Liberal Multiculturalism

Abstract

By analogy to Macpherson’s “protective” and “self-developmental” models of liberal democracy, there might be two distinct models of liberal multiculturalism. On the protective-style model, the aim is to protect minority cultures against assimilationist and homogenizing intrusions of the majority. On the other model, here dubbed “polyglot multiculturalism,” the majority might expand its own “context for choice” by having more minority cultures from whom to borrow. The latter is a more welcoming and inclusive strategy, still recognizably liberal in form, than the self-defensive liberalism of the more purely protectionist sort.