Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Differing diversitiesexample. There are countless examples of this kind. Their effect, in disconnectingquestions of cultural diversity from their relations to peoples who have experiencedlong-term cultural dispossession and a denial of ordinary civic rights, is totrivialise those questions. Where this is the case, those who have criticised the earlierformulations of multiculturalism as tending toward an empty celebration ofdifference have good reason for viewing the vocabulary of cultural diversity witha wary scepticism. 1 In place of making a fetish of difference, then, it is importantthat the focus of cultural diversity policies should be on the need for new kinds of“civic contracts” between the members of diverse populations and the jurisdictionsin which they live.The third difficulty is of a more general kind and echoes the concerns of TheodorAdorno when he argued that whoever “speaks of culture speaks of administrationas well, whether this is his intention or not”. Why? Because, Adorno argues(1991: 93), “the combination of so many things lacking a common denominator –such as philosophy and religion, science and art, forms of conduct and mores –(…) in the single word ‘culture’ betrays from the outset the administrative view,the task of which, looking down from on high, is to assemble, distribute, evaluateand organise (…)”. Similar issues are at stake when the language of culturaldiversity is used to bring together into the same administrative purview forms ofcultural difference whose histories and social articulations often have little in commonbeyond the forms of cultural administration which constitute them as similar.This is not to argue against the need for cultural administration or the need for suchadministration to divide the members of society into different categories for thepurpose of developing particular policy objectives and devising the means bywhich to pursue those objectives. The issue is rather that the categories should beappropriate for the purposes at hand. The argument of this study is that, while usefulfor the purposes we have identified, the broader concept of cultural diversitydoes not bring into adequate focus the kinds of challenge represented by the formsof diversity produced by the patterns of post-war migration and in situ forms ofcultural difference that have resisted assimilation within dominant national culturesover extended periods. For these both generate, and are generated by, distinctivecultural dynamics having to do with the relations between i. different peoples– usually defined in ethnic terms – and their cultural traditions, ii. thehomogenising tendencies of nation-states, and iii. the history of racism. It is to aconsideration of these matters that we now turn.__________1. A powerful and sustained case of this kind is advanced by Jan Blommaert and Jef Verschueren intheir discussion of public debates about cultural diversity in Belgium (Blommaert and Verschueren,1998). Ghassan Hage’s criticisms of “zoo multiculturalism” tend in a similar direction. Hage’scontention is that official multiculturalism often serves as a means of exhibiting diversity as a publictestimony to the state’s support for liberal and pluralist values (Hage, 1998). Paul Gilroy’s criticisms ofwhat he calls “corporate multiculturalism”, in which major international corporations deploy racialsignifiers of difference as a means of constructing a brand image of “timeliness, vitality, inclusivity andglobal reach”, add to the repertoire of critiques cast in this vein (Gilroy, 2000: 21).26