Managing Diversity: Interculturalism v. Multiculturalism

This talk compares interculturalism and multiculturalism as two policies and theories of managing diversity. Interculturalism owes its existence to a critique of multiculturalism, but of highly distorted visions of it. I distinguish between two versions of interculturalism, a majoritarian, practiced in the Canadian province of Québec, and a post-majoritarian, in Europe. Both yield diametrically opposed visions of multiculturalism, as either footloose cosmopolitan (the Quebecois version) or parochial-segregationist (which is the European view). Among the problems of interculturalism is the vacuity of the local as its preferred site of intervention, and its rushed embracing of “diversity” that is also a central plank of neoliberal ideology