Multicultural societies are a phenomenon that can be increasingly observed worldwide. This book focuses on the question of how individuals living within a multicultural society experience the meeting of cultures. Murdock combines both a thorough review of the theoretical body of research concerning multiculturalism and related concepts such as globalization, acculturation and biculturalism with specific empirical research evidence, providing new insights into factors which shape our openness towards a plurally composed society. Multiculturalism, Identity and Difference contains original research conducted within the ‘natural laboratory’ that multilingual, multicultural Luxembourg provides. This is a country where the foreign population makes up nearly half of the total population. In the era of globalization, culture contact is a daily occurrence and this book makes a contribution to the questions of if and how culture contact can be experienced as an opportunity rather than a threat by individuals.

This innovative volume brings a selection of leading political theorists to the debate on multiculturalism and political legitimacy, and confronts issues including rights, liberalism, cultural pluralism and power relations.

Bhikhu Parekh argues for a pluralist perspective on cultural diversity. Writing from both within the liberal tradition and outside of it as a critic, he challenges what he calls the "moral monism" of much of traditional moral philosophy, including contemporary liberalism--its tendency to assert that only one way of life or set of values is worthwhile and to dismiss the rest as misguided or false. He defends his pluralist perspective both at the level of theory and in subtle nuanced analyses of recent controversies. Thus, he offers careful and clear accounts of why cultural differences should be respected and publicly affirmed, why the separation of church and state cannot be used to justify the separation of religion and politics, and why the initial critique of Salman Rushdie (before a Fatwa threatened his life) deserved more serious attention than it received. Rejecting naturalism, which posits that humans have a relatively fixed nature and that culture is an incidental, and "culturalism," which posits that they are socially and culturally constructed with only a minimal set of features in common, he argues for a dialogic interplay between human commonalities and cultural differences. This will allow, Parekh argues, genuinely balanced and thoughtful compromises on even the most controversial cultural issues in the new multicultural world in which we live.

This book aims at analysing the fiction produced by the expatriate Parsee writers of the Indian subcontinent: Bapsi Sidhwa, Rohinton Mistry and Boman Desai. These Parsee writers of the South Asian origin have emigrated to Canada and USA in the latter part of the twentieth century. Their works offer several possibilities seen from the multicultural point of view. The fiction of these Parsee diasporic writers examines the problem of migration, relocation and changing identities from a vantage point of distance gained by an insider’s view of their community and an outsider’s view from the host country. Dislocations, even when voluntary, always have a traumatic side to it due to the process of acculturation, assimilation into or differences with the host country and the issue of rights and privileges in the new location. For the diasporic communities of different backgrounds, their memory, history and cultural beliefs are the important factors that determine their identities. These Parsee novels demonstrate how individual and group/collective identities of the Parsees get constructed and reconstructed/redefined against the changing multinational contexts.

How, and to what extent, can religion be included within commitments to multiculturalism? Multiculturalism and Religious Identity addresses this question by examining the political recognition and management of religious identity in Canada and India. In multicultural policy, practice, and literature, religion has until recently not been included within broader discussions of multiculturalism, perhaps due to worries of potential for conflict with secularism. This collection undertakes a contemporary analysis of how the Canadian and Indian states each approach religious diversity through social and political policies, as well as how religion and secularism meet both philosophically and politically in contested public space. Although Canada and India have differing political and religious histories - leading to different articulations of multiculturalism, religious diversity, and secularism - both countries share a commitment to ensuring fair treatment for the different religious communities they include. Combining broader theoretical and normative reflections with close case studies, Multiculturalism and Religious Identity leads the way to addressing these timely issues in the Canadian and Indian contexts.

The essays in this collection were first presented at an October 1991 conference on comparative constitutionalism under the auspices of the Jacob Burns Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, and the Cardozo-New School Project on Constitutionalism. Essays are organized in sections on the rebirth of constitutionalism, the legitimation of constitution making, the identity of the constitutional subject, the struggle between identity and difference, and the role of property rights. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Globalization and increased migration have brought both new opportunities and new tensions to traditional East Asian societies. Multicultural Challenges and Redefining Identity in East Asia draws together a wide range of distinguished local scholars to discuss multiculturalism and the changing nature of social identity in East Asia. Regional specialists review specific events and situations in China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to provide a focus on life as it is lived at the local level whilst also tracing macro discourses on the national issues affected by multiculturalism and identity. The contributors look at the uneven multicultural development across these different countries and how to bridge the gap between locality and universality. They examine how ethnic majorities and minorities can achieve individual rights, exert civic responsibility, and explain how to construct a deliberative framework to make sustainable democracy possible. This book considers the emergence of a new cross-national network designed to address multicultural challenges and imagines an East Asian community with shared values of individual dignity and multicultural diversity. With strong empirical support it puts forward a regulative ideal by which a new paradigm for multicultural coexistence and regional cooperation can be realized.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Multiculturalism brings together a collection of new essays by leading and emerging scholars in the humanities and social sciences on some of the key issues facing multiculturalism today. It provides a comprehensive and cutting-edge treatment of this important and hotly contested field, offering scholars and students a clear account of the leading theories and critiques of multiculturalism that have developed over the past twenty-five years, as well as a sense of the challenges facing multiculturalism in the future. Key leading scholars, including James Bohman, Barbara Arneil, Avigail Eisenberg, Ghassan Hage, and Paul Patton, discuss multiculturalism in different cultural and national contexts and across a range of disciplinary approaches. In addition to contributions, Duncan Ivison also provides a comprehensive Introduction which surveys the field and offers an extensive guide to further reading. This is a key volume for anyone interested in multiculturalism and its political premise.

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Literature - Modern Literature, grade: 2.1, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Centre for British Studies), language: English, abstract: This study aims to achieve a close examination of colonial discourse, its function in identity construction, and the implications of this process for multicultural politics in The Satanic Verses.