Models of diversity in the Americas: Avenues for dialogue and cross-pollination

In the last decades, scholars in Canada and Europe have engaged in widespreaddebates about the distinctive features of multiculturalism and interculturalism. Atthe same time, discussions about these distinctions have also been ongoing inLatin America,but these are not as widely documented in the anglophone andfrancophone literature. In this chapter, I argue that looking at intercultural andmulticultural orientations to diversity outside of North American and Europeancontexts can both enrich and problematise conversations about multiculturalismand interculturalism. First, I provide an overview of scholarly debates aboutmulticulturalism and interculturalism in the Americas, with occasional referencesto the European context. Next, I explore Latin American discussions onintercultural and multicultural orientations to diversity, drawing connections andcomparisons to the debates in Europe and Canada. Finally, I interrogatenormative trends that largely prescribe and dichotomize models of diversity in allthree settings–advocating for a contextual approach that locates diversityparadigms along a diversity spectrum and identifying current and potentialavenues for dialogue and cross-pollination. Both interculturalism and multiculturalism address the question of how statesshould forge unity from ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. But what are thedividing lines between interculturalism and multiculturalism? This volume bringstogether some of the most prominent scholars in the field to address these twodifferent approaches (among them political philosophers and theorists CharlesTaylor, Gérard Bouchard, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Geoffrey BrahmLevey, and Ted Cantle)