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Liberal Multiculturalism : Protective and Polyglot

Robert E. Goodin
Political Theory 2006 34: 289
DOI: 10.1177/0090591705284131
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http://ptx.sagepub.com/content/34/3/289

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Political/ Theory
10.1177/0090591705284131
Goodin
Liberal Multiculturalism

Liberal Multiculturalism
Protective and Polyglot

Political Theory
Volume 34 Number 3
June 2006 289-303
2006 Sage Publications
10.1177/0090591705284131
http://ptx.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com

Robert E. Goodin
Australian National University, Canberra
By analogy to Macphersons protective and self-developmental models of
liberal democracy, there might be two distinct models of liberal multiculturalism. On the protective-style model, the aim is to protect minority cultures
against assimilationist and homogenizing intrusions of the majority. On the
other model, here dubbed polyglot multiculturalism, the majority might
expand its own context for choice by having more minority cultures from
whom to borrow. The latter is a more welcoming and inclusive strategy, still
recognizably liberal in form, than the self-defensive liberalism of the more
purely protectionist sort.
Keywords: multiculturalism; liberalism; cultural mixing; polyglot multiculturalism; protective multiculturalism

ere I distinguish in deliberately broad brushstrokes two forms of multiculturalism. Both are recognizably liberal, but they are liberal in very
different respects. They correspond, suprisingly closely if not exactly, to two
of C. B. Macphersons famous models of liberal democracy itself.
The first and more familiar sort of liberal multiculturalism, which I call
protective multiculturalism, mirrors Macphersons model of protective
democracy. The latter says that liberal democracy is required in order to
protect the governed from oppression by the government.1 Its mulitcultural
counterpart says that entrenching minority rights is required in order to protect cultural minorities from oppression by the majority community and the
government it elects.
The second sort of liberal multiculturalism, less familiar in academic circles although perhaps more common in actual social practice, is what I call
polyglot multiculturalism. It aligns with Macphersons model of developmental democracy. The latter sees democracy primarily as a means of indiAuthors Note: This article was inspired by Anne Phillipss 2004 Passmore Lecture. For discussion of these issues, I am grateful to her; to Chandran Kukathas, Brian Barry, and Diane Gibson;
and to the referees and editor of this journal.

289

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290 Political Theory

vidual self-development.2 The related model of multiculturalism commends polyglot multiculturalism on the basis that expands the choice set of
autonomous agents. That is not exactly the same as self-development, of
course; still, there is a clear family resemblance in the concern with autonomous agency that those two models share.
It is no part of my brief here to argue that either of those forms of liberal
multiculturalism is superior to the other, from a liberal point of view or any
other. Nor is it part of my brief to argue that liberalism necessarily provides
the best (still less the only) possible ground for multiculturalism. My argument is simply that these are those two very distinct liberal grounds for multiculturalismand, furthermore, that adopting one instead of the other makes
a very big practical difference to what sorts of liberal multicultural policies
you end up endorsing.
In the rich literature on multiculturalism, liberals have argued for it on
many different grounds: of egalitarianism, of fairness, of impartiality,
of rectifying historical injustices, of epistemic abstinence.3 Clearly, the
details of those arguments differ in many important ways. But all of them
share an affinity with protective multiculturalism in representing minority
cultures as making claims against the majority rather than (as with polyglot
multiculturalism) as benefiting the majority.4
Multiculturalists are wary of the latter approach. To date, Will Kymlicka
worries, most majority cultures have not seen it in their enlightened selfinterest to maintain minority cultures.5 Certainly it is true, as he and others
say (briefly and in passing), that cultural diversity is . . . valuable . . . in the
quasi-aesthetic sense that it creates a more interesting world.6 But aesthetics
alone are, he and other liberal multiculturalists fear, too slender a reed upon
which to build any strong case for respecting the claims of competing
cultures.
No doubt polyglot multiculturalism will be a more plausible approach
in some situations rather than others. I freely admit that the cases I have principally in mind in my discussion of it below will be of polyethnic and
immigrant societies (like Australia) rather than of multinational ones (like
Canada). Still, for an interesting range of cases, I think there is more to be
said for the polyglot option than the short shrift it is ordinarily given
(where it is even mentioned at all) in most discussions of liberal multiculturalism. What is crucial in defending the plausibility of that model is the explanation below of how, contrary to the intuitions of theorists like Kymlicka,
people in at least certain sorts of cultures can indeed borrow from without
fully living in the other cultures around them.7

