing their education past the age of 11. The latter cannot be taken to be an extension of the 'logic' of multiculturalism, whatever that means. One way of expressing this is to say it is one thing to seek to protect one's ethnic identity (or better: to protect one's identities), but another to impose restrictions on individual freedom in the name of that identity. This is sometimes a difficult line to draw, but liberal democratic practice and theory give us lots of tools to work with. But still, we live in difficult times and multiculturalism does raise a series of difficult issues. I want to turn to a few now, focusing especially on what I am going to call the problem of resentment.

There are two kinds of resentment relevant to the politics of multiculturalism today. The first, which is basically Nietzsche's conception of ressentiment, occurs under conditions in which people are subject to systematic and structural deprivation of things they want (and need), combined with a sense of powerlessness about being able to do anything about it. It manifests itself in terms of a focused anger or hatred towards that group of people who seem to have everything they want, and yet also symbolize their powerlessness to get it. For Nietzsche, of course, it was out of this set of emotions and psychological state of mind that the 'slave revolt' that gave birth to modern morality emerged, supplanting the aristocratic values oriented around good and bad with the reactive and slavish values of those oriented around good and evil. The desire to lash out or take revenge against those who you perceive as keeping you down, keeping you from enjoying all the benefits and advantages others enjoy and that you want or feel you deserve, for Nietzsche, is a basic emotional orientation that can - in combination with other complex forces - reshape an entire culture.

A second form of resentment is of a more moralized kind; a reactive sentiment bound up with holding another morally accountable for their actions. I resent your curtailment of my liberty, for example, just because I believe we share certain moral commitments - for example, a commitment to justify any such interference in an appropriate way, which you fail to satisfy etc.

I say both of these forms of resentment, and other related emotions, are associated with multiculturalism because they can feature in explanations of how, in part, multiculturalism arose and how it works. On the one hand, multiculturalism arose partly as a response to demands by or worries about the situation of ethnocultural groups in liberal democracies (especially as a result of mass migration), and their integration into the wider community. The disadvantages they faced flowed both from their minority status within a basically majority-rule system, and their location within the confines of a dominant culture that was often hostile towards them in various symbolic and concrete ways. On the other hand, once multiculturalism is up and running, not only does resentment persist on the part of minority groups - especially when it is perceived to be simply a less obvious and more indirect continuation of the original hostility and discrimination by other means - but can also be felt by those who resent the costs imposed by the new multiculturalist ethos. Resentment, in other words, along with other related emotions such as disappointment, frustration and envy, is a permanent feature of politics. It is one of the remainders especially of democratic politics, a by-product of the fact that disagreement in politics means that there will always be political losers. Left unaddressed, the alienation or frustration out of which resentment (in either sense) can grow, corrodes the structures of trust between citizens. Left to fester, it can erupt in socially and politically damaging ways, and is most likely to do so when enough of the same citizens or groups are always the ones who seem to be losing. Even when we coerce someone in terms that we think are justifiable, there can still be resentment, or at least frustration. Indeed there might be forms of what Bernard Williams calls 'reasonable resentment': the remainder of political conflict between citizens who accept the need for legitimate political order, and accept even the process through which political decisions are arrived at, but who nevertheless resent particular outcomes . At some point there might be nothing left to do or say that could assuage such emotions, and rightly so. But democrats need to be concerned with not only the positive effects (and affects) of collective political action, but also with the distribution of negative ones. We need forms of public practical reason that can address these common features of political life, not side-step them.

One potential source of resentment is moralism, something that defenders of multiculturalism can be as prone to as much as it's critics. One danger for both sides is to over-moralize political disagreement and conflict. But first: What do I mean by moralism? And how is it related to the politics of multiculturalism?

