That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It only means that sometimes, a concept can be drilled into someone so much it loses all meaning.
This week offered a fresh take on the concept of multiculturalism, however. Johnson’s dictionary definition of self may have focused on the individual, but the concepts it explored such as self-concept, Cooley’s looking-glass self and even the postmodern definition of self, could be expanded to focus on society and even cultures. For example, people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds live side-by-side in Australia; is their concept of themselves, as an ethnic group or as an individual who is part of an ethnic group, a social construct based on how they interact with each other and societal expectations? Are such social groups defined mainly by their relationship to other social groups?
In Kuthuka’s reading, I appreciated the fact that he brought up the notion of multicultural societies as pluralistic societies. Often we become so caught up in the notion of multiculturalism and why it is so difficult for different cultures to co-exist that we forget that we are already a pluralistic society – people of different genders, ages, occupations and religions live together without too much difficulty. Perhaps it is because we focus on the idea of nationality, which forces us to consider our differences rather than our similarities. Kuthuka discussed two types of institutions that may be considered to govern pluralistic societies, one where “explicit political recognition” (p. 26) is given to different groups and one where individuals, as opposed to groups, are recognized. I agree with his argument that the latter is more suitable, as I believe that by granting political recognition to certain groups still focuses on the differences, and equality is thus more difficult to obtain.
Image: ~ZGRL via Deviant Art
