Paper 8 : The Cultural Studies Assignment
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Assignment
Paper 8 : The Cultural Studies
Subject : American Multiculturalism
Name : Sagar B. Vaghela
Sem : 2
Roll No : 32
Enrollment No : 2069108420180052
Email Id : sagarvaghela2020@gmail.com
Submitted To : S.B.Gardi Department Of English MKBU
Multiculturalism is a term with a range of meanings in the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and in colloquial use. In sociology and everyday usage, it is a synonym for "ethnic pluralism" with the two terms often used interchangeably, for example a cultural pluralism in which various ethnic groups collaborate and enter into a dialogue with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities. It can describe a mixed ethnic community area where multiple cultural traditions exist, or a single country within which they do. Groups associated with an aboriginal ethnic group and foreigner ethnic groups are often the focus.
In reference to sociology, multiculturalism is the end state of either a natural or artificial process (e.g. legally controlled immigration) and occurs on either a large national scale or a smaller scale within a nation's communities. On a smaller scale this can occur artificially when a jurisdiction is created or expanded by amalgamating areas with two or more different cultures (e.g. French Canada and English Canada). On a large scale, it can occur as a result of either legal or illegal immigration to and from different jurisdictions around the world.
Multiculturalism as a political philosophy involves ideologies and policies which vary widely, ranging from the advocacy of equal respect to the various cultures in a society, to policies of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity , to policies in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group to which they belong.
Multiculturalism that promotes maintaining the distinctiveness of multiple cultures is often contrasted to other settlement policies such as aocial intergation, cultural assmilation and racial segregation. Multiculturalism has been described as a "salad bowl" and "cultural mosaic” in contrast to a melting pot.
Two different and seemingly inconsistent strategies have developed through different government policies and strategies. The first focuses on interaction and communication between different cultures; this approach is also often known as interculturalism.. The second centers on diversity and cultural uniqueness which can sometimes result in over jobs among other things and may lead to ethnic conflict. Controversy surrounding the issue of cultural isolation includes the ghettoization of a culture within a nation and the protection of the cultural attributes of an area or nation. Proponents of government policies often claim that artificial, government guided protections also contribute to global cultural diversity.The second approach to multiculturalist policy making maintains that they avoid presenting any specific ethnic, religious, or cultural community values as central.
“Multiculturalism” is similar. Some things that are reasonably labeled “multiculturalism” are mostly bad, and others are mostly good. We can all imagine bad versions of multiculturalism — ones that dramatically undermine the social cohesion necessary to maintain order or defend the nation in war; ones in which many people in a modern economy speak mutually unintelligible languages; ones in which members of some subcultures feel comfortable violently attacking people, whether of their own culture or of others; and so on. But America is also founded on its own sort of multiculturalism, which has usually (though not always) stood us in good stead. Here are four constitutional manifestations of this multiculturalism.
☆ 1 Federalism:
The premise of federalism is precisely that multiple states, which the Framers envisioned as often having substantial differences in culture, should be able to retain their cultures, including the legal rules that flow from those cultures. (Within states, home rule by localities has had a similar, though lesser, mission.)
Of course, the Civil War shows the potential cost of this multiculturalism, though I suspect that the Constitution’s toleration of slavery in some states but not others was inevitable given the situation at the time of the Founding. And the post–Civil War amendments were aimed at homogenizing the nation to some extent, with regard to slavery, voting rights, and other individual rights.
But despite this, even after the Civil War the nation remained committed to a good deal of federalism, aimed at letting the people of each state maintain their own legal and social cultures, which might differ from those in other states. And pro-federalism advocates today, including those who often deride multiculturalism in general terms, are committed to maintaining the rights of states to maintain their own legal regimes, which reflect differing cultural values.
☆ 2 Religious freedom:
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights — especially the Free Exercise Clause — contemplate a country with a considerable range of religious views and even religious cultures. Many of the Founding-era American denominations were distinct cultural groups, such as the Quakers, and some of them lived in relatively homogeneous enclaves.
