The Construction Of National-identity Building In The Context Of Multi-culture

Multiculturalism believes that we should practice group-differentiated rights toprotect the ethnic minority culture, and this has long been a main guide principledealing with ethnic issues among western society. Nevertheless, since the beginning ofthis century, series of terrorist attacks and streets riots related to ethnic minority issuehave brought these multiculturalism policies into challenge. Among the most powerfulcritiques, libertarians start from focusing on social stability and political unity, andchallenge multiculturalism in the sense of both conception and practice, and argue thatpolitics of recognition and ethnic group rights promoted in multiculturalism will finallyerode the unity of national identity. To response to this criticism, scholars ofmulticulturalism argue that multiculturalism itself is an echo in theory to the oppressionof orthodox national-state building to ethnic culture, and actually politics of recognitionor group-differentiated rights help to build the national identity. It’s a responsibility formodern state to accomplish two conflicting mission of building national identity andprotecting multicultural, this debate leads to the reveal of the absence of normativetheory speaking of this area in political science. This dissertation will try to comb thenormative foundation and mechanism of both sides, pointing to the inevitability of theinner interaction between national identity and multi-culture, identify the criticisms andresponses and finally make my own point of view.National identity is the footstone of social stability and political unity for modernsociety, and related to the legitimacy of modern state. The boundary definiteness andcultural heterogeneity determined the nature of national identity building, which is tointegrate different cultures within the state and compose an unite national nationality.However, multiculturalism emphases the importance of different cultural identity to individual, and thinks that the orthodox liberalism national building is actually anassimilation from the mainstream culture to ethnic minority culture, thus, ethnicminority cultures are treated unequally to be simply assimilated, discriminated andinsulted. Then it’s obviously that to protect ethnic minority culture should practicepolitics of recognition, not just eliminated the assimilation, discrimination andinsulation, but also using the group-differentiated rights to entitle ethnic minority ofgroup representation, peculiar welfare and autonomy. We can see there’s a tensionbetween political integration required by national identity and politics of differencederived from multiculturalism, this is what caused critiques from liberalism, concludedthat the logic of multiculturalism will inevitably leading to the failure of nationalidentity building.Among the critiques of multiculturalism from libertarians, one is that the argumentof politics of recognition make public confirming to the cultural heterogeneity, whichbreak down the similarity of social life, these result in a strangeness between differentethnic groups and erode the foundation of national identity; group-differentiated rightsdissolve the equality of citizenship, then it’s not surprise to see that citizenship fail to bethe common bond uniting individuals of different social identity, quite a contrary,citizenship will become an incentive of disunity; to dispute social resources basing onethnicity twist the logic of the socio economic problems related to ethnic issues, and inthe end the state could not fulfill the development needs of ethnic minorities, whichimpair the trust to national political institution for members of ethnic groups; and at lastnot the least, the logic to instrumentalizing ethnicity identity will strength the tendencyof group essentialism, make social barriers and even bring up competitive ethnicalpolity and lead to national secession.To defend themselves, multiculturalism theorists have to revisit their logic to makeresponses. First, in the presetting of libertarians, ethnic identity is a dependency forsocial and economic status, and make the conclusion that politics of recognition isunnecessary, the mainstream social group will always believe in “Not my race, werealiens”, thus any proposals of enhance autonomy is unacceptable; Second, politics ofrecognition will bring the feeling of dignity by destigmatization to ethnic minorities,meanwhile break down the social barriers from mainstream society, improve the loyaltyto the community; Third, differentiated citizenship could exclude the logic of majorityrule and competitive rule both bringing injustice to ethnic minority culture, thus by doing that could guarantee an equal interaction between mainstream group and ethnicminorities in public life, a full express of their own interests will reduce thedisadvantages for ethnic minorities through an institutional channel; And last,multiculturalism abandon the traditional nationality building on mainstream groupculture, they believe that its own nature conform to varies values of modern civilization,and it could be the foundation of national-state building. From all above,multiculturalism try to develop their own model of national identity building: usemulticulturalism as societal culture to build a common culture, to improve socialinteraction with differentiated citizenship, strengthen the loyalty to community and therecognition of political institution, replace the old citizenship to “citizenzation”, developdeliberative democracy to control ethnic politicization.Through this whole debate we find out that multiculturalism criticize theillegitimate in moral and impossibility in practice of the orthodox national-state buildingmodel. For the first time, they bring the reality of cultural diversity before nationalidentity; their anther contribution is to introduce politics of recognition, which willbring the feeling of dignity by destigmatization to ethnic minorities, meanwhile breakdown the social barriers from mainstream society, and improve the loyalty to thecommunity. However, all solutions they provide are immoderately relying on civiceducation and its improvement to civic virtue. It’s too idealism and in some sense withthe suspicion of transform the true difficulties. What’s more, complete modern stateinstitute system is necessary for multiculturalism to control the result of thepoliticalization of ethnicity, and can’t resolve the fierce national problems. Therefore,multiculturalism isn’t applicable to the developing multination countries.