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 291

I. Culture as a Context for Choice

There are many reasons for welcoming a multicultural society. The distinctively liberal reason, urged forcefully by Will Kymlicka over the past
decade and more, is couched centrally in terms of choice.
Culture, Kymlicka maintains, is necessary to provide agents with a
context for choice, and hence for exercising the sort of autonomous agency
so central to liberal values.8 Culture in turn is inherently communal, the
product of collective activity. So to foster and protect the cultures that make
autonomous individuals possible, Kymlicka concludes, we must foster and
protect the communities that create and sustain those cultures in turn.
So far, that constitutes an argument for culture and community in the
singular. If all that autonomous agency required were a context for choice,
then any culture would do and no more than one would be required. But suppose more than one culture happens to be extant in any particular place. Then
there is an argument within this choice-based liberal framework for allowing
all of them free play. To do otherwise would risk depriving autonomous
agents shaped by one or another of those cultures of their own contexts for
choice and the autonomous agency that proceeds from it. This is a result that
liberals would clearly wish to avoid.
Thus, Kymlicka writes, The liberal value of freedom of choice has certain cultural preconditions, and liberals should care about the viability of
societal cultures, because they contribute to peoples autonomy. Failure to
protect those cultures will create new tragic cases of groups which are
denied the sort of cultural context of choice that supports individual autonomy.9
Kymlickas own original, and distinctively liberal, argument for multiculturalism was thus in terms of facilitating the autonomous agency of individuals. But that case for protecting the autonomy interests of individuals in
minority cultures soon started sliding into being a matter of protecting
minority cultures as such. Whereas Kymlickas original argument about protecting people in minority cultures would have better expressed, strictly
speaking, as an argument for the rights of cultural minorities, the title of his
own subsequent collection was, tellingly, The Rights of Minority Cultures.10
The conclusion of the argument had been remembered, while the premises
have been all but forgotten.
Almostbut not quite. For the issue of individual autonomy does conspicuously arise in connection with illiberal cultures (or illiberal corners
of otherwise liberal ones). This is what Susan Moller Okin had in mind when
asking Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?11 If the distinctively liberal rationale for multiculturalism were to promote peoples autonomy, then that

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292 Political Theory

rationale would provide no grounds for multicultural acquiescence in cultures that systematically impair the autonomy of many of their members.
Kymlicka had anticipated that objection. From the start, he conceded the
fact that there were some awfully illiberal cultures. The question, for him,
was merely what to do about that fact. Where critics saw certain cultures as
essentially and irredeemably illiberal, Kymlicka saw cultures as always in
flux and hence as always potentially liberalizable.12
Who is right on this issue of the malleability of cultures matters not, in the
present context. The important point, for present purposes, is the sheer fact
that even so committed a multiculturalist as Kymlicka is not necessarily
nonjudgmental among alternative cultures. It is, for Kymlicka, a criticism of
some cultures that they are illiberal. Kymlicka is perfectly prepared to
endorse attempts to reform them. The fact that he is judgmental in all those
ways is in no way vitiated by the fact that he stops short (for pragmatic reasons as much as principled ones) of endorsing attempts at active suppression
of those cultures.
Thus, liberalsconspicuously including the most prominent liberal
multiculturalistsprioritize autonomous agency. They are prepared to
adjudge cultures that better promote autonomous agency as superior cultures. They demur only as regards how best to attain those superior cultural
results.
Liberals clearly prefer cultures that facilitate rather than undermine peoples autonomy, understood as their capacity to choose. So too do they prefer cultures that afford people a wide range of options among which to
choose. The value of diversity within a culture, for liberal multiculturalists
such as Kymlicka, is that it creates more options for each individual, and
expands her range of choices.13
One must at least have an adequate range of options to qualify as
autonomous at all.14 Beyond a certain point, additional options doubtless
become a burden rather than a blessing.15 But up to that (presumably pretty
high) point, having more options among which to choose, while not exactly
making one more autonomous, makes ones autonomy more valuable.16
So say liberals in general, and liberal multiculturalists along with them.17