American religious freedom has always included religious tolerance — the willingness to let religious groups live free of deliberate persecution. But it has also always included some degree of religious accommodation, which is to say exemption of religious observers from certain kinds of generally applicable laws. The Constitution itself embodies one such accommodation, in the provisions stating that a person taking the oath of office may affirm instead of swearing; that was intended to allow Quakers and other groups to participate in civic life without giving up their religion. Other early accommodations included exemptions from the military draft, exemptions of the clergy from the duty to testify, exemptions of Jews in Rhode Island from laws banning uncle-niece marriages, and more.
☆ 3 Free speech and economic liberty: The Free Speech Clause, coupled with protection for private property and — more broadly — freedom of movement and action, likewise facilitates multiculturalism and especially the preservation of immigrant cultures. When people come to America, they can live near others from the old country, speak their language with one another, celebrate their old festivals, and start up businesses that cater to their fellow immigrants.
They can also organize political movements together with their fellow immigrants, lobbying for exemptions from laws that they see as burdensome, or aiming to change American foreign policy with regard to the old country (or its enemies). Like it or not, this is a necessary consequence of our constitutional structure.
A legal system that was more dictatorial, more majoritarian, and less free-market could more effectively suppress such immigrant cultures. But our system can’t do so without undermining everyone’s free-speech rights, political-participation rights, and economic rights.
☆ 4 Parental rights: Parental rights, which have been expressly recognized by the Supreme Court since the 1920s, further promote multiculturalism, by giving parents broad power to convey their culture to their children. Indeed, the Court’s first parental-rights cases struck down restrictions on child rearing that were aimed at suppressing what some saw as excessive multiculturalism. Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) struck down a law that banned private schools from teaching children a foreign language — a law largely prompted by a sense that such teaching would undermine the common American culture. Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) struck down a ban on all private schooling, a ban largely motivated by its backers’ view that Catholicism is incompatible with majority American culture. Parental rights are not absolute, but they remain powerful protectors for dissenting cultures, whether they are immigrant cultures, religious-separatist cultures (such as the Amish), or religious-conservative cultures that reject the secularism of the public schools.
Work Cited :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/27/the-american-tradition-of-multiculturalism/?utm_term=.7a6d5f401b07
Assignment
Paper 8 : The Cultural Studies
Subject : American Multiculturalism
Name : Sagar B. Vaghela
Sem : 2
Roll No : 32
Enrollment No : 2069108420180052
Email Id : sagarvaghela2020@gmail.com
Submitted To : S.B.Gardi Department Of English MKBU
Multiculturalism is a term with a range of meanings in the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and in colloquial use. In sociology and everyday usage, it is a synonym for "ethnic pluralism" with the two terms often used interchangeably, for example a cultural pluralism in which various ethnic groups collaborate and enter into a dialogue with one another without having to sacrifice their particular identities. It can describe a mixed ethnic community area where multiple cultural traditions exist, or a single country within which they do. Groups associated with an aboriginal ethnic group and foreigner ethnic groups are often the focus.
In reference to sociology, multiculturalism is the end state of either a natural or artificial process (e.g. legally controlled immigration) and occurs on either a large national scale or a smaller scale within a nation's communities. On a smaller scale this can occur artificially when a jurisdiction is created or expanded by amalgamating areas with two or more different cultures (e.g. French Canada and English Canada). On a large scale, it can occur as a result of either legal or illegal immigration to and from different jurisdictions around the world.
Multiculturalism as a political philosophy involves ideologies and policies which vary widely, ranging from the advocacy of equal respect to the various cultures in a society, to policies of promoting the maintenance of cultural diversity , to policies in which people of various ethnic and religious groups are addressed by the authorities as defined by the group to which they belong.
Multiculturalism that promotes maintaining the distinctiveness of multiple cultures is often contrasted to other settlement policies such as aocial intergation, cultural assmilation and racial segregation. Multiculturalism has been described as a "salad bowl" and "cultural mosaic” in contrast to a melting pot.
Two different and seemingly inconsistent strategies have developed through different government policies and strategies. The first focuses on interaction and communication between different cultures; this approach is also often known as interculturalism.. The second centers on diversity and cultural uniqueness which can sometimes result in over jobs among other things and may lead to ethnic conflict. Controversy surrounding the issue of cultural isolation includes the ghettoization of a culture within a nation and the protection of the cultural attributes of an area or nation. Proponents of government policies often claim that artificial, government guided protections also contribute to global cultural diversity.The second approach to multiculturalist policy making maintains that they avoid presenting any specific ethnic, religious, or cultural community values as central.
