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Patchwork Multiculturalism

1. Introduction

In today’s cities, it is not rare to see different religious communities live close to

one another. Often, at workplaces, people from competing ethnic groups cooperate

peacefully. Sometimes, in a context of pressing anxiety and extreme poverty, proximity,

reciprocity and transparency have activated lively example of multicultural organization.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. In recent time, there is so much hype about the

failures of multicultural policies in European countries. Since the Satanic verses

controversy, the harsh debates about French bans on face veils, the remarkable results of

some xenophobic movements in the last European elections, the Charlie Hebdo tragedy

and, now, the phenomenon of radicalization inside and outside Europe, politicians and

theorists have casted doubts on the destiny and desirability of the politics of

multiculturalism.

These examples place interest on two aspects. First, the dual dimension of

multiculturalism. On the one hand, the politics of multiculturalism: measures involving

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cultural recognition and accommodation, economic redistribution, access to political

participation and jobs opportunities, affirmative actions, etc. On the other hand, the real

character of multiculturalism, namely, the set of ordinary exchanges through which

cooperation, assimilation and radicalization are performed.1 So not everything is up to

politics. Besides the domain of policy-making, scholars should look at the multi-coloured

realm of everyday interactions. 2 For instance, in some cases, a partial reach of the state

has encouraged the development of local and micro dimensional mechanisms of positive

mutual control. There, evidence shows that the prospect of future interactions supports

cooperation, trust and equal deliberation. Such a focus may help to emphasize

constructive forms of multicultural coexistence and, possibly, to develop a positive

philosophical argument against increasing scepticism and radicalization. Vis-à-vis the

great mistrust, I argue in this paper, a persuasive normative response to multiculturalism

in today’s cities needs to bring together the politics of multiculturalism and the social

level, where cooperation is a more common result than resentment and violence.3

Moreover, many prominent theorists have been debating on the relationship

between the notion of culture and the very idea of multiculturalism.4 Multiculturalism,

not considering the several conceptions of the term, is concerned with cases including

cultural diversity where cultures, religious and ethnic groups constitute the body of

society. A too ready acceptance of essentialist notions of groups, as have been debated

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for long, is not a satisfactory approach. It does not fully describe how people negotiate

affiliations in their everyday lives and the relational element of multicultural societies

(Carens, 2004), it may be gender biased (Okin, 1999), it opens to the application of

double-standards for evaluating internal practices of cultural groups (Galeotti, 2014) and

it is likely to overlook multiple belongings (Bhabha, 2004). Nevertheless, we cannot

dismiss culture from multiculturalism. Culture is also a crucial attribute of

multiculturalism, which entails internal contestation, historical elaboration, action-

guidance, structures of meaning and expectations. In this article, in turn, I turn the

attention from culture as a collectivistic notion to the individual as an appropriator of

object of disagreement in cultural terms, or not, according to the circumstances.

By putting together the two aspects, this article will argue that a focus on the social

level offers a frame in which the practical importance of the idea of culture is mediated

by reflecting on individuals as active participants in disputes of their concern. In this way,

multiculturalism is taken to both a national and contextual matter. On the first level, the

one of recognition, every individual who is member of a certain community, qua

autonomous being, must be in the position to appropriate objects of his or her concern.

And, this demands top-down policy action so that every member is in principle in the

same position to appropriate objects of disagreement. On the second level, the one of

toleration, people should be involved in the discussion about policies of their interest in

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a peer-to-peer relationship. This implies a shift to a vision of multiculturalism as a

contextually situated deliberative practice. Such a move, as I will argue in the paper, by

favouring alternative and decentralized political spaces, justifies policy makers to

disperse the asymmetric relation of power inherent in the dichotomy minority/majority at

the local level.

In this sense, the study of Shaftesbury’s ideas of amicable collisions and sensus

communis makes available an important normative apparatus for contemporary defences

of small scale discursive spaces. In a series of essays between 1708 and 1710, he

addresses questions of toleration (A Letter concerning Enthusiasm), discursive

interactions and civility in public (Sensus Communis) and self-reflection (Soliloquy).5 By

reading these texts in the light of contemporary disputes about deliberation, we find a

distinctive articulation of a politics of sociability, equality and freedom that emphasises

the relevance of public discourse and participation, but also the significance of discursive

exchanges to encourage a feeling of mutuality among participant.

Together, these elements will inform the argument of this article. Here, I advance

a deliberative model to deal with multiculturalism: patchwork multiculturalism. This

account consists in the construction of small scale consultative groups where people can

take part in decisions of their concern. There are three moves from usual responses to

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multiculturalism. First, I do not consider group or collective identities. The focus turns

towards individuals, who want to appropriate some discursive objects in the light of their

worldview. Second, I put together the sphere of recognition and toleration. This means to

say that recognition encompasses all those policies that put the individual in the position

to express his or her discursive power, while toleration is a collectively (and temporary)

constructed feeling among participants in a discussion in which their equal status is

granted. Third, I focus on the actual practice of multiculturalism, as it is experienced in

context. In this way, I shall provide a normative model to push people in the discussion

of issues of their concern. The constellations of diverse consultative groups, with

distinctive performative experience of toleration, and duties among participants,

constitutes patchwork multiculturalism, as a system where these spaces are tied together

by a politics of recognition that is directed to individuals qua autonomous persons, and in

which much of decision-making power is left to the local level. If in a patchwork multiple

pieces are kept together by a single creative idea; here, in turn, a policy that aims at

empowering the discursive power of all members is the common denominator across

different consultative groups.

