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Multiculturalism
At a time when many public commentators are turning against multiculturalism in response to fears about militant Islam, immigration or social cohesion, Tariq Modood, one of the world's leading authorities on multiculturalism, provides a distinctive contribution to these debates. He contends that the rise of Islamic terrorism has neither discredited multiculturalism nor heralded a clash of civilizations. Instead, it has highlighted a central challenge for the 21st century - the urgent need to include Muslims in contemporary conceptions of democratic citizenship.
In this compelling new book, Modood shows that inclusion is not possible within some narrow forms of liberalism. He argues that while different minorities need to be accommodated in different ways, a single template is not appropriate. He suggests, moreover, that such differential accommodation or multiculturalism cannot be the task of the state alone but must be shared across different civil society sectors. Controversially, he sees the revival of ideological secularism as an obstacle to multicultural integration but institutional secularism as an important resource for accommodating Muslims.
This book will appeal to students, researchers and teachers of politics, sociology and public policy but also to general readers interested in the prospects of multiculturalism today.
In this compelling new book, Modood shows that inclusion is not possible within some narrow forms of liberalism. He argues that while different minorities need to be accommodated in different ways, a single template is not appropriate. He suggests, moreover, that such differential accommodation or multiculturalism cannot be the task of the state alone but must be shared across different civil society sectors. Controversially, he sees the revival of ideological secularism as an obstacle to multicultural integration but institutional secularism as an important resource for accommodating Muslims.
This book will appeal to students, researchers and teachers of politics, sociology and public policy but also to general readers interested in the prospects of multiculturalism today.
160 pages, Paperback
First published July 27, 2007
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About the author
Tariq Modood
54 books6 followersTariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol.
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January 9, 2024
I have read with approval many strong criticisms of "multiculturalism" in the UK and it seemed to me about time I read an advocate of the concept. This came to my attention in the course of a Twitter conversation. As usual, this review is my early thoughts and not a carefully digested thesis.
Madood’s parents brought him to England from Pakistan in 1961 as a child. They were “assimilationist” in their wish for him to take full advantage of the educational opportunities available, but also insisted that “we should never forget who we are,” and who we are was Pakistani, later Asian and finally Muslim. He never identified himself as Black and neither did the Paki-bashing skinheads who assaulted him. [p4]
He emerged as a political philosopher, but “I thought – perhaps mistakenly – that I had learned from Wittgenstein that one does not start from theory, but that theory emerges in how one works through a series of puzzles and problems, It seems in retrospect …a highly risky .. strategy … to enter the field of “race relations” … with such a cavalier attitude to existing scholarship, theoretical frameworks and explanatory models,... “ p2
If his approach was academically risky it was arguably very perceptive. “I was suspicious of theories that claim to know what people really mean and don’t take seriously what people say.” … Social enquiry must seek a degree of system, evaluation of evidence, conceptualization and so on that are more thorough than that of practical action, but all of this intellectual activity only makes sense if it illuminates the perceptions of actors…” p5
This makes me smile, after reading his introduction, because if he was not interested in academic theories, presumably he had to learn on the job as it were, because there is a lot of theoretical discussion and debate in this book.
The basis of this book seems to be a rejection of models of racism and antiracism that are borrowed from the USA without any satisfactory evidence that they are applicable to the experiences of other countries. Indeed, there is a growing suspicion that they don’t work very well for the USA either.
“I have argued that conceptualizations of race and racism, and hence also of antiracism and racial equality, … are too dependent on the … Atlantic slavery triangle of Western Europe – West Africa – America. This Atlantocentric perspective was dominant when I entered the field in the late 1980s… It was shaped by the assumption that the key issue was colour racism, understood as white domination of non-whites…My very first argument was that Britain could not be understood in terms of a racial dualist framework.”
In opposition to the USA model, Modood reviews various alternatives but settles on the term cultural racism, which he contrasts to the ideal of assimilation. He argues that in the UK, groups like the British National Party and the Police have long transferred their hostility from skin colour as such to cultural difference and assimilation, with British Muslims from South Asia (Bangladesh and Pakistan) their particular targets.