“Multiculturalism” is similar. Some things that are reasonably labeled “multiculturalism” are mostly bad, and others are mostly good. We can all imagine bad versions of multiculturalism — ones that dramatically undermine the social cohesion necessary to maintain order or defend the nation in war; ones in which many people in a modern economy speak mutually unintelligible languages; ones in which members of some subcultures feel comfortable violently attacking people, whether of their own culture or of others; and so on. But America is also founded on its own sort of multiculturalism, which has usually (though not always) stood us in good stead. Here are four constitutional manifestations of this multiculturalism.
☆ 1 Federalism:
The premise of federalism is precisely that multiple states, which the Framers envisioned as often having substantial differences in culture, should be able to retain their cultures, including the legal rules that flow from those cultures. (Within states, home rule by localities has had a similar, though lesser, mission.)
Of course, the Civil War shows the potential cost of this multiculturalism, though I suspect that the Constitution’s toleration of slavery in some states but not others was inevitable given the situation at the time of the Founding. And the post–Civil War amendments were aimed at homogenizing the nation to some extent, with regard to slavery, voting rights, and other individual rights.
But despite this, even after the Civil War the nation remained committed to a good deal of federalism, aimed at letting the people of each state maintain their own legal and social cultures, which might differ from those in other states. And pro-federalism advocates today, including those who often deride multiculturalism in general terms, are committed to maintaining the rights of states to maintain their own legal regimes, which reflect differing cultural values.
☆ 2 Religious freedom:
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights — especially the Free Exercise Clause — contemplate a country with a considerable range of religious views and even religious cultures. Many of the Founding-era American denominations were distinct cultural groups, such as the Quakers, and some of them lived in relatively homogeneous enclaves.
American religious freedom has always included religious tolerance — the willingness to let religious groups live free of deliberate persecution. But it has also always included some degree of religious accommodation, which is to say exemption of religious observers from certain kinds of generally applicable laws. The Constitution itself embodies one such accommodation, in the provisions stating that a person taking the oath of office may affirm instead of swearing; that was intended to allow Quakers and other groups to participate in civic life without giving up their religion. Other early accommodations included exemptions from the military draft, exemptions of the clergy from the duty to testify, exemptions of Jews in Rhode Island from laws banning uncle-niece marriages, and more.
☆ 3 Free speech and economic liberty: The Free Speech Clause, coupled with protection for private property and — more broadly — freedom of movement and action, likewise facilitates multiculturalism and especially the preservation of immigrant cultures. When people come to America, they can live near others from the old country, speak their language with one another, celebrate their old festivals, and start up businesses that cater to their fellow immigrants.
They can also organize political movements together with their fellow immigrants, lobbying for exemptions from laws that they see as burdensome, or aiming to change American foreign policy with regard to the old country (or its enemies). Like it or not, this is a necessary consequence of our constitutional structure.
A legal system that was more dictatorial, more majoritarian, and less free-market could more effectively suppress such immigrant cultures. But our system can’t do so without undermining everyone’s free-speech rights, political-participation rights, and economic rights.
☆ 4 Parental rights: Parental rights, which have been expressly recognized by the Supreme Court since the 1920s, further promote multiculturalism, by giving parents broad power to convey their culture to their children. Indeed, the Court’s first parental-rights cases struck down restrictions on child rearing that were aimed at suppressing what some saw as excessive multiculturalism. Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) struck down a law that banned private schools from teaching children a foreign language — a law largely prompted by a sense that such teaching would undermine the common American culture. Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) struck down a ban on all private schooling, a ban largely motivated by its backers’ view that Catholicism is incompatible with majority American culture. Parental rights are not absolute, but they remain powerful protectors for dissenting cultures, whether they are immigrant cultures, religious-separatist cultures (such as the Amish), or religious-conservative cultures that reject the secularism of the public schools.
Work Cited :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/27/the-american-tradition-of-multiculturalism/?utm_term=.7a6d5f401b07
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