Perspectives on Cultural Diversity

Abstract

In the European and British context, the much referred to concept of ‘cultural diversity’ and its equivalent in French and German is often evoked as complementary to, a synonym for, or an advance on, the similarly omnipresent term ‘multiculturalism’. This is mainly due to shifts in the perception of ethnically-marked difference in the postwar period. Particularly in the British context, these shifts were characterized by moving from a policy approach based on support for ‘ethnic minority’ cultures to multiculturalism, and then most recently to cultural diversity (Bennett, 2001: 58–9) In many different contexts, where metropolitan (as well as national and European) cultural policy engages with the relationship between people of different cultural backgrounds in European cities, cultural diversity seems to suggest a progressive, anti-discrimination agenda. However, when examined in more detail within the linguistic and pragmatic context of policy documentation and political debate, ‘cultural diversity’ becomes ambiguous, difficult to pin down, as well as contradictory. Whereas ‘multiculturalism’ discourses explicitly thematize questions of cultural coexistence or integration, and have been met with highly politicized support, critique or rejection, cultural diversity discourses are more fluid in their implications, and more in need of contextualizing within their respective political and cultural environments. Drawing upon key policy documents and political discussion produced at the European, national and metropolitan levels, we will explore in detail some of the linguistic and pragmatic contexts of cultural diversity and the semantic fields within which the term acquires its significance. Our aim is to examine the extent to which the multiple meanings of cultural diversity across the different levels and layers of policy and public debate in European nations, disguise or even potentially hinder and misdirect the discussion about greater transnational coexistence, which the earlier debates about multiculturalism had begun. Our critique is not intended as a defence of multiculturalism insofar as this has come to mean ‘a carnival of nations within nations’, but rather as a critique and clarification of the shifting term of ‘cultural diversity’.