Tony Bennett, Differing diversities - Council of Europe

Conclusions: cultural diversityand cultural democracyThese things are never wonI would like to end as I started, anecdotally, in reflecting on the country visit toCanada, which concluded with a meeting involving a range of policy makers,administrators and researchers who had just completed two days discussion at theRound Table organised by the European CIRCLE network and the CanadianCultural Researchers Network (CCRN). The remark – “These things are neverwon” – was made by Dr Catherine Murray from Simon Fraser University in thecontext of a discussion of right-wing criticisms of multiculturalism that are currentlyprevalent in Canada, and especially outside the major cities, opening up theprospect of significant divisions between those Canadian cities large and diverseenough to participate in a global network of cosmopolitan world cities and theirmore monocultural and chauvinist hinterlands.The warning is surely a salutary one at a time when, as one critic puts it, governmentswhich trumpet the virtues of globalisation and diversity are also “almosteverywhere tightening their border controls and more vigilantly enforcing immigrationlaws” (Morley, 2000: 225). However much policy elites may have understoodthe need for a shift from homogeneity to heterogeneity in the managementof culture, popular support for such policies is often much more lukewarm, lacking,or antagonistic. This results, in many jurisdictions, in climates of opinion thatcan be politically exploited for xenophobic ends as well as placing limits on theroom for manoeuvre that is available to pro-diversity political forces.At the same time, though, these things are never entirely lost either. This was evidentfrom discussions with the young Austro-Turkish staff of Echo – a magazinefor young, second-generation migrants in Vienna – who, notwithstanding thesomewhat gloomy prospects for any immediate advancement of their position inAustrian society, were clearly undaunted by the challenges of living and workingin the relations between their parental cultures and those of “mainstream” Austria.And popular support can sometimes be ahead of both policy and political opinion.Although it was widely argued that the election, in 1997, of the CoalitionGovernment in Australia represented a backlash against the commitment of theprevious Labor administrations to multicultural and Aboriginal rights, andalthough the Coalition Government has had calamitous consequences for indigenousAustralians, the turn out – in early 2000 – of hundreds of thousands of ordinaryAustralians to give Aboriginal Australia the apology that the CoalitionGovernment has denied them was clear evidence that the clock could not simplybe turned back to the bad old days of White Australia.63