II. Living in versus Borrowing from Many Cultures

Arguing against Kymlickas claims about culture and choice, Jeremy
Waldron (in)famously asks us to imagine someone not unlike himself:

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 293

[A] person who lives in California, but came there from Oxford via Edinburgh,
and came in turn to Oxford from the other side of the world, the southwestern
corner of the Pacific Ocean, whither his English and Irish ancestors emigrated
in the mid-nineteenth century. . . . [S]omeone who did not associate his identity
with any secure sense of place, someone who did not take his cultural identity
to be defined by any bounded subset of the cultural resources available in the
world. He did not take his identity as . . . compromised when he studied Greek,
ate Chinese, wore clothes made in Korea, worshipped with the Book of Common Prayer, listened to arias by Verdi sung by a Maori diva on Japanese equipment, gave lectures in Buenos Aires, followed Israeli politics, or practiced
Buddhist meditation techniques.

Clearly, Waldron says, a person can live like that. Waldron does. From that
fact, Waldron regards his case as proven:
[P]eople do not need . . . what the proponents of cultural identity politics claim
they do need . . . [and] are entitled to as a matter of rightnamely, immersion in
the secure framework of a single culture to which, in some deep sense, they
belong.18

Understood (as Waldron pretty clearly intended it to be understood) as an

argument that he is participating in many cultures at once, Kymlicka is unpersuaded. He doubts that Waldrons example could be all that common.19 More
fundamentally, Kymlicka doubts that the lifestyle Waldron describes really
amounts to living in a kaleidoscope of cultures. Eating Greek does not
make you Greek, nor does practicing Buddhist meditation techniques make
you a Buddhist. You are not genuinely living in any of those cultures when
you merely borrow bits from them.
What Waldron describes, Kymlicka thinks, is merely someone who is
enjoying the opportunities provided by the diverse societal culture which
characterizes the Anglophone society of the United States.20 That is to make
two claims at once: (1) that there is a singular (the) Anglophone U.S. societal culture, and (2) that that single societal culture is itself internally
diverse, being comprised of a pastiche of fragments borrowed from many
other societal cultures from around the world.21
If so, then, on the point at issue between them, Kymlicka would be right
and Waldron wrong. Anglophone residents of the United States do indeed
have a secure framework of a single culture to which, in some deep sense,
they belong, just as Kymlicka had said. That singular Anglophone U.S.
societal culture just happens to be internally diverse, in the various ways that
Waldron memorializes.

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294 Political Theory

III. Polyglot versus Protective Multiculturalism

Remember, though: Kymlicka is perfectly prepared to say that some cultures are better than others. In agreeing to countenance liberalizing reforms,
Kymlicka has conceded the superiority of cultures that are more liberal, that
facilitate choice and expand choices.
So the debate between Waldron and Kymlicka can simply be recast in the
following terms. Let us concede that the scenario that Waldon describes does
not involve people participating in multiple cultures. What it involves,
instead, is those people participating in a superior culture. The Anglophone U.S. polyglot societal culture is superior to various other less polyglot ones, in the selfsame context-for-choice terms that Kymlicka thinks cultures are valuable at all.
This suggests another, distinctively liberal, case for multiculturalism. On
this alternative account, multiculturalism is superior to monoculturalism precisely on the grounds that it enriches the autonomy of agents by providing
them with a superior context for choice.
That is importantly different from the now-standard form of multiculturalism, also recognizably liberal but in a very different way, that fixates on
the rights of minority cultures. That latter form of multiculturalism tolerates minority cultures, for the sake of those trapped in them and who have no
escape from them.22 Toleration, however, inevitably carries a taint of disapproval. It is an unfortunate fact that they are thus trapped. Liberals wholly
agree that we ought to solicitously respect the rights of people in such situations. But here, as so often, it is an unfortunate fact about peoples circumstances which makes them need to stand on their rights.
That sort of multiculturalismthe sort that emphasizes protecting the
rights of minority culturesis what I call protective multiculturalism. It is
a rather grudging multiculturalism. It respects the rights of cultural minorities and minority cultures, insofar as they are present. But it sees no particular
reason to broaden the cultural mix, beyond that found in any given place
at present. It sees nothing of value in a multiplicity of cultures, as such.23 It
attaches value merely to the culture or cultures that happen to be presently
extant in some particular place.24
Protective multiculturalism is an argument for multiculturalism that,
paradoxically enough, is sometimes content to endorse monoculturalism. If
it so happens that at present there is only one societal culture extant in some
particular place, then Kymlickas liberal argument for protecting culture as a
context of choice extends to that one societal culture alone.
Furthermore, protective multiculturalism is an argument for multiculturalism that, if not exactly exclusionary, certainly is not actively inclu-