In two quite detailed chapters, Modood demonstrates from survey data in the UK that both economic and educational attainment and opportunities do not fall conveniently into the kind of colour categories on which American thinking concentrates. A far more fragmented picture emerges, in which migrant communities from different parts of the former British empire have had quite distinct experiences, both for the initial period after coming to Britain and over longer timescales for both migrants and their children. Migrants from Bangladesh, for instance, often came to work in the textiles industry, and were stranded by its demise in the late 70s and the 80s. Others from East Africa or India included many professional or business people with corresponding ambitions for themselves and their children. Boys from Caribbean families struggled with education, but so did white working class boys, whereas boys of Asian background often performed very well and for girls of every community there were also diverse results to be examined, often unlike those for boys of the same communities.
Not only can ethnic minority communities not be assumed to belong to any particular economic class, but it is also apparent that some very deprived communities can mitigate the impact of deprivation for their children, who benefit in the form of better educational outcomes and opportunities. For example, he writes that “despite four out of five Pakistani and Bangladeshi households being in poverty, these groups produce a larger proportion of university entrants than the white population.” [p98] Modood make many comments on the impact of family and community based social influences. Perhaps he has other work in which he expands on this theme.
The book shifts next to a very rich conversation about the position of Muslims in British society, giving evidence (including a reference to the British National Party website and a report about the attitudes of police officers in training) to support his view that this was emerging (in the early 2000s) as a more critical challenge for race relations than colour (without implying that colour racism is unimportant or only historical). The general drift in anti-Muslim commentary was the claim that for religious and cultural reasons, Muslims were incapable of assimilating into British culture and represented an existential threat to British values. The response to this was often a move towards self-identification as Muslim rather than Pakistani, or Asian and certainly not as politically Black, with membership of the Muslim community seen as a source of group pride and dignity.
“Most Muslims feel most acutely those problems that the antiracists are blind to, and respond weakly to those challenges that the antiracists want to meet with most force. And there can be no way out of this impasse if we remain wedded to a concept of racism that sees only colour discrimination as a cause and material deprivation as a result. We need … a concept of race and racism that can critique sociocultural environments that devalue people not only because of their origins but also because of their membership in a cultural minority… “ [P104] “The new strength among Muslim youths in, for example, not tolerating racial harassment, owes no less to Islamic assertion than to metropolitan antiracism. … British antiracists see the racism but are happy to be ignorant of the living identities that racism obscures.” [p105]
Modood deals very intelligently with key highlights such as the Salmon Rushdie / Satanic Verses affair, Britain’s role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the huge impact of the American inspired “war on terror.” At the same time, Modood points out that a Muslim identity is open to many interpretations; what British Muslims chiefly aspired to was to be accepted as British while taking pride in their own culture and religion.
Modood also compares the British approach to migrants, racism and multiculturalism with policies in France and Germany, though not at very great length. He says that Germany’s migrant workers, many from Turkey, are classed as guest workers and do not obtain citizenship rights at all, nor do their children or grandchildren, even if born in Germany. The question of assimilation is not acknowledged. In France, it is assumed by contrast that people coming to live in France – often from Algeria or other parts of the former empire - will seek citizenship and will fully assimilate to French cultural values; the very idea of multiculturalism is not accepted but that does not prevent the inevitable presence of very distinct cultural communities, whose needs are arguably neglected and often disrespected.
Modood speculates about different approaches to cultural diversity, and identifies with the thinking of two American sociologists, Robert Park and W.I. Thomas, who studied European and Southern black immigration to cities such as Chicago. Modood writes: “Ethnicity Paradox” refers to their conviction that allowing ethnic communities to take root and flourish in the new soil was the most satisfactory way of promoting long term integration and participation in the institutions of the wider American community. They argued that not only did immigrant institutions meet the special cultural needs of a community, but they also provided a basis of continuity for people who were caught up in a particularly severe and destabilizing change. … They were a source of an individual’s self esteem and status… they enabled group pride and could lead to a rise in status and respect for the group as a whole, and therefore, stem the need to disown one’s origins in order to succeed in the new society… The fact that the individual will not be respected unless the group is respected becomes thus, perhaps the most sincere source of nationalist movements in America. To this extent the nationalist movements represent an effort to increase participation in American life.” [pp109-110]
The book continues to discuss issues such as secularism, laws about incitement to hatred and the politics of multiculturalism in Britain before concluding that liberal democracy requires some serious rethinking to arrive at a workable and acceptable way to handle the reality of multiculturalism, which is that it is a part of British life, it is in a constant process of change and it raises fundamentally important questions for which a political solution must be found.
