Global Multiculture, Flexible Acculturation

Abstract

This article develops two propositions: multiculturalism has gone global and identification has become flexible. Multiculturalism is a global arena, yet most treatments still conceive of multiculturalism as a national arena. In contemporary global multiculture far-off conflicts become part of multiculturalism arenas; this is illustrated with a discussion of two multicultural conflicts, the Danish cartoon episode and the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam. Muslim women's headscarves from Istanbul and Cairo to Tehran and Lyon display a wide register of meanings, but in the French national assembly have been signified in just one. Multiculturalism means global engagement and to engage with the world is to engage with its conflicts. Multiculturalism is not no man's land. Multiculturalism is not consensus. There is no consensus in Britain about the war in Iraq and there is none among immigrants either. The securitization of cultural difference confirms the interplay between global and multicultural frictions. Multiculturalism is one of the faces of globalization and globalization, at its Sunday best, is human history conscious of itself, which by the way is not always nice. Contemporary global multiculture represents a new phase of globalization.