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 295

sionary. If there is only one societal culture presently extant in some particular place, multiculturalism of this sort offers no reason for admitting (much
less actively seeking to import) any others.25
Now, multiculturalism means different things in different places. And no
doubt in many places multiculturalism does indeed take that purely protective form. In many places multiculturalism does indeed amount to little
more than a defensive maneuver on the part of beleaguered groups, and can
indeed be seen purely as special pleading on their behalf.26
In other places, however (Australia being a conspicuous example),27
multiculturalism, as a practical political project, involves first and foremost a celebration of diversity. In societies like that, multiculturalism of
the protective sort rings vaguely untrue, precisely because it seems unable
to provide any grounds for celebrating diversity. At most, it provides
grounds for tolerating diversityacknowledging it, respecting it, protecting
it, but hardly celebrating it.
The alternative liberal argument for multiculturalism that I have been
teasing out of the Waldron-Kymlicka exchangepolyglot multiculturalism, I call itis a study in contrast, on all those points. On that account, the
really great virtue of multiculturalism is that it provides a broad smorgasbord
of mix-and-match options from which to choose.
Now, Kymlicka is absolutely right: choosing a Greek dinner does not
make you Greek, nor does intoning Buddhist chants make you a Buddhist.
You are not simultaneously participating in all those cultures. You are not
really participating in any of them, if dipping in for the odd meal or chant is
all you do.
But the pointthe central point, from the point of view of polyglot
multiculturalismremains that you are blessed with a wider context for
choice, for being able to choose among all the diverse range of options that
polyglot multiculturalism makes available.

IV. How to Mix Cultures

Polyglot multiculturalism presupposes two things. First, it presupposes a
polyglot societal culture (akin to Kymlickas Anglophone societal culture in
the United States) into which borrowed bits are incorporated. Second, polyglot multiculturalism presupposes a variety of other cultures from which
those bits are borrowed.
It is of course logically possible for borrowing to occur at a distance. We
can borrow from cultures without having any representatives of them within
our own society. Remember Delftware: the polyglot culture of seventeenth-

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296 Political Theory

century Holland mimicked Ming patterns in its pottery, without any appreciable numbers of Chinese living in the Netherlands.
Still, it is always easier to borrow from near neighbors than distant strangers. And that is what provides polyglot multiculturalism with its distinctive
argument for multiculturalismnot only tolerating such cultural diversity as
is already extant in some place but also actively encouraging the expansion of
that diversity by welcoming in yet more cultures that are different yet again.
Perhaps not all cultures admit of the possibility of polyglot borrowing,
however. And if so, perhaps the case for multiculturalism on polyglot
grounds extends in some directions, but not in others. Let us explore those
issues with a bit more care than is often given them.