The purpose of this paper, indeed, is eminently speculative. Following an

investigation of the disputes about the idea of culture in today’s political theory, in section

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3, I shall reconstruct Shaftesbury’s notion of amicable collisions and his conception of

sensus communis. In section 4, I shall examine his suggestion and translate them into the

language of contemporary political theory. This account, I suggest, places in question

asymmetric power distributions - which informs much contemporary debate on

multiculturalism – and elaborates a distinctive conception of the relationship between

recognition and toleration. In section 4, I shall construct deliberative spaces – consultative

groups, which find roots in Shaftesbury and constitute the core of patchwork

multiculturalism. Eventually, in section 5, I shall conclude.

2. Multiculturalism and the place of culture

Multiculturalism has long been identified with the protection of certain minority

rights from the claims of collective authority. In this tradition, the most powerful claim

for special rights comes from Will Kymlicka, who articulated his account of

multiculturalism in a series of works covering more than fifteen years. In Liberalism,

Community and Culture, he emphasizes the special importance of societal cultures to

personal agency and development (1989: 176). Cultural structures, as he says, are

contexts of choice ascribing specific forms of lives with exceptional meaning. Access to

a viable societal culture is therefore a necessary precondition for our ability to choose

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good lives for ourselves. In one sense, a life within the norms, attitudes, and values of a

particular cultural group might be a necessary condition for people ability to make

choices. That is, wisdom, practices and narratives intrinsic in a societal culture shape the

actions of its members, designing “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” (1995: 76). Moreover, societal cultures

encourage a sense of self-respect. Here, culture is to be observed as “a source of emotional

security and personal strengths” (1989: 175-6). Likewise, only coming into terms with

the significance of their social environment and through a comparison among different

ways of life, people make an autonomous and informed choice regarding their

membership in the group. For Kymlicka, “it’s only through having a rich and secure

cultural structure that people can become aware, in a vivid way, of the options available

to them, and intelligently examine their values” (1989: 169). These claims inform his

conception of minority rights as supporting the individual’s ability to select between

significant forms of life. Specifically, once we acknowledge the importance of societal

cultures for the individuals, we also attest the connection between the respect we give to

the cultural group and the individual’s self-esteem. “What matters, from a liberal point of

view”, he writes, “is that people have access to a societal culture which provides them

with meaningful options encompassing the range of human activities” (1995: 101).

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Something of what is at stake, Kymlicka writes, can be captured from looking at

how Western states have been persistently perpetrated severe injustices on cultural

minorities. Economic discrimination, forced assimilation and the denial of political rights

as well as linguistic barriers, politicization of identities, the accent on religious and ethnic

differences demonstrate majority groups’ efforts to prevent minorities from the access to

social institutions and from the full exercise of their rights (1995: 2). Minority groups,

thus, Kymlicka argues, “are caught in contradictory position, unable either to fully

participate in the mainstream of society or to sustain their own distinct societal culture”

(1995: 101). At this stage, taking that 1) cultures provide contexts of choices and enable

individual autonomy, and that 2) inequality in fully accessing cultural membership stems

from luck (roughly, embryos cannot decide where they will be born); self-government

rights help secure access to a societal culture as well as the flourishing of liberal

autonomy. While, “failure to recognize these rights will create new tragic cases of groups

which are denied the sort of cultural context of choice that supports individual autonomy”

(1995: 101). Thus, Kymlicka argues, “within a liberal egalitarian theory…which

emphasizes the importance of rectifying unchosen inequalities” (1995: 109), members of

minority groups, disadvantaged in terms of fully accessing to their peculiar culture,

should be entitled to forms of special protections (i.e. rights of self-government, public

funding for supporting cultural practices; religious or cultural exemptions from laws).

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Taken together, this argument seems to lie on an ambivalent appeal to the idea of

culture. On the one hand, as Markell puts it, he treats culture as an external – primary –

good to which we are or are not denied to have access. On the other hand, since culture

is a source of meaningful options, “the idea of a particular culture as one’s own suggests

– it has to suggest - not just that I possess my culture but that it possesses me” (Markell,

2003: 159). Moreover, another problem confronting Kymlicka’s solution is that a too

ready acceptance of culture matters has encouraged cultural stereotypes. It has, Anne

Phillips writes, “enabled critics of multiculturalism to represent it as more intrinsically

separatists” (Phillips, 2007: 21). For Kymlicka, indeed, “the desire of national minority

to survive as a culturally distinct society is not necessarily a desire for cultural plurality,

but simply for the right to maintain one’s membership in a distinct culture” (Kymlicka,

1995: 104). In this way, a focus on special rights as a way to preserve cultural borders

may accentuate closure and radicalization of differences.

