The psychology of intercultural adaptation was first discussed by Plato. Many modern enculturation theories claim that ethnic minorities (including aboriginal natives, immigrants, refugees, and soj...

Critical History of the Acculturation Psychology of Assimilation, Separation, Integration, and Marginalization

No reverberatory effect of the great war has caused American public opinion more solicitude than the failure of the “melting-pot.” The tendency... has been for the national clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly established and more and more prosperous to cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real. Just as these clusters became more and more objectively American, did they become more and more German or Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish.... [This] is not, however, to admit the failure of Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean. It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been broad or narrow—whether perhaps the time has not come to assert a higher ideal than the “melting pot.”... We act as if we wanted Americanization...

The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship On the Interpenetration of Political and Ethnic Cultures

The Ethics of Immigration

How should we deal with social diversity if we conceive it as cultural diversity? Appeals to cultural relativism and to the collective good of diversity provide inadequate answers. Taking cultural diversity seriously requires that we respond to it fairly or justly and that, in turn, requires an approach that is impartial (or neutral) amongst cultures. Claims of impartiality are often thought peculiarly implausible when applied to cultural diversity, but an impartialist approach is in fact peculiarly appropriate to that form of diversity. The issue is not whether we can be impartial, but whether we are ready to accept the implications of describing a diversity as ‘cultural’ and, if we are, what form our impartiality should take. Attempts to avoid claims of impartiality by dealing with diversity through deliberative processes are misguided since those processes must embody commitments to impartiality if their outcomes are to be just.

Political theory and cultural diversity

Affirmative action policies are in the spotlights again, in America as well as in Europe. Taking stock of recent normative and political debates I clarify the concept and modalities of affirmative action. From my moral pluralist perspective of liberal, democratic socialism conflicting principles of moral and legal equality have to be balanced in a prudent and context‐sensitive way. Wherever severe structural inequalities among ethnic and national groups are reproduced and strengthened, affirmative action is morally required. Some rules of thumb with regard to appropriate modalities, aims, forgetting and public legitimation of affirmative action are discussed. A short comparison of the institutional contexts of the US and The Netherlands demonstrates that ethnic affirmative action is both more morally required and more difficult to realize and to legitimize in the US. Canadians and Europeans beware of an export of US‐American ideological gifts.

Maurice Rickard

Papers

Liberalism, Multiculturalism, and Minority Protection