Un/settled Multiculturalisms

This anthology reconsiders the social, political and intellectual meanings of multiculturalism in the West, particularly Britain. In introducing a new conceptual language for thinking about it, the volume stresses the importance of distinguishing between the multicultural as a signifier of the unsettled meanings of cultural differences, and multiculturalism as the signfied of attempts to 'fix' their meaning in national imaginaries. The book also casts the debates about multiculturalism in the contexts of globalization, post-colonialism and what Barnor Hesse calls 'multicultural transruptions' - which he sees as resurgent, irrepressible multicultural issues which unsettle the racialized meanings of social norms and the cultural habits of national politics. Divided into two parts, the first considers a variety of diaspora formations ranging from the Muslim Umma and Black Britain to the Chinese foodscape and Transatlantic Black sporting performances. It examines their transnational impact on how cultural differences are lived and poses questions for how we participate in and think about Western societies. The second part on cultural entanglements focuses on media constructions of the 'Asian Gang' in Britain, gender and sexuality in 'ragga music', and the ambivalences of Black/White identities in post-Apartheid South Africa. The contributors explore the consequences of understanding cultural identities as cross-cut by other identities and entangled with wider social issues, rather than simply existing as distinct, celebratory and free-standing. The conclusion by Stuart Hall makes a timely reassessment of the multicultural question for the social cohesiveness and political future of liberal democracies. Un/Settled Multiculturalisms offers a fresh and reinvigorated challenge to those who continue to ignore the complex political and theoretical implications of living in the contested post-colonial fall-out of Western 'multicultural-scapes'.