At first glance this seems to be an inescapable controversy for theorists of

multiculturalism. Charles Taylor demands people to be recognized for who they are, as

fixed set of facts, actions, beliefs, which they have performed in the past and that have

special relevance in the present.6 Specifically, Charles Taylor marks the distinction

between honour and modern recognition on the passage from the idea of a group-based

identity to individualization, a kind of recognition that affirm my particular identity and

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my being different from others. Nevertheless, Taylor sees cultural identity as a

fundamental aspect of my individualized identity (Taylor, 1989: 27-9) up to the point that

his theory of recognition becomes very much a theory of cultural recognition (Taylor,

1994: 59-64). Individual identities, indeed, find roots in specific cultural identities that

give legitimacy to claims for more cultural sensitivity.7

Then, representation and political participation may be another element that may

exacerbate essentialisation. De facto, being the voice of a collective presupposes a

minimal regularity across people as well as unity and consensus.8 To this point, if the idea

of cultural group as a political entity leaves itself open to serious criticisms, but the

existence of such a thing as multiculturalism shows the significance of some peculiar

features on people’s lives and the need for someone to make those elements politically

relevant; what is to be done? The search for an account of multiculturalism that weights

specific attachments and that explains their negotiation in practice is what characterizes

this essay.9 This means to be sensitive to the breaking and rethinking of agreement across

affiliations, but also to accept a minimal communality among people identified by others

as co-members of a group. 10

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One point is of importance for this essay. The idea of culture is theoretically

ambiguous and highly contested, but it may be self-evident for someone who sees in a

certain behaviour the close presence of other people, or for someone that interprets actions

by analogy with an already present communal world. From a philosophical perspective,

both looking at subjective elaboration of cultural affiliation (if any) and focusing on

commonality, culture in practice seems to be the result of a dialectical interplay between

some individually elaborated collective features and other locally mediated structures that

define people’s position in a given social group. As the individual, indeed, rarely is an

individual as such, but rather she is often an individual among others. Equally, the

inescapable intersubjective character of human life does not strictly connect communality

with a fixed point of view. Because a practice takes place in an atmosphere of generality,

I cannot overlook that my behaviour responds to a given situation. Like the perspective

of a painter, it evolves and changes continuously. While the painter shifts from the

original position or directs the gaze to a different point; historical accidents, casual

encounters and reasoned deliberation articulate the margins of commonality.

Moreover, belonging to a certain field, every social act is finite. Nevertheless, this

subordination of a certain field holds inherently the possibility of overcoming its borders

by opening to things that I did not consider before. The ways of approaching the shape of

this sort of changing identity and the evidence that sometime culture matters as a source

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of reasons, expectations, arguments and ideas, which a person can take up passively, but

also voluntarily, encourages a normative inquiry into the role of culture into the individual

experience of multiculturalism.

To sum up, a reified notion of culture has been certainly able to trigger the model

of a struggle for recognition and to enrich the claim for accommodation of collective

identity. At the same time, scepticism about a too-ready acceptance of these notions have

casted light upon the asymmetries of power that a justification in terms of culture can

engender and on the individual experience and negotiation of social structures. However,

it is possible to hold a middle way between the two poles. Such a perspective looks at the

experience of disagreement and to the ways through which individuals appropriate in their

worldviews certain objects of concern when other persons are doing the same. This means

to begin with the individual act of appropriation of certain objects.

With act of appropriation, I mean the individual effort to incorporate one object

into a public consideration that is informed aby a worldview that the person finds her

own. In this way, what we need to look at is the fundamental connection between one

person and the object of concern. This is a purely individual relation, one in which each

and every person negotiates his or her worldview in a specific argumentative context.

Whether she does so in cultural terms, or she does not, emerges only in the actualization

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of such an act of appropriation. In this way, the focus is on the individual that must be

able to discursively act upon certain objects. Culture matters at a second level of analysis:

that is, when we have to reconstruct the content of each act of appropriation and when

appropriators have to find a solution to that specific concern in their own terms.

This reading of culture as incorporated in an act of appropriation pushes us to

study the paradigm of conversation as a distinctive kind of communicative interaction,

one in which participants are peers. They have an equal entitlement to access the object

of disagreement and they construct a feeling of mutuality from their diverse

communicative exchanges.

3. The paradigm of conversation

So far, I have provided reasons for reflecting on the limitations of a too simplistic

account of culture, and gestured towards a defence of an approach to multiculturalism

that focus on individuals as agents that appropriate discursive objects in their own ways.

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Now, it is the suggestion of this paper that this indication can be illuminated by going

back to the modern idea of amicable collisions and sensus communis, as Anthony Ashley

Cooper (1671 – 1713), the third Earl of Shaftesbury, puts them. At first, it may seem

rather counterintuitive and anachronistic to connect the negotiation of cultural

commitments with common sense. Common sense, indeed, has been considered as the

ultimate limitation to philosophical speculation.11 This theoretical function apart,

common sense is often intended to play as a significant rationale in achieving objectives

that need particular emphasis in a certain community. In politics, appeals to common

sense often hide conservative stances. People use common sense to defend commitments

to a set of undisputable moral principles or as a reference to a minimal standard of moral

integrity. In other cases, common sense has been the very mark of communal identities:

that is, it justifies the discredit of unacceptable lines of conduct, it provides criteria of

general acceptability and it makes available a ready-made justification for decisions of

public interest. Sensus communis, however, is not common sense. In Shaftesbury, it is not

a conservative limitation to the range of good reason, but rather it is the sense of equality

that people mature towards other human beings.

Given so, to what extent sensus communis can be of any use for contemporary

theorists of multiculturalism? As if this were not enough, traditionally, scholars have

studied Lord Shaftesbury as a philosopher with very much to say in moral theory and

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aesthetics, but with a marginal interest and relevance in the political disputes of his time.