Modood may not convince his readers that multiculturalism is a desirable basis for social policy; there are issues he does not touch on at all which need discussion. Some may prefer the German model, or the French one, neither of which seems very realistic for the UK. What he does convincingly demonstrate is that the theories about racism and antiracism that prevailed up to the 1980s and which he refers to as Atlantocentric, are incapable of addressing the issues confronting migrant communities and that those issues do not diminish for being ignored. In simpler terms, it is essential to construct policies based on evidence of actual conditions in the UK rather than continuing to import from North America simplistic theories about racism which simply do not apply to this country.
Madood’s parents brought him to England from Pakistan in 1961 as a child. They were “assimilationist” in their wish for him to take full advantage of the educational opportunities available, but also insisted that “we should never forget who we are,” and who we are was Pakistani, later Asian and finally Muslim. He never identified himself as Black and neither did the Paki-bashing skinheads who assaulted him. [p4]
He emerged as a political philosopher, but “I thought – perhaps mistakenly – that I had learned from Wittgenstein that one does not start from theory, but that theory emerges in how one works through a series of puzzles and problems, It seems in retrospect …a highly risky .. strategy … to enter the field of “race relations” … with such a cavalier attitude to existing scholarship, theoretical frameworks and explanatory models,... “ p2
If his approach was academically risky it was arguably very perceptive. “I was suspicious of theories that claim to know what people really mean and don’t take seriously what people say.” … Social enquiry must seek a degree of system, evaluation of evidence, conceptualization and so on that are more thorough than that of practical action, but all of this intellectual activity only makes sense if it illuminates the perceptions of actors…” p5
This makes me smile, after reading his introduction, because if he was not interested in academic theories, presumably he had to learn on the job as it were, because there is a lot of theoretical discussion and debate in this book.
The basis of this book seems to be a rejection of models of racism and antiracism that are borrowed from the USA without any satisfactory evidence that they are applicable to the experiences of other countries. Indeed, there is a growing suspicion that they don’t work very well for the USA either.
“I have argued that conceptualizations of race and racism, and hence also of antiracism and racial equality, … are too dependent on the … Atlantic slavery triangle of Western Europe – West Africa – America. This Atlantocentric perspective was dominant when I entered the field in the late 1980s… It was shaped by the assumption that the key issue was colour racism, understood as white domination of non-whites…My very first argument was that Britain could not be understood in terms of a racial dualist framework.”
In opposition to the USA model, Modood reviews various alternatives but settles on the term cultural racism, which he contrasts to the ideal of assimilation. He argues that in the UK, groups like the British National Party and the Police have long transferred their hostility from skin colour as such to cultural difference and assimilation, with British Muslims from South Asia (Bangladesh and Pakistan) their particular targets.
In two quite detailed chapters, Modood demonstrates from survey data in the UK that both economic and educational attainment and opportunities do not fall conveniently into the kind of colour categories on which American thinking concentrates. A far more fragmented picture emerges, in which migrant communities from different parts of the former British empire have had quite distinct experiences, both for the initial period after coming to Britain and over longer timescales for both migrants and their children. Migrants from Bangladesh, for instance, often came to work in the textiles industry, and were stranded by its demise in the late 70s and the 80s. Others from East Africa or India included many professional or business people with corresponding ambitions for themselves and their children. Boys from Caribbean families struggled with education, but so did white working class boys, whereas boys of Asian background often performed very well and for girls of every community there were also diverse results to be examined, often unlike those for boys of the same communities.
Not only can ethnic minority communities not be assumed to belong to any particular economic class, but it is also apparent that some very deprived communities can mitigate the impact of deprivation for their children, who benefit in the form of better educational outcomes and opportunities. For example, he writes that “despite four out of five Pakistani and Bangladeshi households being in poverty, these groups produce a larger proportion of university entrants than the white population.” [p98] Modood make many comments on the impact of family and community based social influences. Perhaps he has other work in which he expands on this theme.
The book shifts next to a very rich conversation about the position of Muslims in British society, giving evidence (including a reference to the British National Party website and a report about the attitudes of police officers in training) to support his view that this was emerging (in the early 2000s) as a more critical challenge for race relations than colour (without implying that colour racism is unimportant or only historical). The general drift in anti-Muslim commentary was the claim that for religious and cultural reasons, Muslims were incapable of assimilating into British culture and represented an existential threat to British values. The response to this was often a move towards self-identification as Muslim rather than Pakistani, or Asian and certainly not as politically Black, with membership of the Muslim community seen as a source of group pride and dignity.
