Civic NationalismEthnocultural NationalismMulticultural Nationalism

Civic nationalism

- offers a visions of a community of equal citizens which is formed on the basis of contract, commitment, loyalty and love.

- ‘individuals from various ethnic backgrounds may enter this community at adulthood, or through migration, by committing themselves to loyalty to the public institutions and way of life of their residential homeland’.

- Under civic nationalism, the state is ethnically blind in its public instututions and policies. (ethnicity is not involved in public institutions and in social, economic and political activities)

- the individuals direct their political loyalty to the state rather than to their ethno-national groups. - problem of ethnic diversity is resolved through civic integration.

Ethnocultural nationalism - offers a vision of a community united by a belief in common ancestry and ethnocultural sameness. - focusses on the belief that the community shares some distinctive racial, religious and linguistic attributes - individuals who have not inherited such attributes may be able to acquire them through intermarriage, religious conversion, language acquisation etc.

- the potential problem of ethnic diversity is resolved

through assimilation

Multicultural nationalism

-offers a vision of a community which respect and

promotes the cultural autonomy and status equality of

its component ethnic groups.

-- attempts to establish an encapsulating social justice

community based on ethnic diversity.

- offers commitment to ethnic equity.

- offers a national community within which the diverse ethnic communities can flourish.

- guarantees the rights and resources for ethnic minorities

Multicultural nationalism

Promote diversity

PromoteDifferences-blindness

Promote ethnicMinority rights

Promote assimilation

Civic cultureMajority ethnoculture

Ethnicascription

Integration Assimilation

CivicNationalism

EthnoculturalNationalism

Four aspects of ongoing debates about multicultural nationalism

1.IDENTITY: (encapsulating identity)-some versions of the multicultural vision see identity as being intrinsically derived from ethnic community. (only source of identity is ethnic community)

-Other versions claim only that the ethnic community is the primary source of identity. (there are secondary sources of identity)

-Since the ethnic community is seen as primary, multiculturalists demand that the state should protect and enhance ethnic minority communities.

2.GROUP RIGHTS:- multiculturalism calls for the state to recognize that

ethnic minority communities have legal and moral rights as collectivities.

- some multiculturalists argue that minority rights

are group rights which are independent of and have priority over individual rights.

- the state should give ethnic minority communities the right to define and restrict the liberties of their individual members.

- Communitarian defenders of multiculturalism argue that community has priority over the individual.

3. JUST DISTRIBUTION OF POWER AND RESOURCES: Social justice:

-each distinct ethnic minority community has a fair share of power and resources.

- the state institutions fairly allocate positions of power to representatives of each ethnic community

- various mechanisms may be used to promote this, including federalism, communal electoral rolls, consociational government and quotas.

- but some proponents of multiculturalism support the idea that the state rather than the ethnic minorities themselves should decide which ethnic communities be represented in the governing coalition.

4.MINORITIES AND MAJORITY:

- in some states multiculturalists claim that members of ethnic minority communities have been politically, economically, and culturally marginalised (because of assimilationist ethnocultural nationalism)

- domination of power within modern states by members of the ethnic majority.