To see the normative significance of sensus communis let me illustrate and discuss,

without any ambition of historiographical originality, how this notion is connected with

some aspects of Shaftesbury’s philosophy, which, put one after the other, prove the

existence of foundational political demands in the thought of the English philosopher

Shaftesbury’s thought, indeed, was largely influenced by the consolidation of the

right to freedom of expression and press. The flourishing of independent press as well as

the growth of new social spaces, primitive public spaces such as coffee houses, theatres

and gardens, indeed, demanded new forms of communication, abstractions from

considerations of status and mutual politeness among actors equally involved in free

conversations (Klein, 1994: 13). The diffusion of these new centres encouraged the

democratisation of practices of discussion and enhanced the articulation of public spirit

as a social sense, a feeling of communality among people equally involved in the

dialectics of giving and receiving reasons (Habermas, 1989). These amicable collisions

stressed the opposition with palace etiquette, where manners led conversations to be a

perpetual reiteration of the existing power relations. These conversations, like orations,

Shaftesbury writes, made people unenthusiastic listeners and

are fit only to move the passions: and the power of declamation is to terrify, exalt,

ravish, or delight, rather than satisfy or instruct ... to be confined to hear orations on

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certain subjects must needs give us a distaste, and render the subjects so managed as

disagreeable as the Managers (Shaftesbury, 1999: 34)

Conversations between peers, in turn, instigated a reciprocal learning, a continual

refinement, but also, Shaftesbury says, a profound self-reflection. In these spaces, people

were not supposed to say only the first thing that came to mind. There was, in turn,

common awareness of the importance of expressing the right thing for the right reasons.

In this way, as Shaftesbury writes, conversation is firstly an occasion of encounter with

the self. What people present to the public fora should have first passed through a private

process of self-reflection.

This conception may be made clear by referring to a passage from the Soliloquy

where Shaftesbury, against secular memoirs, sanctified edifications and epistemological

philosophy, developed in rich detailed an analogy between polished writing and good

grooming (Gill, 2014). As if one has to make ready for a public appearance, a writer

makes judgments about expected achievements, notes the things that could be said better

and takes conscious refinement to make his points sharper. A perpetual movement back

and forth allows the individual to look at himself and to avoid the evil of hubris (Gill,

2014: 5-8). In this sense, the dialogue has a moral and cognitive relevance. First, contrary

to univocal monologue, by confronting and comparing ideas or by doubting and

approving others’ arguments, the dialogue makes easier to gain a better picture of the

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question at stake. Second, dialogue triggers an internal elaboration of one’s own self: it

helps to put the ego in contact with itself (Casalini, 2001). As if we are in front of the

mirror, speaking, engaging in public discussion and testing our opinions presuppose the

capacity to look at ourselves, to accept limits and to evaluate our lines of conduct. With

Shaftesbury’s words, defensible arguments must look like “correction by themselves, and

been well-formed and disciplined before they are brought into the field” (Shaftesbury,

1999: 76). Public discussions, thus, have maieutic force as well as resources for

discovering our moral qualities – they function both as valid and concrete passage to find

truth, and as a way to realise completely the goals of virtue - that ideal of moral self-

governance that has been a theoretical locus from Cambridge Platonists to the Scottish

sentimentalist (Gill, 2000: 12).

Amicable collisions, thus, turns out to be a moral context for public exchange,

since their conventions embodies the norms of freedom, equality, involvement and

pleasure. These elements are listed in an important passage of Sensus Communis, where

the narrator, by evoking a past episode, traces the contour of what can be considered as

an appropriate conversation. “A great many fine schemes”, he tells

were destroyed; many grave reasoning overturned: but this being done without

offence to the parties concerned, and with improvement to the good humour of the

company, it set the Appetite the keener to such Conversations. And I am persuaded, that

had Reason herself been to judge of her own interest, she would have thought she received

more advantage in the main from that easy and familiar way, than from the usual stiff

adherence to a particular opinion (Shaftesbury, 1999: 33).

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In this brief description, we see three distinctive attributes. The conversation,

indeed, was of a free kind, substantive but also diverting. It was free in as much as there

was “a Freedom of raillery, a liberty in Decent language to question everything, and an

allowance of unravelling or refuting any argument, without offence of the arguer”

(Shaftesbury 1999: 33). Freedom, as Klein rightly points out, is an intellectual freedom.

Among peers, it is freedom to question, to respond and to ridicule the others (Klein, 1994:

98). It is not a legal entitlement, but rather a contextually constructed condition

(convention) for making good use of conversations. Besides being free, the conversation

was diverting. Despite freedom to (fair) derision, it was without offence. Finally, the

contents were so diverse to cover many areas, to encourage further discussions and to

delight the reason of the participants (Klein, 1994: 97). Conversations, thus, are a model

to provide the best conditions for the advancement of reason. Productive discourses

presuppose active involvement of the participants, inclination towards the other agents,

but also equality. It is not equality of endowments, but rather it is more like symmetry.

Participants have equal access to advance their points and to enjoy the pleasure of sharing

their views (Klein, 1994: 98).

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Shaftesbury’s conception of sensus communis is the result of this dialogical

movement among equals, a continual self-refinement that he considers as part of the

nature of each human being as a being that turn to herself and elaborate what she sees.