“Most Muslims feel most acutely those problems that the antiracists are blind to, and respond weakly to those challenges that the antiracists want to meet with most force. And there can be no way out of this impasse if we remain wedded to a concept of racism that sees only colour discrimination as a cause and material deprivation as a result. We need … a concept of race and racism that can critique sociocultural environments that devalue people not only because of their origins but also because of their membership in a cultural minority… “ [P104] “The new strength among Muslim youths in, for example, not tolerating racial harassment, owes no less to Islamic assertion than to metropolitan antiracism. … British antiracists see the racism but are happy to be ignorant of the living identities that racism obscures.” [p105]
Modood deals very intelligently with key highlights such as the Salmon Rushdie / Satanic Verses affair, Britain’s role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the huge impact of the American inspired “war on terror.” At the same time, Modood points out that a Muslim identity is open to many interpretations; what British Muslims chiefly aspired to was to be accepted as British while taking pride in their own culture and religion.
Modood also compares the British approach to migrants, racism and multiculturalism with policies in France and Germany, though not at very great length. He says that Germany’s migrant workers, many from Turkey, are classed as guest workers and do not obtain citizenship rights at all, nor do their children or grandchildren, even if born in Germany. The question of assimilation is not acknowledged. In France, it is assumed by contrast that people coming to live in France – often from Algeria or other parts of the former empire - will seek citizenship and will fully assimilate to French cultural values; the very idea of multiculturalism is not accepted but that does not prevent the inevitable presence of very distinct cultural communities, whose needs are arguably neglected and often disrespected.
Modood speculates about different approaches to cultural diversity, and identifies with the thinking of two American sociologists, Robert Park and W.I. Thomas, who studied European and Southern black immigration to cities such as Chicago. Modood writes: “Ethnicity Paradox” refers to their conviction that allowing ethnic communities to take root and flourish in the new soil was the most satisfactory way of promoting long term integration and participation in the institutions of the wider American community. They argued that not only did immigrant institutions meet the special cultural needs of a community, but they also provided a basis of continuity for people who were caught up in a particularly severe and destabilizing change. … They were a source of an individual’s self esteem and status… they enabled group pride and could lead to a rise in status and respect for the group as a whole, and therefore, stem the need to disown one’s origins in order to succeed in the new society… The fact that the individual will not be respected unless the group is respected becomes thus, perhaps the most sincere source of nationalist movements in America. To this extent the nationalist movements represent an effort to increase participation in American life.” [pp109-110]
The book continues to discuss issues such as secularism, laws about incitement to hatred and the politics of multiculturalism in Britain before concluding that liberal democracy requires some serious rethinking to arrive at a workable and acceptable way to handle the reality of multiculturalism, which is that it is a part of British life, it is in a constant process of change and it raises fundamentally important questions for which a political solution must be found.
Modood may not convince his readers that multiculturalism is a desirable basis for social policy; there are issues he does not touch on at all which need discussion. Some may prefer the German model, or the French one, neither of which seems very realistic for the UK. What he does convincingly demonstrate is that the theories about racism and antiracism that prevailed up to the 1980s and which he refers to as Atlantocentric, are incapable of addressing the issues confronting migrant communities and that those issues do not diminish for being ignored. In simpler terms, it is essential to construct policies based on evidence of actual conditions in the UK rather than continuing to import from North America simplistic theories about racism which simply do not apply to this country.
May 25, 2016
This book left me with mixed feelings, the most profound being: this could have been more but wasn't.
Perhaps I am a bit harsh but the book had several aspects working against it for me to really appreciate it. First it was written for a British audience that has an already significant knowledge of the debates surrounding multiculturalism and political/philosophical theories on political liberalism. Even tough I do have a reliable basis to built upon it still felt like I missed key pieces to fully get what was written. Secondly, I had trouble to decipher his own opinion due to the high amount of referencing to other theories and interpretations of these theories. One could say this book is 2/3 interpreting and confronting existing theories and 1/3 presenting a new one but even so the new one did not feel as innovating a was perhaps intended. The latter caused by a large degree to painstakingly emphasize what he does not mean or intend to say.At times I felt lost in a blur of words and had to go back to get the full picture.
