Jul

28

Amartya Sen on How not be be multicultural

July 28, 2006 |

Sen is particularly critical of the ways in which communitarian notions of identity have found their way into social policy, especially through the ideas of multiculturalism, and in so doing have diminished the scope for individual freedom. “I am not opposed to multiculturalism,” he says. “But I am opposed to the way it has been interpreted. There are two basically distinct approaches to multiculturalism. One concentrates on the promotion of diversity as a value in itself. The other focuses on the freedom of reasoning and decision-making, and celebrates cultural diversity to the extent that it is freely chosen. The way that British authorities have interpreted multiculturalism has very much undermined individual freedom. A British Muslim is not asked to act within the civil society or the political arena but as a Muslim. His British identity has to be mediated by his community.”
prospect magazine

In parts of an increasingly secular Canada we still see the vestiges of an earlier attempt at defining people by community: Protestant and Catholic school boards. A hundred years ago perhaps the most salient group identification a person could have was religious and, in order to reach constitutional compromise, the Governments of Canada and some provinces set up seperate school boards and, in some case, social welfare systems based upon religion.

Sen’s argument is that this version of multicultualism profoundly erodes civil society and the rights of the individual by allowing government to deal with group, rather than individual, identity.

It is an increasingly important question and one which is going to shape a good deal of the coming debates about the nature of Canadian society and the place of the individual within that society.


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