To accuse someone of moralism, generally speaking, is to accuse them of applying moral judgments to activities or spheres where such judgments have no application. But since almost no one believes that morality is never relevant for political judgment or action, that charge is too vague. To be more precise, moral and political philosophers are often accused of what we might call undue abstraction. Here the point is not so much that abstraction itself is the problem - how could it be, since without abstraction there is no thought - but that we can be unduly moralistic about the capacities of the people to whom our moral arguments are addressed to live up to the idealizations of our theories. Moreover, undue abstraction can be depoliticizing: abstracting too much from the context of political action can induce naïveté about the unintended consequences of actions taken with the best of intentions. And it can mask other kinds of motivations and beliefs highly relevant to politics, such as fear, greed, prejudice and indeed resentment. Second, there is what I shall call unjustified moralism. This is to impose moral judgments on people through the exercise of state power or public policy, which are inadequately justified. The danger here is that moralism associated with the exercise of power becomes a form of domination, one that infringes people's basic freedom and dignity and which generates frustration and resentment. Finally there is the inversion of this phenomena: impotent moralism. Here moralism is essentially reactive; an effect of the unhinging of one's moral values from a world that will not yield to them, which generates a desire to strike back at the forces that have rendered you powerless.

Each of these kinds of moralism have featured in interesting ways in recent criticisms of the political theory and public policy of multiculturalism. Here the charge is not so much that moral judgments have no application in relation to the treatment of minorities, but that the moral claims of defenders of multiculturalism are: (a) appealed to without any sense of the practical realities on the ground, [the undue abstraction charge]; (b) asserted as if they were self-evidently true [the unjustified moralism charge]; which often results in (c) a stifling of reasoned criticism of the orthodoxy surrounding multiculturalism, disconnecting them (so this argument goes) from the attitudes of the vast majority of their fellow citizens and thus from any hope of realizing the reforms being sought [which engenders impotent moralism].

Something like these arguments have become prominent in recent years, as debates over the consequences of multiculturalism for national unity and the provision of collective welfare have intensifed. In Australia, for example, defenders of Aboriginal peoples' land rights, or the recent 'Reconciliation' process, have been accused of engaging in a game of moral ascendancy intended to stifle public debate. Leftist intellectuals are accused of taking the high moral ground in order to impose their views of the past and the moral consequences for the present upon a general public that is barely allowed a word in edgewise, corralled into a false consensus by the 'Politically Correct Thought Police'.

A concern with the moralism of multiculturalism can also be found in Brian Barry's, recent pugnacious attack on MC, where he argues that support for group-specific policies actually undermines the pursuit of justice for the very people multiculturalists claim they are defending. Barry claims that:

Pursuit of the multiculturalist agenda makes the achievement of broadly based egalitarian policies more difficult in two ways. At the minimum, it diverts political effort away from universalistic goals. But a more serious problem is that [it] may very well destroy the conditions for putting together a coalition in favour of across-the-board equalization of opportunities and resources…(Barry 2001: 325)

Special preferences, special rights, quotas and other group-targeted measures end up 'pitting against one another the potential constituency for universalistic policies aimed at benefiting all those below the median income…Not only does [the politics of identity] do nothing to change the structure of unequal opportunities and outcomes, it actually entrenches it by embroiling those in the lower reaches of the distribution in internecine warfare' (Barry 2001: 326). At one point Barry says that the demand that all minority groups everywhere be recognized and granted equal respect and equal worth is impossible to fulfill, both logically and psychologically (Barry 2001: 270-1). But since none of the multiculturalists he discusses actually say that, or believes it, this is a red herring. His deeper and more plausible point is that the politicization of culture that multiculturalism entails can backfire. The consequences of allowing electoral majorities (and minorities) to give legal effect to their own particular 'cultural revolutions', whether conservative or liberal, is dangerous. It jeopardizes hard-won gains in the areas of basic human rights and social welfare legislation by leaving open the possibility that the exercise of political power will be taken up by moral and cultural zealots (Barry 2001: 271-9). For Barry, the 'whole thrust of the "politics of difference"…is that it seeks to withdraw from individual members of minority groups the protections normally offered by the liberal states…and [that these groups] should be able to discriminate with impunity against women or adherents of religions other than the majority'. Now this last charge is a gross distortion, I think, of the views of people he actually discusses - especially Will Kymlicka, Iris Young and James Tully. But his broader point that defenders of multiculturalism often fail to show how they can hope to attract broadly based-support for the policies they are defending, and not just preach to the converted, is well worth considering. I will return to it below.

