The 'Parekh Report' - national identities with nations and nationalism

‘Multiculturalists’ often advocate national identities. Yet few study the ways in which ‘multiculturalists’ do so and in this article I will help to fill this gap. I will show that the Commission for Multi-Ethnic Britain’s report reflects a previously unnoticed way of thinking about the nature and worth of national identities that the Commission’s chair, and prominent political theorist, Bhikhu Parekh, had been developing since the 1970s. This way of thinking will be shown to avoid the questionable ways in which conservative and liberal nationalists discuss the nature and worth of national identities while offering an alternative way to do so. I will thus show that a report that was once criticised for the way it discussed national identities reflects how ‘multiculturalists’ think about national identities in a distinct and valuable way that has gone unrecognised

Review debate: we need human rights not nationalism 'lite': globalization and British solidarity

The article explores the relationship of multiculturalism to social solidarity. The multicultural nature of Britain is accepted as a welcome reality but certain problems in relation to the development of multiculturalism in Britain are acknowledged. Various approaches to buttress or replace multiculturalism are reviewed. These are: a strengthened and/or reconstituted nationalism (`Britishness'); human rights; and social equality. The issue of citizenship recurs throughout. It is argued that a combined emphasis on human rights and greater social equality offer a better basis than nationalism for strengthening solidarity in Britain, especially in the longer term. Sociological theory offers a fruitful if strangely neglected starting point for understanding social solidarity. I draw critically on Durkheim and Marx to obtain some objective perspective on this controversial matter. Copyright 2007 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution

Religious pluralism in the United States and Britain

This article provides a historically informed analysis of the contemporary incorporation of Islam and Muslims into an idea of common – national – membership in the United States and Britain. It shows that there is a current movement towards synthesis between religious and national identities by Muslims themselves, and explores the ways in which this synthesis is occurring within rich and dynamic public spheres in societies that have historically included and incorporated other religious groups. The authors argue that both countries are wrestling with the extent to which they accommodate Muslims in ways that allow them to reconcile their faith and citizenship commitments, and that the British ‘establishment’ is no less successful at achieving this than secular republicanism in the US

Examining 'postmulticultural' and civic turns in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, and Denmark

There is a widely shared view that the appeal of multiculturalism as a public policy has suffered considerable political damage. In many European states the turn to “civic” measures and discourses has been deemed more suitable for the objectives of minority integration and the promotion of preferred modes of social and political unity. It is therefore said that the first decade of the new century has been characterized by a reorientation in immigrant integration policies—from liberal culturalist to the “return of assimilation” (Brubaker, 2001), on route to a broader “retreat from multiculturalism” (Joppke, 2004). In this article, we argue that such portrayals mask a tendency that is more complicated in some cases and much less evident in others. To elaborate this, we offer a detailed account of the inception and then alleged movement away from positions in favor of multiculturalism in two countries that have adopted different versions of it, namely the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and two countries that have historically rejected multiculturalism, namely Denmark and Germany. We argue that while there is undoubtedly a rhetorical separation between multiculturalism and civic integration, the latter is in some cases building on the former, and broadly needs to be understood as more than a retreat of multiculturalism. Taking seriously Banting and Kymlicka’s argument that understanding the evolution of integration requires the “the mind-set of an archaeologist,” we offer a policy genealogy that allows us to set the backlash against multiculturalism in context, in manner that explicates its provenance, permutations, and implications

In defence of both multiculturalism and progressive nationalism: a response to Mike O'Donnell

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