Multicultural conversations: The nature and future of culture, identity and nationalism

Despite well-known criticism of multiculturalism in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Australia, India and elsewhere since 9/11, such policies have proliferated (Banting and Kymlicka, 2013; Mathieu, 2017) and the Canadian and Australian policies of multiculturalism have celebrated their 50th birthdays. Political theories of multiculturalism have proliferated in this period too (Parekh, 2019; Phillips, 2007; Modood, 2007/2013; Patten 2014; Lenard, 2022). Schools of multiculturalist thought have been identified (Levey, 2019; Uberoi and Modood, 2019), as have contextual methods in the political theory and normative sociology of multiculturalism (Modood and Thompson, 2017; Modood, 2020). New historical inquiries into the origins of the political thought of multiculturalism have begun (Tyler, 2017; Uberoi, 2021) and the ideas of multiculturalists have been altered to defend majority rights (Koopmans and Orgad, 2022). Current and former politicians continue to debate its merits (Braverman, 2022, Denham, 2023). Policies of multiculturalism and multiculturalist ideas have thus proved more resilient than many had thought. In the following conversation, which took place on 20 June 2023, Bhikhu Parekh, Tariq Modood, Varun Uberoi, and Colin Tyler discuss the history, varied natures, and future of the contested multiculturalist ideas of “culture,” “identity” and “nationalism”.