Internal versus External Borrowing

When judging the mix-and-match possibilities of a particular culture,
note that polyglot and protective forms of multiculturalism adopt importantly different perspectives.
Protective multiculturalism takes the internal point of view, the point of
view of someone within the culture in question. The issue, from that perspective, is whether someone inside that culture can adopt elements of other cultures and still remain fully a member of that culture. Can a Shaker privately
own motorized vehicles and still remain a true Shaker, for example? Surely
not, most Shakers would presumably insist.
Polyglot multiculturalism, in contrast, takes the external point of view.
The issue, from that perspective, is whether people outside of some particular
culture can appropriate elements of that culture piecemeal, without appropriating all elements of that culture wholesale. The issue from that perspective
is whether people who are not practicing Shakers can nonetheless take
pleasurealbeit perhaps different pleasures than an actual practicing Shaker
mightfrom decorating their houses with Shaker furnishings.
If Waldron were right in his original claim that polyglot cosmopolitans were genuinely participating in each of those cultures from the inside,
then these two perspectives would collapse into one another. But suppose
Kymlicka is right that dabblers are not genuinely participating in the cultures
from the inside at all. Suppose that they are instead creating a pastiche, polyglot societal culture of their own, borrowing fragments from many different
other cultures, with no presumption that the meanings attached to those fragments within the polyglot culture necessarily correspond exactly (or perhaps
even remotely) to those in the original culture from which they were borrowed. Then the external and internal perspectives can potentially pull apart,
and cultural mixing-and-matching that makes no sense from the internal

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 297

point of view (that of the lending cultures) makes perfectly good sense
from the external point of view (that of the borrowing cultures).
The implication for liberal multicultural policy is just this. On the model
of protective multiculturalism, as I have already observed, there is no reason for welcoming the addition of more cultures than already extant in any
particular place. In terms of polyglot multiculturalism, there is an argument of the sort just sketched for welcoming the addition of other cultures,
beyond those that are presently extant, just so long as there is something
interesting that the larger polyglot culture of that community can borrow
from it.
That polyglot multicultural test for admission, as it were, is the external
rather than internal one. The question is not whether, from the inside, the culture in question is open or closed, whether from the inside it is an all-ornothing proposition that admits of no mixing-and-matching with elements of
other cultures. The question is, rather, asked from the outside: is there something the rest of us can get from it? The questionthe distinctively liberal
questionis whether including it in our cultural mix expands our context
for choice.

Assimilation versus Appropriation

We should similarly note the differing emphases, within polyglot and
protective multiculturalism respectively, on appropriation versus
assimilation.
Protective multiculturalism looks at cultures from within. Protective
multiculturalists are wary of assimilation. They worry that, in being assimilated, the culture in question will lose what is distinctive about it, from the
point of view of those living within it.
From the perspective of polyglot multiculturalism, the issue appears
very different. The perspective there is external. What is involved in polyglot multiculturalism is the incorporation of bits of other cultures into the
overall polyglot mix.
Polyglots, for their part, are not asking those other cultures to assimilate. On the contrary, it would be counterproductive of polyglot purposes if
they did, insofar as their doing so reduces the diversity within the polyglot
mix. Polyglots instead simply want to appropriate bits of those other cultures, making use of them for their own purposes.
From the point of view of adherents of the culture being appropriated, that
may well be seen as a misuse of their cultural materials. They may regret or
even resent that misappropriation. Still, that is importantly different from
forcing them to convert to the polyglot culture and abandon their own cul-

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298 Political Theory

ture. Appropriation does not entail assimilation. Forced conversions, on the

model of the Spanish Inquisition, are no part of (and are actually counterproductive of) polyglot multiculturalism.
Opportunities for polyglot borrowing presuppose the continuing existence ofand hence, in some sense, the protection ofthe cultures from
which the borrowing occurs. To some extent, therefore, polyglot multiculturalism presupposes protective multiculturalism, at least of a watered-down
sort.28 One thing that polyglot multiculturalism most definitely would not
protect cultures against, however, is being borrowed from by other cultures.

