Multicultural and its critics : Approaches in diversity

Abstract

The importance of the research lies in the growing international interest in international and regional organizations, states and societies in the issue of cultural diversity. Many countries of the world have begun to reconsider the status of their components, and amend their constitutions to make them able to frame cultural and social diversity, and grant these identities more rights, special status and powers. Consequently, there is an urgent need, due to external and internal variables, to accept those cultural identities and not to deny them, and to work on framing that acceptance constitutionally, legally and politically. As well as developing the legal, political, social, economic and cultural guarantees guaranteeing the full enjoyment by these groups of their rights. The problem that the research deals with is the emergence of two main approaches that dealt with the issue of cultural pluralism. The first of which is ‘approach to multiculturalism’, and it has researchers and thinkers who adopt it. The second is the ‘liberal approach to equality’, which was a critical response to the first approach. The research examined the views, arguments and opinions of these approaches. It investigated the variables affecting the rise of the multicultural approach, multiculturalism and the issue of classifying minorities, the standards adopted in the multicultural approaches, and the critical approach directed to the multicultural approach.