Beyond multiculturalism? Difference, recognition and social justice

Harris surveys a number of overlapping debates relating to 'difference' and the 'public/private' distinction, including: positions that perceive diffe rences only as labels to secure governmentality; that treat difference as s omething to be consumed; that accept but confine difference to the private domain; that attempt to reconcile collective difference to the demands of a liberal theory of individual rights; that counter this by suggesting a nee d to rethink the relationship between state and society to allow for the cr eation of multicultural public forms; that insist that the option of differ ence should be enlarged to embrace the fundamental differences of economic inequality; that would see the appeal to cultural differences as only an id eology that masks the contradictions of modern liberal capitalism; and thos e, like Harris's own, that want to focus on the multifaceted, interactive a nd relational nature of difference. Identity and culture, he argues, are ac hieved processes deriving from a specific praxis of interpretation and enfo rcement located within the field of historically constituted social relatio ns shaped by grids of meanings, access to resources and power. Once we give up the idea of cultures as sealed entities and recognize that even within cultural boundaries communication is essentially about difference and requi res translation, then the problematic nature of the constituent elements of 'multiculturalism'-multi-, -cultural-, -ism-renders the whole concept ques tionable. Undoubtedly, most avowed multiculturalists are committed to some sense of the 'good' or 'better' society, but it will simply not do to overb urden the notion of multiculturalism, however radically conceived and well intentioned, with the task of achieving social justice.