ASTK12297U Course: Multiculturalism - what is it really about?

Volume 2014/2015
Education
Bachelorlevel: 10 ECTS
Masterlevel: 7,5 ECTS
Content

Ever since the early 1980s, multiculturalism and “diversity” has been a core component in the Western hemisphere. Currently, it is claimed, it is exercising an influence towering above Marxism of the early 1970s. What, then, is multiculturalism essentially about? Using a wide range of scholarly material, this course will put multiculturalism in an ideological framework. Generally, multiculturalism is seen as a leftist and progressive idea. Above all, this reputation is closely associated with the fact that multiculturalism is linked to anti-racism and a generous immigration policy. It also enjoys a wide public footing, in particular among the elites. However, this interpretation may be fruitfully compared with a leftist critique against multiculturalism, resting, among other things, on the collectivist, mythical and anti-individualist implications of the multicultural idea of ethnic belonging. From this vantage point, multiculturalism is a conservative ideology.

 

The course is expected to be structures according to the following headings.

  1. Introduction
  2. In defence of multiculturalism – Will Kymlicka,
  3. In defence of multiculturalism – Charles Taylor
  4. In defence of multiculturalism – Bhikhu Parekh
  5. Anti-racism as tolerance.
  6. Ethnicity as protection.
  7. Culturalism as progressive
  8. Critics of multiculturalism – Slavoj Zizek
  9. Critics of multiculturalism – Bech, Necef
  10. Critics of multiculturalism – Göran Adamson
  11. Anti-racism or racism – is it that simple?
  12. Ethnicity as imprisonment
  13. Culturalism as conservative
  14. Conclusion and summing up
Learning Outcome

‘The objective of the course/seminar is to enable the students to:

 

  • Contextualize multiculturalism: why did it emerge, and why is it currently increasingly being questioned?
  • Explain the salient features in the various ways in which multiculturalism is being defended.
  • Explain the salient features in the various ways in which multiculturalism is being critizised.
  • Explain multiculturalism’s intricate relationship to key political concepts, such as populism, elitism, diversity, and citizenship.
  • Explain the reasons why multiculturalism – by its advocates – is seen as progressive, while its left-leaning critics see it as a form of conservative ideology.

 

Göran Adamson, Svensk mångfaldspolitik – En kritik från vänster (Malmö: Arx Förlag, 2014)

Anne Phillips, The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)

Bech, Henning & Ümit Necef, Mehmet, Er danskerne racister?Invandrerforskningens

problemer, Frederiksberg: Frydenlund, 2013

Will Kymlicka, Politics in the Vernacular – Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

+ Articles

 

The list of articles will be available at the start of the course.

A general understanding of political concepts such as diversity, ideology, and populism.
The course will consist of lectures, with an hourly similar discussion at the end of it, where key features of the lectures will be highlighted.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Total
  • 28
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Oral examination
Oral exam
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Criteria for exam assesment
  • Grade 12 is given for an outstanding performance: the student lives up to the course's goal description in an independent and convincing manner with no or few and minor shortcomings
  • Grade 7 is given for a good performance: the student is confidently able to live up to the goal description, albeit with several shortcomings
  • Grade 02 is given for an adequate performance: the minimum acceptable performance in which the student is only able to live up to the goal description in an insecure and incomplete manner