V. The Limits of Cultural Mixing

From a practical political point of view, polyglot liberal multiculturalists
may be a little nervous of admitting closed culturesones from which the
polyglot society culture can borrow, but which cannot borrow from it in turn.
While seeing the advantages in being able to borrow from them, liberal polyglots may well worry about the insistent sectarianism of such closed cultures
and their refusal to fit into the larger society into which they are being
welcomed.
Note that there is no problem, from the side of polyglot culture as I have
described it, in the standoffishness of those closed cultures. Polyglots can
borrow happily from them; and the benefits polyglots gain from so doing are
nowise compromised by the fact that those other cultures do not borrow from
or participate in the polyglot societal culture, in turn. Cultures that are
appropriable but not assimilable pose no problem, from the perspective
of polyglot multiculturalism
What polyglot multiculturalism does need, however, is for the cultures
from which it borrows to tolerate the borrowing. If among true believers it is
deemed a sacrilege to display an image of the Madonna in a nonreligious
context, then polyglots have problems. At the very least, that makes it harder
(more costly, in terms of alienating those from whom you borrow) to realize
any polyglot benefits from having those true-believer cultures among their
larger culture: they cannot borrow from them (or anyway they cannot do so
without cost, in terms of giving cultural offense and perhaps stirring up
culture wars).
If some culture is not appropriableif the polyglot societal culture cannot realistically borrow from itthen there is no advantage in terms of polyglot multiculturalism from having that culture extant within its community.
That is not to say it should be kept out, necessarily. There may be no particular disadvantage in those terms from having that culture represented among
us, either. The point, from the perspective of polyglot multiculturalism, is

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 299

simply that including that particular culture within (but apart from) its own
society does nothing either way to alter the context for choice available to
polyglots within that society.

VI. Illiberal Cultures in Polyglot Societies

For the bulk of this discussion, I have adopted the shorthandcommon in
these discussions, although misleading in ways I have remarked upon
beforeof talking in terms of cultures as monolithic entities with agency
and moral standing of their own. Strictly speaking, however, the liberal concern is clearly with the rights of cultural minorities rather than with the
rights of minority cultures. From a liberal point of view, it is the people, not
the culture, that enjoys moral standing and exercises moral agency.
Recalling that fact might serve to remind us of one good liberal reason that
polyglot multiculturalism might not be quite so relaxed as I have just been
suggesting about cultures that are neither appropriable nor assimilable. From
the polyglot perspective, the presence of those sorts of cultures may be a matter of indifference: such cultures do neither good nor harm to the larger polyglot mix. From the liberal perspective, however, there may be an objection to
such cultures. That objection arises insofar as those cultures are also closed
in the sense of restricting the context for choice available to their own
membersby making it hard for members to leave them, for example, or by
making it hard for members even to have an informed choice of what it would
be like to leave.
Recall here the debates over illiberal education as a matter of cultural
right. Arguments are sometimes offered for parents who are themselves imbued with an illiberal culture to educate their children in that culture, in such
a way as to deprive the children of access to any other cultural options. That is
sometimes justified in terms of parental rights; it is sometimes justified in
terms of preservation of cultures that would otherwise be endangered.
That, however, smacks of what might be called culture by capture. It
was a practice not unknown on the American frontier. Conventional wisdom
there had it that, when Native American raiding parties captured children of
European settlers, parents had to recapture the children quickly or count
them as lost forevernot because they would be killed, but instead because
they would be assimilated into the tribal ways of their captors.29 One cannot
help hearing echoes of that old practice of culture by capture in contemporary arguments for the preservation of Amish culture, for example, by permitting Amish parents to educate their children in such ways as in effect to
trap them in their parents culture.30

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300 Political Theory

Liberals cannot help being nervous of those sorts of arguments. The liberal case for multiculturalismof either a protective or polyglot sort
hinges crucially upon the way in which culture provides a context for
choice and thus enables the exercise of autonomous agency. Cultures that
instead undermine that are, from a liberal point of view, worse cultures for
that fact.
How best to liberalize them is, as Kymlicka says, an empirical question.
He may well be right that the best way to liberalize them is to tolerate them,
insofar as they are presently extant within our society, and indeed to welcome
them into our polyglot society, insofar as they are presently outside it. But
how best for liberals to intervene in illiberal cultures inevitably poses difficult issues for liberalism, on a par perhaps with the issues posed by paternalistic intervention into the affairs of some other individual or humanitarian
intervention into those of some other state.
The point to note in the present context is simply this. The problem those
cases pose are problems for liberalism, and hence liberal multiculturalism, of
any stripe. Those problems may be rather more pointed for the variant of liberal multiculturalism that I have been calling protective, and a little less
pointed for the variant I have been calling polyglot. Still, both are subspecies of liberal multiculturalism. And by virtue of those liberal roots, they
share the problems that liberalism more generally inevitably has with illiberal educational practices in particular, and with culture by capture more
generally. Those problems are problems experienced by liberal multiculturalism generically, and are nowise peculiar to any particular subspecies of it.

