Multiculturalism, culturalism and public incorporation

Abstract In the name of ‘multiculturalism’, Western societies have witnessed since the 1980s a proliferation of discourses concerning the general place of minorities, programmes designed to foster equality, institutional structures created to provide better social services, and resources extended to ethnic minority organizations. Despite much goodwill and not inconsiderable evidence of progress in local and national initiatives concerning minorities, however, such developments have often in effect excluded minorities from, rather than facilitated their engagement with, the majority public domain. In significant ways this has been because many public policies and wider political discourses surrounding multiculturalism tend to employ ill‐defined ideas and implicit notions ‐ particularly regarding ‘culture’ ‐ which, when operationalized, function socially and politically to separate and distance members of given minorities. These ‘culturalist’ underpinnings found in a variety of multi‐culturalist initiatives can be seen to echo or to parallel views espoused in the so‐called ‘new cultural racism’. Examples on the level of local government authorities in Britain are cited. Clearly, initiatives promoting all forms of equality for minorities must be encouraged while ‘culturalism'‐in‐multi‐culturalism must be overcome. Instead of attempting to redefine ‘culture’ for policy‐makers, the author suggests that in rethinking and restructuring modes of public incorporation affecting minorities (roughly following certain key ideas of M.G. Smith on plural societies, John Rex and Bhikhu Parekh on the public domain), we may be able to begin to move beyond some currently exclusive and divisive aspects of institutionalized multiculturalism. Certain modes of local government interface in the British city of Leicester which have been co‐developed by local government authorities, by a complex range of local Islamic organizations, by a uniquely successful Muslim representative federation, and by prominent Muslim individuals are examined by way of suggesting one new model of public incorporation.