Entering in dialogue implies a process of understanding and the effort of reaching an

agreement through this mutual learning. “To reach an understanding in a dialogue”, as

Gadamer writes, “is not merely a matter of putting oneself forward and successfully

asserting one’s own point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we

do not remain what we were” (Gadamer, 1992: 379).12 Engaging in a dialogue involves

a temporal acquiescence to what the other says. This is not mere compliance, but it is a

sort of acceptance of our own fallibility. The interaction with the other makes us desist

from obstinately holding our views as well as casts doubts (or confirm) on the

expectations we had about others’ identity. Only in this openness, indeed, there is space

for new truths and for an authentic mediation of the two original positions. When

positively inclined, as casual observation can demonstrate, people commit to a position

that enable them to listen to what the other is saying. There, through questions and

answers, participants investigate arguments from the other and postulate a shared

participation in a common sense, which we expect to regulate, at least provisionally, what

to do between us. Common sense, indeed, implies positive inclination towards the others

and self-control. It is, like in its original Greek meaning (koinemosume), a “sense of public

weal, and of the common interest, love of the community or society, natural affection,

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humanity, obligingness, or that sort of civility which rises from a just sense of the

common rights or mankind, and the natural equality there is among those of the same

species” (Shaftesbury, 1999: 48). These ideas of affection, love, common interest and

civility put emphasis on the distinctive attribute of Shaftesbury’s notion of sensus

communis. It is the result of the mutuality of the living together, where people elaborate

their own reasons and, by confronting with the others, have a deeper understanding of

themselves as well as of those involved in the same dialogical process.13 It is, indeed, a

feeling for common good, a social disposition that aspires to be universal, and the key

condition for a profitable relationship with the other. In the experience of a dialogue,

people constitute a common ground, where thoughts, ideas, and doubts intertwine. Words,

actions and views are inserted into a shared operation. Perspectives merge into each other

and individuals collaborate in reciprocity.

To sum up, by suggesting that sensus communis consists in the commitment to

prefer a social feeling of partnership with all humankind, Shaftesbury not only places in

question the moral theory prevalent since Hobbes and the public practices of the Court,

he offers insights for the creation of peculiar forms of contextual discursive interaction.

The significant focus on amicable collisions suggests that Shaftesbury says that what

direct human beings towards a spirit of public civility is not abstract theorizing, but rather

a contextual universality identified by the group of participants in a public conversation.

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Here, what concerns us is a kind of moral knowledge that, as Duke has recently pointed

out concerning Gadamer’s reading of sensus communis, results from practical

(favourable) settings and which make available the basis to act towards the other (Duke,

2014: 29).

From this excursus, thus, the crucial insights for our purposes is the investigation

of the conditions of possibility for sharable forms of life made explicit in the lives of the

participants, who have the title to participate and, therefore, absorb communal patterns

through exchanges. What matters is not the actual worldview that activates a person in a

certain context, but rather how this worldview is translated into an act of appropriation

that is available to the others.

4. Recognition to Toleration

So, according to Shaftesbury, individuals, when allowed to participate equally,

transform simple exchanges of opinions and ideas into amicable collisions, where

reciprocal learning and self-reflection opens to a sense of public civility, the sensus

communis. If sensus communis and amicable collisions are of any value in political

theory, they can be understood in the framework of those contextual and informal

practices that contribute to the judgments of individual citizens on issues of their interest

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and, therefore, in the construction of mechanisms that make deliberative procedures

structured in a way that allow individuals to be part of a sense of mutuality, while ensuring

that those affected by its outcomes are also its authors.

In this way, there are two levels of normative action. First, we have a level of

recognition in which institutions must ensure that all members have adequate means to

appropriate certain objects, and to make the distinctive character of this appropriation

available to the others.14 Once this has been granted, a second level of informal normative

action among participants. This is the level of toleration. Here, by combining their diverse

acts of appropriation around the same issues of concern, parties are in the position to make

their culture relevant. At the same time, from these exchanges among peers with an equal

say and the same concern, a common sense of weal may arise.

Therefore, for institution, the primary normative task is to create conditions for

people to appropriate objects of concern. If participation is so central, the focus turns

toward the very moment in which the agent takes part in something. This means to direct

attention towards the original poietic moment in which the subject reconciles her

worldview in an action that aims at modelling collective action in the light of her

perspective. This act of appropriation epitomizes a connection of one’s needs and interests

with an object of concern. It is not primarily addressed to the others, but rather it is a

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spontaneous response to an external stimulus that triggers a generative occasion in which

individuals are pushed to interact with the others because they happen to have the same

concern.

The emphasis on the phase of access, rather than on the reciprocal exchange

between peers, falls within an expanded understanding of recognition, which functions as

category for scrutinizing constraints to the spontaneous act of appropriation. In this way,

recognition subsumes all those policies that make certain the prerequisite of whatever

conversation among peers: that is, the entitlement to grasp an object of concern. Here,

there is a substantial move from the canonical understanding of recognition in

multiculturalism (Taylor 1992). Unlike Taylor, the problem of recognition does not arise

in front of a demand that is advanced by a collective with the aims of equalizing different

forms of life. The recognition of marginalized traditions and forms of life turns out to be

encapsulated in the performative act to grasp an object of disagreement distinctively. The

preservation of collective identities (if any) is the result of a demand for equal treatment

that allows for the exercise of one’s diversity in public. This suggests a model in which

public policies and political programs must actively construct laws, political programs

and public policies that actively support one’s worldview and its manifestation in public.

A politics of recognition, in so doing, ensures the integrity of the individual only in

connection with the constitutive link with his or her act of appropriation of certain objects

of disagreement. At the same time, since identity is individually realized, such a politics

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does not act only in the direction of preserving the rights to flourish or to ensure

membership in a certain community, but rather it tries to ensure equal chances of

expressing one’s act of appropriation in a specific manner. By trying to equalize the

manifestation of one’s identity, such a politics of recognition must include in its agenda

also those actions that encourage persons not to leave those cultural links that they find

important and pervasive in their life. But this is functional to make certain that everyone

is in the same position to appropriate objects of their concern.

