Multiculturalism and Cultural Diversity

Multiculturalism and Cultural Diversity

• Learning outcome: To discuss concepts and perspectives that will be useful in the study of gender and multiculturalism based on different interactional frameworks.
• Problem question: What key concepts are there in order to explore all forms of marginalization?

Defining Multiculturalism

• Culture: A system of beliefs and behaviors.
• Multicultural: Plurality of cultures.
• Recognizes and respects the presence of all diverse groups in an organization or society.
• Acknowledges and values socio-cultural differences.
• Encourages and enables continued contribution within an inclusive cultural context that empowers everyone in the organization or society.
• It is beneficial to society to consist of people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultures, and religions, because members learn how to live and work together despite the cultural differences or cultural diversity.

Cultural Universals

• Cultural universals are common aspects that exist in every human culture on the planet, yet vary from culture to culture, such as values and modes of behavior.
• Examples: gender roles, incest taboo, religious and healing rituals, mythology, marriage, language, art, dance, music, cooking, games, jokes, sports, birth and death.

Ethnocentrism

• Ethnocentrism is a term coined by William Sumner, is the tendency to see and evaluate other cultures in terms of one's own race, nation, or culture.
• Ethnocentrism rests on the belief of the superiority of one's own culture or ethnic group compared to others.
• Ethnocentrism is a kind of ethnic or cultural group egocentrism, which involves a belief in the superiority of one's own group.
• Culture shock happens when a person physically and mentally maladapts when placed in a new cultural environment.
• People with the best intentions sometimes travel to a society to "help" its people, seeing them as uneducated or backward; essentially inferior.
• Cultural imperialism: the deliberate imposition of one's own cultural values on another culture.

Xenocentrism

• Xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism.
• Xenocentrism is the preference to the ideas, lifestyle, and products of other cultures.
• Xenocentrism was termed by John D. Fullmera.
• Xenocentrism means a culturally based tendency to value other cultures more highly than one's own.
• Xenocentrism can materialize in different ways.

Cultural Relativism

• Cultural relativism was coined by Franz Boas
• Cultural relativism is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture.
• Cultural relativism highlights the perspective that no culture is superior to any other culture when comparing systems of morality, law, politics, etc.

Cultural Change

• Culture is always evolving.
• New things are added to material culture every day which affect non-material culture as well.

How Cultural Change Happens

• Innovation refers to a new object or concept's initial appearance in society.
• Discovery is to make known previously unknown but existing aspects of reality.
• Invention is when something new is formed from existing objects or concepts.

Cultural Change Effects

• Generational gaps effects include conflict among family members of different generations and misunderstandings in opinion.
• Cultural gap: Any systematic difference between two cultures which hinders mutual understanding or relations like values, behavior, education, and customs of the respective cultures.
• Cultural lag: period of maladjustment occurs when the non-material culture is struggling to adapt to new material conditions.

Cultural Diversity

• Cultural diversity is the cultural variety among people with different racial or ethnical backgrounds that is present in the world, societies, or organizations.
• Jonathan Sacks: "Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical, and artistic expressions of mankind."
• UNESCO, 2021: "Culture takes diverse forms across time and space. This diversity is embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of the identities of the groups and societies making up humankind. As a source of exchange, innovation, and creativity, cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature..."

Identity

• GRAPH1: Uniqueness on three levels in the humans' mental programming (Hofstede 2005, p. 16): Specific for the individual (Personality - Hereditaried and learnt), Specific for the group or the category (Culture - Learnt), Universal (The human nature: Hereditaried).
• Identity includes nationality, religion, location, political party, ethnicity, race, language, ability or skills, gender or sexual identity, generation, role category, socioeconomic status, and organizations (work or school).
• Avruch 1998:17-18: "The more complex and differentiated the social system, the more potential groups and institutions there are. And because each group of institution places individuals in different experiential worlds, and because culture derives in part from this experience, each of these groups and institutions can be a potential container for culture."

Subcultures

• Subcultures: A cultural group within a larger culture, often having beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger culture.
• Members of a subculture still participate in the dominant culture while engaging in unique and distinct forms of behavior.
• Argot is a specialized language that will distinguish it from the wider society; it's the jargon or slang of a particular group or class.

Multicultural Self/Social Categorization

• Everyone is simultaneously a member of several different cultural groups and thus could be said to have multicultural membership.
• Culture exists in every individual (cognitive process in non-material culture).
• When people adhere to the values, beliefs, and norms of cultural groups, those cultures reside in those people.
• Social Categorization: A distinction between the group containing the self, the ingroup and other groups, the outgroups.
• Distinctions between the "we's" and "they's".
• Ingroup: social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member.
• Outgroup: social group with which an individual does not identify.