But it is not that I found the entire book uninteresting! far from it. I did find the idea proposed by Modood of seeing society and groups in societies as families an interesting method of forging a middle path between two concepts. At the on hand thatcher no such thing as society and the other, the risk of turning groups into monolithic blocks. His comparison based on the idea that family members are related and can work together but can also have disagreements or even feuds without disrupting the relation they share, families can also be formed, expanded, reduced and broken up, reorganised in a variety of ways that reflects group dynamics in society. I also liked the idea of presenting multiculturalism as a political project that is never finished and off which the content and application can be contested.In contrast to many in the current political debate who make it seem as if there is only one fixed model to be for or against, made more complicated due to the wrong usage of terms such as integration. He does go for controversy as well with his suggestion (some might call it an attack) to change the ideal of a secular state as to better include religious communities, but his suggestion is not as radical as you might imagine. The second controversy I found the most interesting is his appeal to the government to bind Muslim communities to the state in a corporatistic manner and to learn form mistakes it made in northern Ireland and the IRA and catholic Irish minority. Interesting but I found them not as worked out as I would have liked.
The two stars are limited here for it's not a bad book but it was written for a highly specific audience. In the end I get what he was trying to do and I think that if you are looking for a specific book on liberal politics and it's relation with multiculturalism then look no further. But if you are only new to the subject, I would wait some time for you pick up a copy.
Perhaps I am a bit harsh but the book had several aspects working against it for me to really appreciate it. First it was written for a British audience that has an already significant knowledge of the debates surrounding multiculturalism and political/philosophical theories on political liberalism. Even tough I do have a reliable basis to built upon it still felt like I missed key pieces to fully get what was written. Secondly, I had trouble to decipher his own opinion due to the high amount of referencing to other theories and interpretations of these theories. One could say this book is 2/3 interpreting and confronting existing theories and 1/3 presenting a new one but even so the new one did not feel as innovating a was perhaps intended. The latter caused by a large degree to painstakingly emphasize what he does not mean or intend to say.At times I felt lost in a blur of words and had to go back to get the full picture.
But it is not that I found the entire book uninteresting! far from it. I did find the idea proposed by Modood of seeing society and groups in societies as families an interesting method of forging a middle path between two concepts. At the on hand thatcher no such thing as society and the other, the risk of turning groups into monolithic blocks. His comparison based on the idea that family members are related and can work together but can also have disagreements or even feuds without disrupting the relation they share, families can also be formed, expanded, reduced and broken up, reorganised in a variety of ways that reflects group dynamics in society. I also liked the idea of presenting multiculturalism as a political project that is never finished and off which the content and application can be contested.In contrast to many in the current political debate who make it seem as if there is only one fixed model to be for or against, made more complicated due to the wrong usage of terms such as integration. He does go for controversy as well with his suggestion (some might call it an attack) to change the ideal of a secular state as to better include religious communities, but his suggestion is not as radical as you might imagine. The second controversy I found the most interesting is his appeal to the government to bind Muslim communities to the state in a corporatistic manner and to learn form mistakes it made in northern Ireland and the IRA and catholic Irish minority. Interesting but I found them not as worked out as I would have liked.
The two stars are limited here for it's not a bad book but it was written for a highly specific audience. In the end I get what he was trying to do and I think that if you are looking for a specific book on liberal politics and it's relation with multiculturalism then look no further. But if you are only new to the subject, I would wait some time for you pick up a copy.
October 11, 2012
Tariq is one of the very few sociologists that I have heard and read of that staunchly believes in the existence and advantages of multiculturalism. This book as the title suggests is about multiculturalism a subject brought about especially with the increasing migration of Muslims to mostly secular countries and how that played to the host countries' emotions especially after 9/11. It is an easily controversial book especially since it touches on what people hold as 'right' in whatever society they live in, versus what is 'right' in the whole scheme of things.
I do not necessarily agree with all of his arguments, but I respect how he lays them out. Social science is not my field - I just dabble :) but he gets my approval.
I do not necessarily agree with all of his arguments, but I respect how he lays them out. Social science is not my field - I just dabble :) but he gets my approval.
April 16, 2012
essential reading for people studying multiculturalism, community cohesion, community engagement or politics of identity. Its well-written and constructs very good arguments putting the case forward for a new kind of understanding about multiculturalism and how it continues to be relevant.
August 19, 2013
THIS BOOK DISCUUSES WIDELY AND CRITICALLY OF THE MULYICUTURAL BRITAIN, INTEGRATION AND ASSIMILATION OF RACE,CLASS, CULTURES AND RELIGION. IT EXPLORES WHY MULTICULTURALISM CHALENGES WAYS OF REASONING THE INCLUSIVE IDEA OF WHAT BRITISHNESS MEANS
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