This idea implies a customization of recognition as a contextual and individual

socialization of moral autonomy. Recognition is not once for the all, but it is a temporary

and contextual achievement. It is not group-oriented, but it focuses on the person, as a

member who wants to be the author of his or her own laws. The same person can act

differently in each of these sites of disagreement. Vis-à-vis different objects of concern,

the subject not only declines his or her worldview differently, but also he or she

experiences a temporary and always different phase of initial crisis with other moral

agents who happen to have a claim upon the same object. Then it follows that the basic

demand that one’s act of appropriation is not ignored represents the essential constituent

for having proper discursive exchanges that can be propitious for better social

relationships outside discussion.

25

When the fundamental demand of appropriation is satisfied, the specific sub-

norms that are codified through contextualized episodes of disagreement are

interrogatives that could incorporate the specific character of participants’ worldviews.

This opens to the second normative domain; that of toleration. Toleration is neither seen

as a discourse (Brown 2014), nor as a practice of justification (Forst 2003, 2012), but

rather, in analogy with the idea of sensus communis, toleration is a sense of common weal

among participants. It comes up through discussion and it makes possible exchanges

between persons during discursive exchanges thanks to self-reflection and mutuality.

As noticed earlier, Shaftesbury lists a precise description of what makes

conversation the milieu for a prolific self-reflection and for justifying commitment to a

pubic weal. On the one hand, Shaftesbury says, individuals must be equals, not in terms

of endowments, but more like in their common status as participants holding the

opportunity to advance their ideas and to enjoy from what the others have to say. On the

other hand, during conversations, since the discrepancy in power are suspended,

individuals are also intellectually free: that is, in an oratorical situation, they are free to

question and even to ridicule the other. Only the combination of these two levels triggers

26

a movement back and forth, from the self to the public, that helps participants to polish

their arguments, to self-refine and, finally, to open to a sentiment of public civility. 15

While, in declamations and orations, there is a characteristically unequal relation

between the orator and auditor, conversation implies the activity of the participants. Since

the power of argumentation is a habit put into action in the practice of conversations,

conversers are equal in their capacity to deploy what they have of this power. What gives

individuals legitimacy in the public discourse is the fact that they, despite their being

differently endowed with reason or wit, are symmetrically involved in the emancipatory

effort to be more rational and autonomous by engaging in intellectually productive

discourses. Conversation distributed equally provides individuals, as Shaftesbury would

say, pleasure and disposition towards the other. Communality, thus, is less efficiently

served when criticism is resisted or in case the monopoly of discussion is not shared

among all the affected.

This performative equality applies the idea of mutual engagement to discuss

arbitrary relations of power and to defend the moral significance of a conversation

between equals. At the same time, intellectual freedom to question and even to ridicule

the other is not an entitlement to be free from interference during conversation; neither

27

can it be read only as the power to fulfil one’s potential as a converser. Intellectual

freedom might best be conceived as the result of an informal relationship that exists

between the conversers. Whether a converser offends the other is an occasional event –

maybe reiterated - that depends on her temperament and on the issues conversers are

dealing with. In turn, what is not contingent, according to Shaftesbury, is the broader aim

of conversations to amuse their participants. Of course, this implies a critical scrutinizing

of other ideas, questioning and rebutting what others are saying, nevertheless, as

Shaftesbury writes, “being done without offence to the parties concern’s, and with

Improvement to the good humour of the company” (Shaftesbury, 1999: 33). As Klein

notices, thus, this sort of intellectual freedom is not absolute license. Two conditions

qualifies this conception: avoiding offenses and improving the good humour of the

company. In this situation, being free entails decency: a self-control of unnecessary

offence and the possibility of refusing unnecessary offence for the sake of the common

weal (Klein, 1994: 98). Humour and irony, moreover, put emphasis on the contextual

character of conversations. When one meaning is put forward and an unusual

interpretation is presupposed, we expect other fellows to understand the intended

contradiction between facts and our description. This communal disposition is toleration.

Under this view, toleration involves the ability to raise oneself to a state of critical

understanding of what other conversers are disposed to bear or of the background

knowledge of a specific subject, but also a self-reflection on one’s role as participant in

28

the collective discussion. Toleration is not simply happily coexisting with one another

without interference. It is focused on a proper sense of mutuality that characterizes people

engaging in the same discursive enterprise as peers. They can ridicule one another, they

can fight, they can also challenge one’s discursive appropriation, but they are not in the

position to question one’s entitlement to participate and to symmetrically answer these

questions in his or her own terms. In other words, it is a momentary acceptance of

difference for the purpose of discursive exchange, which is made possible, as I have

argued earlier in this section, by a prior act of recognition of all members as potential

appropriators of objects of disagreement. Then, the main claim of this part and the

substantive normative terrain for the discourse to come is that toleration is a sense of

public weal that only a universal recognition can make possible.