Race vs. Ethnicity

• Identity includes Nationality, Religion, Location, Political Party, Ethnicity, Race, Language, Ability or skills, Gender or Sexual Identity, Generation, Role Category, Socioeconomic Status and Organizations (Work or school).
• Race examples are Caucasian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White.
• Ethnicity examples are Ivatan, Ilocano, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Aklanon and Cebuano.
• Giddens & Sutton, 2014: "...even in biological terms, there are no clear-cut 'races', though there is a range of physical variation in human populations. Human groups are on a continuum, and genetic diversity within populations is as great as the diversity between them. Most sociologists argue that 'race' is nothing more than an ideological construct."

Minority Groups

• Minority groups are any group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination.
• Unequal treatment and less power over their lives
• Awareness of subordination
• Distinguishing physical or cultural traits like skin color or language
• Involuntary membership in the group (categorization)
• High rate of in-group marriage (example: Great Wall)

Scapegoat Theory

• Scapegoat theory is blaming someone else for one's own problems.
• It is a process that often results in feelings of prejudice toward the person or group that one is blaming.
• Scapegoating serves as an opportunity to explain failure or misdeeds, while maintaining one's positive self-image.

Stereotypes and Prejudice

• Stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people and overgeneralized ideas, distorting the essence of the individual
• Prejudice refers to beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that someone holds about a group that is not based on experience or facts (example: racism), and is usually unfavorable.

Stigma and Discrimination

• Stigma is an attribute, behavior, or reputation which is socially discrediting in a particular way:
  • It causes an individual to be mentally classified by others in an undesirable way (Goffman).
• Discrimination is action or practice that excludes, disadvantages, or merely differentiates between individuals or groups on the basis of some ascribed or perceived trait.

Intergroup Hostility

• Genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular group or nation
• Expulsion: subordinate groups being forced by a dominant group to leave a certain area or country
• Segregation: physical separation of two groups, particularly in residence, workplace, and social functions

Intergroup Relations

• Pluralism: Mixture of different cultures where each culture retains its own identity and yet adds to the flavor of the whole
• Assimilation: Minority individual or group gives up its own identity by taking on the characteristics of the dominant culture
• Amalgamation: The process by which a minority group and a majority group combine to form a new group known as "the melting pot".
• Acculturation is the process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society where an individual adopts, acquires, and adjusts to new cultural environment.
• Accommodation: The dominant group allows for the minority group to express their culture.
  • This is the opposite of assimilation, rather assimilation is where a minority group gives up its own identity by taking up the dominant culture.

Multiculturalism Defined

• Longley, 2019: "Different cultures can coexist peacefully. Multiculturalism expresses the view that society is enriched by preserving, respecting, and even encouraging cultural diversity."
• Multiculturalism helps change the way people see and act in the world by being exposed to beliefs, values, and practices of other cultures.

Perspectives in Multiculturalism:

• Communitarian (Taylor, 1995)
  • Rejects the idea that the individual comes before the community
  • Struggle for recognition can only be resolved through a "regime of recognition among equals"
  • Identities are formed dialogically and dependent on the recognition of others
  • Places importance on the common good
• Liberal Egalitarian (Kymlicka, 1995)
  • Cultural membership is a personal good
  • Cultures serve as "contexts of choice" which provide meaningful options and scripts with which people can frame, revise, and pursue their goals with autonomy and self-respect
  • Places importance of rectifying unchosen inequalities (migrants)
• Freedom from Domination (Lovett, 2010):
  • Domination is an obstacle to human flourishing
  • The basis for special accommodation is the desire to reduce domination, not a desire to protect valuable culture or considerations of fairness and equality.
  • Examples include Philippine Catholic Schools vis a vis France's public schools and language support for immigrants
• Historical Injustice and a Postcolonial Perspective
  • Focus on Indigenous sovereignty through reckoning of history
  • Focus on the historical background of the denial of equal sovereign status of indigenous groups, the dispossession of their lands, and the destruction of their cultural practices through historic injustices.
  • Example: Aboriginal peoples
• Types of multicultural policies:
  • Voice
  • Symbolic recognition
  • Redistribution
  • Protection
  • Exemptions
  • Assistance to promote culture
  • Autonomy
• Policies that are available in the following sectors/institutions:
  • International Organizations (United Nations)
  • Philippine Constitution and national laws
  • Local Government Ordinances
  • Workplaces in the Philippines
  • This University
• Criticisms of multiculturalism:
  • Multiculturalism exaggerates the internal unity of cultures, solidifies differences that are currently more fluid, and makes people from other cultures seem more exotic and distinct than they really are.
  • Tolerance will lead to indifference and a universalist ideal of equality.