<論文>マルチカルチュラリズム再考 --包括的な社会理論的検討のために--

Abstract

Since the dawn of the 21st century, it has become a cliché that multiculturalism has `retreated', or more crudely, is now `dead'. However, we can often find this kind of discourse marked by narrow and, as Will Kymlicka and other critical commentators rightly point out, recently-created consumerist/corporate/neoliberal understandings of multiculturalism. Furthermore, although some liberal multiculturalists critically assess that kind of use and misuse of the concept of multiculturalism, they also have some fundamental limitations that must be overcome for more critical and creative practices. My objective in this article is to explore thoroughly the conceptual history of multiculturalism in the West from a social theoretical point of view, in order to gain a more comprehensive and critical understanding of it. By saying `from a social theoretical point of view', I mean that the main focus of the exploration is to be put on the logical principles which are at the deep base of multicultural practices: the principles used to legitimate defends for equality and tolerance. They are divided into two types: one is the principle of homogeneity; the other is that of heterogeneity. The former legitimates equality and tolerance among different existences by denying their fundamental differences, such as the principle of human rights or that of redistribution. The latter does the same by respecting the fundamental differences, such as the principle of identity politics or that of recognition. Setting these kinds of fundamental principle as the basis of the analysis, this essay tries to reconstitute the contemporary history of the politics of multiculturalism, beginning from the aftermath of WWⅡ, continuing through the emergence of multiculturalism in the 1960s and 1970s and its flourishing in the 1980s and 1990s, to its `retreat' and transformation from the 2000s onwards. After mapping multiculturalism in this way, in the concluding part I engage critically with the recent trends in multiculturalism scholarship, that is, liberal academic (and also nonacademic) discourses which place multiculturalism mainly on its national-integrative function. My point is that these discourses are faulty, not only because they have a limited imagination and understanding of multiculturalism, but also because this limitation creates a crucial paradox in their own arguments.