VII. Conclusion
The aim of this essay has been analytics rather than advocacy. I merely
wish to draw attention to another distinctively liberal argument for multiculturalism, in terms of its polyglot rather than merely its protective
potential.
Those two forms of liberal multiculturalism entail rather different policies. But while they are different, there is no particular reason to think that the
policies they imply will necessarily be incompatible. To a large extent, our
multiculturalism can be protective and polyglot at one and the same
time.
Just as polyglot multiculturalisms demands are rather different, so too is
its appeal. Liberals who find themselves hesitant to endorse multiculturalism of a broadly protective sort might find the polyglot case far more
congenial.31

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 301

Notes
1. C. B. Macpherson, The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 22.
2. Ibid.
3. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 108-15; John
Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press 1993), lec. 4; Thomas Nagel,
Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp. ch. 14; James Tully,
Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Joseph Raz, Ethics in
the Public Domain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), ch. 4.
4. To borrow Kymlickas distinction, the former arguments appeal to the obligations of the
majority, whereas the latter argument appeals to the interests of the majority and defends
[minority] rights in terms of self-interest not justice (Multicultural Citizenship, 121).
5. Ibid., 123.
6. Ibid., 121. See similarly Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 30.
7. Failure to appreciate this possibility is the primary reason that Kymlicka (Multicultural
Citizenship, 121) gives in dismissing this option:
One of the basic reasons for valuing intracultural diversity has less application to intercultural
diversity. The value of diversity within a culture is that it creates more options for each individual,
and expands her range of choices. But protecting national minorities does not expand the range of
choices open to members of the majority in the same way. . . . [C]hoosing to leave ones culture is
qualitatively different from choosing to move around within ones culture. The former is a difficult and painful prospect for most people, and very few people in the mainstream choose to assimilate into a minority culture.

Clearly, in that passage Kymlicka is not contemplating the possibility that members of the majority culture might borrow from the minority culture without fully living in it and abandoning
their own culture. Sometimes they can, as I hope to show below.
8. The fullest and most explicit statement is in Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 83-94;
precursors are found in his earlier works: Will Kymlicka, Liberalism and Communitarianism,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988): 181-204; and Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989).
9. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 76, 94, 101.
10. Will Kymlicka, The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995). I complained of this shift of focus in a review of Kymlickas collection in Ethics 107
(1996-1997): 356-58.
11. Susan Moller Okin et al., Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1999). See also Susan Okin, Feminism & Multiculturalism: Some Tensions,
Ethics 108 (1998): 661-84; and Susan Okin, Mistresses of Their Own Destiny: Group Rights,
Gender & Realistic Rights of Exit, Ethics 112 (2002): 205-30.
12. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 94-101.
13. Ibid., 121.
14. Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), ch. 14.
15. Gerald Dworkin, Is More Choice Better Than Less? in Gerald Dworkin, The Theory
and Practice of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 62-84.
16. To borrow John Rawlss distinction between liberty and the value of liberty; John
Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), sec. 32.
17. To what extent promoting autonomy is the responsibility of the state might be more contestable among liberals. Some might argue that, so long as people are above the threshold of hav-