Yet another set of criticisms of liberal multiculturalism also comes from the left, broadly speaking, but with a very different set of concerns than Barry's. These too I want to evaluate from the point of view of the accusation of moralism For these critics, liberal multiculturalism is condemned not for violating an egalitarian theory of justice, but rather for being essentially continuous with the racist and colonial policies it succeeded. Since power, not moral argument, shapes social and political interaction, moral argument without a transformation of the relations of power is a form of vacuous moralizing. This critique breaks down into two further variations. First, liberal attempts at recognizing cultural difference are argued to be simply more sophisticated ways of governing it. Elizabeth Povinelli argues, for example, that liberal respect for Aboriginal 'traditional' or 'customary' practices represent, in fact, 'the political cunning and calculus of cultural recognition in settler modernity'. In 'postcolonial multicultural societies', she argues, a distinctive kind of liberal power is at work, whereby recognition is 'at once a formal acknowledgement of a subaltern group's being and of its being worthy of national recognition and, at the same time, a formal moment of being inspected, examined and investigated' (Povinelli 1999: 223; 2002). The inevitable failure of the indigenous subject to match the liberal's pre-conceived notion of what constitutes a valid 'traditional culture' or custom then justifies the legal curtailment of the expression of this alterity. Thus undue abstraction slips into something more sinister: domination. On the other hand, this fixation on identity has itself been interpreted as the product of a certain kind of moralism. Focusing too narrowly on identity above all risks confusing the effects of subordination with its causes.

These critiques of multiculturalism highlight at least two ways in which its defenders can become moralists in the ways outlined above. First, by applying moral judgments about the past or the present to justify accommodating various kinds of multiculturalist demands without any clear sense of how to build broadly-based support for these policies on the ground. Second, by missing the extent to which it is power, not moral argument, which shapes politics and thus how appeals to the 'recognition of difference' can mask more insidious forms of domination.

What is the best way of responding to these criticisms? The disagreement between Barry and a defender of Aboriginal rights is mainly over a substantive theory of justice. But consider first the claim that the politics of difference 'crowds out' social justice, which I take to be a conditional and partly empirical one. In a recent paper, Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka (2003) point out that the 'crowding out' argument presupposes that political action with regard to welfare or multicultural issues is a zero-sum game, such that focusing on one necessarily detracts from the other. But why should we believe that? If it were true, then does the pursuit of racial equality 'crowd out' the pursuit of economic justice? Does the pursuit of gender equality 'crowd out' the pursuit of social justice? Does the history of the women's movement or of the civil rights movement suggest that identity-related claims always undermine the pursuit of social justice? It seems just as plausible to assume the reverse, or at least until we have a more fine-grained account of how the 'crowding-out' thesis is supposed to work. My own sense is that since racism and sexism, for example, can't be reduced entirely to the workings of capitalism, broad-based social movements are always going to be drawing on a range of different experiences of injustice in the course of building support for their goals. It would be self-defeating to exclude such claims from the beginning.

More seriously for Barry, however, is that the purported causal connection between the retrenchment of the welfare state and the rise of multiculturalist policies is inconclusive, to say the least. First of all, the welfare state has been undermined in countries that were both strong supporters of multiculturalist policies (Canada, Australia) and those who are not, or at least less so (France, USA). There is certainly evidence to suggest that the constitutionalization of rights in many countries since the 1980s has done little to slow the growth of economic inequality. Nor has it significantly improved access for historically disenfranchised groups to education, basic housing, healthcare and employment. But the causal relations here and conclusions to be drawn from them are ambiguous. Does it show that the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal rights in 1981 in Canada, for example, made Aboriginal peoples worse off, or contributed to a deepening of inequality more generally (given the 'crowding out' thesis)? It might. But at most it shows that the constitutionalization of rights - whether cultural or socioeconomic - is not a sufficient condition for achieving social justice. But this is a point about the relation between constitutions and rights, not about multiculturalism (since multiculturalist policies are compatible with both 'constitutionalist' and 'political' approaches to rights).

More specifically, Banting and Kymlicka show that, at least in terms of the relationship between the presence of what they call 'strong' or 'weak' multiculturalist policies and the proportion of GDP dedicated to social spending (including the extent of redistribution shaped by these expenditures), 'there is no evidence of a consistent relationship between the adoption of multiculturalist policies and the erosion of the welfare state'. This isn't to say that cultural and linguistic diversity does not pose severe challenges to the solidarity required to support universal provision of social welfare - it does. But the empirical claim that multiculturalism can be blamed, wholly or in part, for the recent erosion of the welfare state is not sustainable.

