Abstract

Political Theory and Australian Multiculturalism
by Melissa Lovell

The official commitment to multiculturalism as a policy has ‘waxed and waned’ in recent years, but it remains an important part of the Australian political landscape. As Geoffrey Brahm Levey points out in his comprehensive introduction to Political Theory & Australian Multiculturalism, the multicultural policy developed in ‘piecemeal’ fashion from the 1970s in Australia. Emerging from an initial focus on practical assistance and welfare services for new immigrants, multicultural policies have since prompted considerable public and political debate. The themes of national identity, citizenship, social justice, social cohesion and community harmony have all been central to the Australian debate. Most political philosophy in this field originates in North America and, unsurprisingly, is preoccupied with the concerns (and political institutions) of the United States and Canada. This edited collection—recently published in paperback form—sets out to bring the Australian experience of multiculturalism into political theory.  Some of the fifteen chapters on this subject achieve this goal better than others. In general this collection makes a modest, but interesting, contribution to scholarship on Australian multiculturalism.

 The chapters of this book engage with many of the key debates in contemporary political theory and are written by a number of influential and well-known authors including Chandran Kukathas, Barry Hindess, Philip Pettit and Duncan Ivison. As we would expect in a collection of this type, there is no overarching argument that draws the chapters together. Rather, papers focus on a range of important issues such as the appropriate limits of liberal toleration, the tension between liberalism and nationalism, differing conceptions of citizenship, and tensions between group rights and human rights. Contributions also represent a diversity of ideological perspectives. Chandran Kukathas, for instance, argues for a ‘minimalist’ variety of multiculturalism, which he suggests is most in keeping with classical liberalism and the liberal value of toleration. A more radical approach is developed by Barry Hindess in his analysis of the way that the polis is conceptualised in multicultural theory. Hindess argues that most political philosophers uncritically accept the current apparatus and institutions of the modern State, even though the practices and objectives of State agencies can pose significant problems for disadvantaged groups.

 The collection is strongest when it explicitly engages with Australian case studies, and with the concerns and preoccupations of Australian debates on cultural difference. Duncan Ivison’s chapter on multiculturalism and resentment is a good example of this approach. He draws on examples from newspapers and speeches to illustrate the dangers of moralism in debates about multiculturalism, and to consider effective arguments in defence of multiculturalism. Moira Gatens’ chapter on group rights, women’s rights and Aboriginal customary law is also very effective.  This chapter employs two case studies of forced arranged marriages between older men and young women in Aboriginal communities to investigate the claim that group rights are oppressive and harmful for women from minority groups. She argues that traditions which harmed women in the past can be reinterpreted or reinvented, with appropriate input from women in minority cultures, and that group rights and women’s rights are therefore not fundamentally incompatible.

 One of the premises of this book is that it is important to attend to the particularity of historical and cultural contexts as part of a consideration of multiculturalism. However, one disappointment of this collection is that the Australian experience of multiculturalism is treated rather perfunctorily in a number of chapters. One example of this is Philip Pettit’s chapter on three conceptions of citizenship. In this chapter Pettit acknowledges that particular understandings of citizenship—and corresponding expectations about the duties and rights of citizenship—are linked to particular institutional structures. However, his analysis of conceptions of citizenship remains very theoretical. In part, the tendency towards abstracted argument is just a feature of the conventions of political philosophy as a scholarly field. Questions are expressed in abstract or universal terms, and the roots of these questions in ‘real world’ concerns and political dissent and debate become obscured. This, in my opinion, is a shame because knowledge of the original context of philosophical questions can help scholars to evaluate the relevance of particular arguments to other political situations or dilemmas.

This book addresses an issue of ongoing political importance. It contributes to the now substantial body of normative philosophy concerned with issues of culture, diversity, and difference, and does this in diverse and fascinating ways. Overall, this is a collection that will be of considerable interest to scholars of multiculturalism, particularly those with a proclivity for the more analytical brand of political philosophy.

Melissa Lovell is an early career researcher based at the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. Her research interests include political theory, colonial studies, and Australian Indigenous Affairs policy.

Geoffrey Brahm Levey (ed.), Political Theory & Australian Multiculturalism, Berghahn Books, 2012.