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302 Political Theory

ing an adequate range of options to qualify as autonomous at all, the state should have no
responsibility for providing them with more options (even if that would make their autonomy
more valuable). From what Kymlicka says in the passages quoted above, I take it that he and
most liberal multiculturalists like him would presumably take a more expansive view of the
states responsibility vis--vis autonomy.
18. Jeremy Waldron, What Is Cosmopolitan? Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (2000):
227-44, at 228, glossing his earlier discussion in Jeremy Waldron, Minority Cultures and the
Cosmopolitan Alternative, in Kymlicka, The Rights of Minority Cultures, 93-122, at 95.
19. Those doubts extend in various directions: (1) a select few might manage to fit into multiple cultures at once, but most people are rooted in one or another; (2) in any case, almost everyone
(Waldron included) needed to be reared in one culture before branching out to embrace elements
of others; and (3) finally, the way of life Waldron describes is ungeneralizable because it is parasitic upon the quotidian lives of others to create the various local flavors and identities in which
he dabbles; Roger Scruton, Cosmopolitan, in A Dictionary of Political Thought (London:
Macmillan, 1982), 100.
20. Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 85.
21. By Kymlickas definition, a
societal culture . . . is a culture which provides its members with meaningful ways of life across
the full range of human activities, including social, educational, religious, recreational and economic life, encompassing both public and private spheres. These cultures tend to be territorially
concentrated and based on a shared language. (Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 76)

22. It is different yet again from the sort of posthole multiculturalism advocated by
Chandran Kukathas, The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom (Oxford:
Clarendon, 2003). There, the idea (also recognizably liberal) is for there to be a multiplicity of
cultures among which to choose. But having a diversity of cultures among which to choose is
importantly different from living within a polyglot culture which is itself internally diverse.
There is a world of difference between a single diverse culture and a diverse set of constraining,
monolithic cultures: the former involves a diversity of cultures but provides none of the goods
by means of which diversity is to be justified as a political value; Michael Blake, Language
Death and Liberal Politics, in Language Rights & Political Theory, ed. Will Kymlicka and Alan
Patten (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 210-29, at 217.
23. Kukathass Liberal Archipelago is importantly different in this respect.
24. This is true even of Joseph Razs discussion in Multiculturalism: A Liberal Perspective,
in Ethics in the Public Domain, ch. 8, although his previous discussion in Raz, The Morality of
Freedom, of autonomy as adequacy of options might have attuned him to the ways in which
cultural diversity might contribute (in the polyglot way here discussed) to autonomous agency.
25. Note Kymlickas endorsement of the fact that
liberal theorists have generally, if implicitly, accepted that cultures or nations are basic units of
liberal political theory. . . . [F]ew people favor a system of open borders, where people could
freely cross borders and settle, work and vote in whatever country they desired. (Kymlicka,
Multicultural Citizenship, 93)

26. American and UK forms are like that, insists Brian Barry, Culture & Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); cf. various replies in Paul Kelly, ed., Multiculturalism Reconsidered (Cambridge: Polity, 2002).
27. For once, official policy tracks social practice. For the official statement, see Commonwealth of Australia, Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (Canberra: Department of
Communications, 2003), http://www.immi.gov.au/multicultural/australian/ (accessed April 14,

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Goodin / Liberal Multiculturalism 303

2005). Note that this policy of multiculturalism explicitly subsumes both immigrant cultures and
Australias indigenous peoples and their culture.
28. As Kymlicka (Multicultural Citizenship, 123) observes, it would not necessarily explain
why minorities should be able to decide for themselves whether or how to maintain their cultures, to imply rights of self-government to national minorities more generally. Whether that
counts as a mere observation or as a telling criticism depends on whether you are persuaded by
Kymlickas other justice-based case for rights of national minorities, of course.
29. One famous case is that of Rev. John Williamss daughter, Eunice. The Mohawk captured
her, aged six, in their 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, and brought her up as their own.
When years later she was offered the opportunity to return to Deerfield, she declined. John
Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (New York: Vintage, 1995).
30. Richard J. Arneson and Ian Shapiro, Democratic Autonomy & Religious Freedom: A
Critique of Wisconsin v. Yoder, in Nomos XXXVIII: Political Order, ed. Ian Shapiro and Russell
Hardin (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 365-411.
31. Such as Brian Barry, judging from Culture & Equality.

Robert E. Goodin is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and of Social & Political Theory at
the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University. He is founding editor of
the Journal of Political Philosophy; general editor of the forthcoming ten-volume series, Oxford
Handbooks of Political Science; and author of, most recently, Reflective Democracy (Oxford
University Press, 2003).

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