Barry's more substantive charge is that a scheme of differential citizenship rights violates an egalitarian theory of justice. The liberal multiculturalist disagrees, thinking a commitment to equality is compatible with a commitment to some forms of differential rights. I can't provide a full defence of this argument here, but the gist of it is to link an ideal of equality with the recognition of a heterogeneous public sphere in which identity-related differences are both recognized and challenged in various ways. The problem with simply ignoring these differences, or ruling them inadmissible from the beginning, is that for some citizens - especially, in this case, Aboriginal ones - they are tied to their sense of the legitimacy of the basic structure of society. To turn the tables on Barry, if one wants to build broadly based support for an egalitarian program of social justice, then treating people equally will require taking their claims for the recognition and accommodation of their identity-related differences seriously.

Egalitarianism is best understood as involving a cluster of ethical commitments. It includes the resourcist egalitarianism that Barry champions, but not only that. There is also civic egalitarianism, which is connected to the promotion of mutuality and sociability between citizens, and though not entirely independent of questions of resources, operates in a different register with regard to them. Civic equality is tied to the way citizens perceive and regard each other, such as whether they are being treated with equal respect or contempt, and the degree to which people either identify with or feel alienated from the main institutions of society. Thus, it might be that it is Barry who is unduly optimistic that a common political identity can be forged in a context where the claims of cultural minorities are discounted automatically, merely for being 'cultural'. Not least because norms of recognition and struggles over their interpretation are, more often than not, tied to the currency of egalitarian justice - to interpreting and defining the rights, resources and opportunities that a liberal theory of justice is supposed to distribute equally. The two processes are internally related. It's not that multiculturalism is undermining the possibilities for social justice and political community so much as transforming them - and we need to understand how and what kinds of new common institutions can be constructed in light of them.

Thus, arguments defending multiculturalism should aim to do two things.
First, to show how they contribute to the achievement of egalitarian justice by linking rules or norms of recognition to a defensible ideal of equality. And second, by showing how this process can contribute to the development, as opposed to corrosion, of social solidarity. This might seem counter-intuitive, but I believe it is potentially one of the strongest arguments the defender of multiculturalism has. Citizens come to value their membership of the general community when they feel their identity-related differences, among other things, no longer block or distort their access to the opportunities and resources of a liberal political order. This doesn't mean, as Barry suggests, that multicultural policies aim at withdrawing them from the protections of the liberal state, but rather adding to our conception of liberal citizenship the disposition to acknowledge the different ways in which cultural and associational-related identities may be linked to matters of fairness and equal treatment. The point is not that identity or 'culture' trumps the application of general norms and laws in every instance, but that in some instances claims related to culture or identity deserve serious consideration, and may indeed call for various modes of accommodation. A liberal and historically sensitive multiculturalism is distinguished from other kinds of multiculturalism precisely because it is committed to making these kinds of distinctions, and taking a long hard look at what work the appeal to 'culture' is actually doing.

Finally, what about the appeal to shared values? As I've argued, the values out of which multiculturalism arises are very similar to those appealed to by critics of multiculturalism: freedom, tolerance, equality, and respect for persons. But there is a serious problem with the idea that it is shared values that hold democratic states together anyway. At one level it is obviously true; just insofar as we identify with and participate in the public institutions of our society, we share the values that inform them, in some general way. But if values bind they only do so in relation to a complex of other things. Australians and Canadians, for example, as polls show, share remarkably similar values - to individual freedom, tolerance, to equality and fairness (although perhaps not to mateship; that does seem to be uniquely Australian, although Australians clearly aren't the only people who value the virtues of friendship or at least a form of friendliness, that I take 'mateship' to refer to!). But the fact that we share these values doesn't provide any necessary reason that we should live together in the same state. Norwegians and Swedes shared many values in 1905, but they still split up. Quebecois and the rest of Canada share all the same political values I listed above, but they still talk about separating. So shared principles or values are not a sufficient condition for political unity, even though they obviously feature in some way. Moreover it is my contention that if these are indeed our values, then the commitment to freedom and respect for persons they express form part of the liberal defence of multiculturalism. A much better way of thinking about political unity anyway, I think, is in terms of the arguments we share. And like most arguments that get stuck in a rut, they benefit enormously from new interlocutors joining the fray, offering new and different perspectives to broaden our horizons.

- Duncan Ivison