The end of multiculturalism

National Interest, The, Jan-Feb, 2008 by Lawrence E. Harrison

If nothing else, the Iraq adventure demonstrates the enormous risks that attend a foreign policy predicated on President Bush's view, expressed when he met Indonesian President Yudhoyono in November 2006, that "freedom is universal and democracy is universal." But it also underscores the need to appreciate the role culture plays in all aspects of foreign affairs--and the cultural competence necessary in all foreign-affairs agencies, including the Department of Defense.

Multiculturalism and International Development

ANOTHER AREA where the sway of multiculturalism is apparent is international development. Development of poor countries in all its dimensions--political, social and economic--has been a priority goal of the advanced democracies, motivated by both pragmatic (e.g., reduced international strife, increased trade, reduced illegal immigration) and humanitarian motives.

But most development-assistance institutions have thus far failed to address cultural obstacles to progress and the need for cultural change. Their avoidance of culture is in part attributable to culture-blind economists--and anthropologists and other social scientists committed to cultural relativism--who have dominated policy. The four UN Development Program Arab Human Development Reports are courageous exceptions.

Cultural relativism fits very nicely with, and reinforces, the predilection of many economists to assume "that people are the same everywhere and will respond to the right economic opportunities and incentives"--a point made by former World Bank economist William Easterly when he reviewed my book Who Prospets? (2) How, then, would Easterly explain why, in multicultural countries where the economic opportunities and incentives are available to all, some ethnic or religious minorities do much better than majority populations. This has been true, for example, of any place the Chinese have migrated, from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand--all the way to the United States and Canada.

Or what about differences that emerge between countries in the same region of the world, with similar geographical attributes and populations of the same general ethnic stock? Haiti is the poorest, least literate, most misgoverned, most corrupt country in the Western Hemisphere, substantial aid from the United States, Canada, the World Bank, and other bilateral and multilateral donors notwithstanding. The dominant belief system, Voodoo, is based on sorcery Hundreds of spirits, very human and capricious, control human destinies. The only way to gain leverage over what happens in one's life is to propitiate them through the ceremonial intervention of the Voodoo priests and priestesses. What you do, whether you live your life ethically, is irrelevant to the spirits; what matters only is that they be, in essence, "bribed." Voodoo is thus a major contributor to the high levels of mistrust, paranoia, sense of helplessness and despair noted in the anthropological literature about Haiti.