Rethinking Multiculturalismby Bhikhu Parekh

Chapter 4

Conceptualizing Human Being

Chapter 5

Understanding Culture

Conceptualizing Human Being

Naturalism Culturalism

What is human nature?

• Virtue of belonging to the common species

• Shared physical and mental structures, common life cycles and common life experiences

How are human beings formed?

• What human beings share as members of a common species

• What they derive from and share as members of a cultural community

• What they succeed in giving themselves as reflective individuals

Frameworks

Relativism

Monism

Minimum universalism

Relativism

Relativism argues that since moral values are culturally embedded, and since each culture is a self-contained whole, they are relative to each society and the search for universal moral values is impossible.

Parekh´s critique: Relativism ignores the cross-culturally shared human properties and is mistaken in its believes that a culture is tightly integrated and self-contained whole and can be neatly individuated and determines its members.

Monism

Monism takes the opposite view: moral values are derived from human nature. Since human nature is understood as universally common, we can agree upon universal moral values.

Parekh´s critique: Monism fails to appreciate cultural mediation and reconstitution, and also rests on a simplified view of human nature.

Minimum universalism

Minimum universalism takes the intermediate position and assumes that all cultures can arrive at a body of universal values.

Parekh´s critique: Minimum universalism naively assumes that the minimum universal values do not come into conflict and mean the same thing in different cultures.

Pluralist Universalism

“Universal moral values are those we have good reasons to believe to be worthy of the allegiance of all human beings, and are in that sense universally valid or binding”.

Central to this is the cross-cultural dialogue and the creative interplay between universal moral values and the complex moral structures of different societies.

Parekh on human rights

• Human Rights as a starting point

• Born out of a cross-cultural dialogue

• Retains a liberal bias (based on an idea of individualism, e.g. unlimited freedom of expression, right to marry who you want etc.)

Asian values

• Asian spokesmen are not a homogenous group. They raise different kinds of objections to human rights as being too western and individualistic oriented.

• They emphasize such collective goals as social harmony and cohesion, moral consensus, integrity of the family, etc.

Understanding Culture

Culture – a system of beliefs and practices in terms of which a group of human beings understand, regulate and structure their individual and collective lives. Culture has no coordinating authority and develops over time and shapes morality.

These ideas about the meaning of life shape the way life is lived and regulated on four levels:

Language Arts Values Norms

Concepts of society and culture

SOCIETY

Group of human beings and their relations

CULTURE

Principles that govern these relations

Parekh on religion

• Part of the reason why there is a sense of moral crisis today has to do with the fact that we cherish these ideals but neither share their religious rationale, nor know how to defend them adequately on wholly secular grounds.

• No religion can be culture-free.

Cultural community

Cultural community not only structures and shapes the lives of its members, but also demands conformity, may regulate choice and bring obligations.

Cultural community

You may relate to culture by

cherishing it adapting parts of it into your life or choosing pieces from different cultures with no sense of loyalty to one in particular

Conflict may arise when individuals subscribe to two different systems

Diversity as a desirable characteristic

of society

Arguments for diversity Parekh’s critic

• Expands freedom of choice Does nothing to argue for those cultures we didn’t choose

• Diversity is inescapable Doesn’t make a good case for desirability

• Joy of variety Too vague

• Linking diversity to individuality and progress

Ignores the intrinsic value of cultural diversity

Parekh’s stand on diversity

No culture can ever contain the sum of human experience and life, then a variety of cultures can only compliment and correct each other.

Parekh’s arguments for culturally plural society

• While homogeneity promotes solidarity, sense of community and loyalty, it tends to become closed, intolerant or even oppressive.

• Plural society provide all the things that a homogenous one can, but same is not true vice versa

• Homogeneity is in any case no longer realistic

• Multiculturalism is not committed to the idea that culturally open life is the best, but also includes those cultures that are self-contained

Parekh on respecting cultures

• All cultures have worth and deserve basic respect, but they are not equally worthy and do not merit equal respect.

• Respect for human dignity, e.g., should be insisted upon (but not confused with liberal individualism), and similarly, personal choice is critical to human well-being, but shouldn’t be equaled with full scale autonomy (as in defined by Paz, Dworkin, Kymlicka)

Parekh on western superiority

“There’s a persistent tendency in some western societies to act as global missionaries and assume that other societies are all devoid of reformist resources and need western guidance and ‘moral leadership”.

Conclusions

• We have to learn how to negotiate and channel the tensions cultural diversity brings

• We need to find a productive way to compare and evaluate cultures

Food for thought

• Is pluralist universalism simply minimum universalism with the extra element of cross-cultural dialogue?

• Is pluralist universalism an idea of utopia?

• Should all cultures be respected equally?