ABSTRACT
Ideas about the legal and political accommodation of ethnic diversity have been in a state of flux for the past 40 years around the world. A familiar way of describing these changes is in terms of the “rise and fall of multiculturalism.” Indeed, this has become a kind of “master narrative,” widely invoked by scholars, journalists, and policy-makers alike to explain the evolution of contemporary debates about diversity. Although people disagree about what comes “after multiculturalism,” there is a surprising consensus that we are indeed in a “post-multicultural” era. My goal in this chapter will be to explore and critique this master narra-
tive, and to suggest an alternative framework for thinking about the choices we face. In order to make progress, I will suggest, we need to dig below the surface of the master narrative. Both the rise and fall of multiculturalism have been very uneven processes, depending on the nature of the issue and the country involved, and we need to understand these variations if we are to identify a more sustainable model for accommodating diversity. In its simplest form, the master narrative goes like this:2
From the 1970s to mid-1990s there was a clear trend across the Western democracies towards the increased recognition and accommodation of diversity through a range of multiculturalism policies and minority rights. These policies were endorsed both at the domestic level in various states and by international organizations, and involved a rejection of earlier ideas of unitary and homogenous nationhood.