4. Patchwork multiculturalism

In this paper, by drawing upon Lord Shaftesbury’s ideas of amicable collisions

and sensus communis, I have argued that the paradigm of conversation, where

participation and intellectual freedom among equals are essential elements, help to trace

a picture of multicultural interactions in which culture is not a label, but rather an account

that places attention on the act of appropriation that individuals direct upon certain objects

29

of concern and on the coordination among people that are equally entitled to access

objects in their own ways. These ideas allow for a substantial analysis of everyday

interactions as well as for careful investigations of asymmetric decisional structures,

decentralized institutional settings and social, political or cultural barriers that prevent

someone to access disputes he or she cares about. Sensus communis and amicable

collisions, I have argued, justify an overture to the social level and define a distinctive

normative apparatus that reads the possibility of toleration as a result of a prior

equalization through a proper politics of recognition, giving everyone the opportunity to

access object of his or her concern, regardless the content and the form of such an act of

appropriation. In this section, I shall lay out the distinctive elements of patchwork

multiculturalism as a collection of multiples sites of discussion brought together by a

holistic and comprehensive politics of recognition.

There are a number of responses to multiculturalism that argue for

decentralization (Modood 1998, Parekh 2000, Song 2007, Williams 1998), patchwork

multiculturalism has a distinctive normative ground and tries to describe how deliberative

spaces may be organized, their area of intervention and how representation should be

thought in those fora. Under this view, special rights and assistance, from translators to

logistic support, may be additional instruments to make each potential participant enjoy

the free and equal spirit of an open conversation as a peer. When translated into the debate

30

about multiculturalism and democratic deliberation, taken as an assumption that in a

certain multicultural community we have different worldviews coexisting all together, it

is important to make clear how contextual acts of appropriation can be mediated in a way

that allows community members to create a structure of social coordination informed by

toleration, a structure that, from discursive interaction, may give rise to positive

relationships outside disagreement.

Neighbourhoods turn out to be the focus of investigation for multiculturalism as

fieldwork. In order to identify the actual borders of this geographical space, the postal

code seems a reasonable solution. There, local resources and individual inter-personal

experiences may interact more easily. The emphasis on micro-communities does not

dismiss top-down political approaches definitively. Those are all actions that fall within

the dimension of recognition, which should apply upon individuals without the reference

to the place where they live but as potential appropriators of objects of disagreement.

National institutions must be structured in a way that people can live in a legal

environment that is respectful for differences. Moreover, they must be able to guarantee

social solidarity, to avoid the relevance of significant wealth disparities in the decision-

making system, to ensure equal access to service and to provide adequate scheme of

redistribution of public finances. Representatives from institutions, working together with

voluntaries from the local community, may be used to collect demands from the local

31

community and it may lobby for them at the national level as a preliminary part of a

politics of recognition.

While social standards should be valid equally across the communities, a

decentralized system that want to favour cohesive civic spaces, trust and reciprocity must

set context-sensitive standards of policy evaluations. The key to this strategy lies in

institutional mechanisms that disperse power in the social space to ensure collective

decisions that respond to the interests and values of those they affect. The focus on small-

scale political spaces aims, in turn, at clarifying a division of work among a formal politics

of recognition and an informal collective construction of norms and rules at the local

level.

Objects of disagreements are whatever discursive object, from the application of

non-local legislation to internal disputes and vituperation of some of the members, that is

incorporated in one’s act of appropriation and that get sufficient momentum to be

discussed by co-members in adequately structured consultative groups. Consultative

groups are contextually constructed informal structure of deliberation and decision

making, where under a scheme of direct participation or active delegation, affected

members, together with representative of associations, organizations and local politicians

elaborate policy proposals, monitor the implementation of governmental policies in their

32

context and deal with issues of their own local concern. Within different communities

there will be different organisations, associations, groups that are already well established

and that can be used to nurture community partnership. For example, institutions should

be able to encourage participation in the consultative groups by empowering young

people and women to bring their act of appropriation to the others. By expanding the

network of contacts, indeed, marginalized people may extend the political horizon and

find legitimate grounds to advance their cause through coalition-making across

differences. In this sense, unions, civil organizations, social movements, residential

community, NGOs, sport teams, public and private housing associations, voluntary

organizations working with the elderly and charitable organizations are potential vehicles,

parallel to the consultative groups, to strengthen transversal awareness and create a

tolerating environment. This sentiment will not raise alone. When this is not the case,

representatives must be able to collect these missing acts of appropriations and make

certain that they will count in the deliberation within the consultative groups.

There must also be some normative requirements for the composition of

consultative groups. In order to avoid gender biased representation or the reproduction of

structure of domination by educated and by influential elders, consultative groups must

guarantee by statue a one-to-one representation of the acts of appropriation. In order to

avoid the control of wealthy member of the community, consultative groups must have

an articulated financial structure where a certain degree of funds is guarantee by local

33

institutions for the services they subcontract with the consultative group (like policy

monitoring, policy evaluation and design), while the majority of the resources is provided

by membership fees, which must be equally accessible to all the members of the

neighbourhood. Private donations must not be allowed. The structure of co-financing and

a universal membership fees have twofold implications. On the one hand, they reduce

relevant wealth inequalities between the members of the community that participate in

the consultative group. On the other hand, they put financial constraints on the

consultative groups. In this way, people in the consultative group should be encouraged

to include a great number of people in the group, at the same time, they have incentive to

maximize their revenues, by being efficient in the administration of services within the

community and by providing reliable and detailed information concerning the community

to the national power.

