The Limits of Pluralism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23246772 |
|---|---|
| Authors | K Anthony Appiah (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1998 |
| Pages | 37-54 |
| Publication date | 1998-04-28 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Multiculturalism and American Democracy (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | University Press of Kansas (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/j.ctv1p2gkdp.6 |
| OpenAlex | W3166966858 |
| ISBN | 9780700631124 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
There is an Akan proverb, from my home in Asante in Ghana, that says: Aban begu a, efiri yam. