Hand in Hand: Multiculturalism, Nationality, Cosmopolitanism

Forefronting presentations made at the May 2009 KAME Conference, Pinar addresses the vexed if reciprocal relations among multiculturalism, nationality, and cosmopolitanism. Rather than formulating these concepts as developmental phases or as inevitably antagonistic social formations, Pinar insists that multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism become intelligible only within national histories and cultures. Rather than nationalism always undermining cosmopolitanism, Pinar suggests it can encourage cosmopolitanism: national pride and accomplishment can encourage citizens to become internationalists, citizens of the world, in order to demonstrate their patriotism. He worries that the primacy of "culture" in contemporary models of multiculturalism recalls earlier and often reactionary associations of nationality with ethnicity as it now threatens to essentialize subnational groups along ethnic lines, undermining dialogue, negotiation, and deliberation. Likewise, the primacy of "identity" in multiculturalism risks reinscription of stereotypes, if now demanding recognition as favorably valorized. The multicultural content of every culture becomes obscured just as the individuality of persons - the key category of human rights worldwide is effaced. Positioning "justice" as the objective of multicultural education threatens to reduce knowledge of the other to a means to an end, reinstating an instrumentalism that reduces education to politics. Pinar suggests that Korean scholars must formulate Korean models of multiculturalism that may, and may not, bear resemblances to Western models, as multiculturalism, nationality, and cosmopolitanism are vexed but not opposed; indeed, they can go hand in hand.