This requires a significant change in the process of policy-making to allow

operational front-line actors greater autonomy to make decisions that implies enhanced

respect for their judgement as local experts. At the same time, this approach requires a

commitment on the part of institutional organization to mobilise and direct material and

human resources directly to the point of service delivery in a way that accepts direct

participation from the community and delegation of decision-making power at the local

level. This system of delegation and specialization should be actively exercised also

34

during divisive legal cases, which often are the source of scepticism about the entire

multicultural enterprise. Consultative groups should serve as mediators not only to

explain why some practices are so important for a certain member, but also they should

make clear whether, in that precise case, that practices is so significant for the person

under judgment, whether it is the result of an external imposition from within the

community or whether the sentence can have a threatening impact on the community as

a whole. All these aspects should be decided by deliberation within the consultative

group. Moreover, in one school in a certain neighbourhood, a tough policy against racist

language might fail, while in another one it might yield positive results. In one housing

estate, the enforcement of actions against rubbish dumping and night-time noise may

radicalize differences, while carefully managed resident meetings that are able to steer

discussion may avoid partial resolution and favour mutual control and cooperation.

This movement in register from purely top-down approaches or vacuous claims

for decentralization to that of integrated democratic deliberation, where national

institutions create opportunities (recognition) for local, formal and informal, actors, helps

to surpass fixed cultural assumptions and to sustain efforts for civic mobilisation and

mutual understanding through a sense of common weal (toleration).

35

5. Conclusion

In this paper, I have suggested a conception of multiculturalism called patchwork

multiculturalism. It is a highly decentralized mix of discursive interaction and the

traditional politics of recognition. In so doing, my argument have developed alongside

three trajectories. First, I have argued that culture matters for multiculturalism, but that

the politics of recognition should first make possible everyone’s appropriation of object

of concern. Here, members are interrogated as persons with something to say on a certain

issue under scrutiny. This conception needs not hold an essentialist notion of culture. It,

indeed, defines people through their agency as affected members in a process of public

deliberation. Second, I have argued that the focus should be contextual and local. Third,

by drawing upon the paradigm of conversation, I have tried to rethink the relationship

between recognition – as equalization of everyone’s potential as appropriator – and

toleration – as a sense of common weal among participants in the same discursive

exchange.

Ultimately, the successful political application of these ideas depends on the

deconstruction of asymmetric relation of power and on a contextual reconsideration of

the terms for an equal participation in the decision-making process. No person should be

the subject or object of a policy of assimilation, for such a policy only reproduces or

reinforces unequal relations of arbitrary power. At the same time, by looking at

36

deliberation at the social level, this position takes seriously the practical importance of

the idea of culture in multicultural contexts. Persons, indeed, as holders of specific values,

more or less rooted in strong cultural links, shape practical parameters within which

bargaining, negotiations and conversations are mutually accepted as equal and free.

Whether this idea is overwhelmingly optimistic or not, it largely depends on the very

possibility of constructing institutional mechanisms apt to favour the true contribution of

local actors and the genuine involvement of all the affected members in the decision

making process.

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1 I owe the expression “the character of multiculturalism” and its definition to Patchen

Markell (2003).

2 A contiguous analysis to the view that I take can be found in Parekh (2000) and Iris

Marion Young (2013).

3 This claim takes inspiration and evidence from James Fearon and David Laitin, (1996:

715-7). See also, Ashutosh Varshney (2001). Bhikhu Parekh grounds his idea of

interculturalism upon analogous assumptions. See Bhikhu Parekh (2000: 212). This is

also consistent with findings from Helena Karjalainen and Richard Soparnot (2012). In

the article, they suggest that intercultural cooperation in multicultural working contexts

is a dual process based on a political-dimension and on an identification-dimension,

where the political dimension is found not to be relevant in an intercultural context.

4 Among others, on this issue, see the debate between W. James Booth (2013) and Alan

Patten (2011).

5 These three essays are collected in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.

For this paper, I shall quote by making reference to Lawrence Klein’s edition of this text

(1999).

6 Taylor is not alone in exploring the connection between recognition and

individualization. Axel Honneth grounds his account of individualization in the sphere of

legal recognition. People experience disrespect when perceive that the general accepted

39

legal norms produce forms of exclusion. These forms prevent marginalized persons from

freely participate in public and from being recognized for who they actually are: that is,

autonomous human beings with a set of distinctive attributes (Honneth, 1995: 118-29).

For a critique to the ontological assumptions behind the politics of recognition, see

Patchen Markell (2003: 13-5). In this sense, read also Tully (2000).

7 On this point, Clifton Mark (2014).

8 For an extensive analysis of the notion of multicultural group and its essentialisation,

see Magali Bessone (2013).

9 Bhikhu Parekh and Joseph Carens have placed emphasis on the realm of intercultural

interactions and on the need to make people participate in a common dialogue beyond

difference. See. Bhikhu Parekh (2000: 210-9) and Joseph Carens (2000 2004).

10 In these regards, it is crucial Anna Elisabetta Galeotti’s focus on ascriptive identities.

Among others, see Anna Elisabetta Galeotti (1998).

11 Analogous remarks can be found in John Rawls’s Kantian Constructivism in Moral

Theory: “The admissible grounds for holding institutions just or unjust must be limited to

those allowed by forms of reasoning accepted by common sense, including the procedures

of science when generally accepted” (Rawls, 1999: 327).

12 See also Hans Georg Gadamer (1991). For a rich analysis of the dialogical character of

Gadamer’s hermeneutics, see Lauren Swayne Barthold (2010).

13 On this point, Gadamer (1992: 19).

14 With recognition, I understand the institutional actions that respect the agent’s

capacity to raise and defend claims discursively (Honneth 1995).

15 This reading draws upon Gill (2014).