ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problems related to the emergence of modernity and deals with the changing perceptions around the issue of multiculturalism. Modernity is a state of society, contrasted to what was dominant before—loosely: traditional society. Modernism and postmodernism refer to movements that express a collective state of mind: approaches to the existential reality with which people have to deal. Modernity has created problems for Western societies: it leads to a crisis of meaning for individuals, which in turn brings about anomie, other-directedness, spiritual homelessness. Multiculturalism is both an ideology and a policy; its central idea is that immigrants and their descendants should be given equal rights without being expected to give up their cultural distinctiveness. Multiculturalism has been pursued with such gusto as in the Netherlands up to the beginning of the present millennium. In the Netherlands, as much as can be done on behalf of multiculturalism has been done.
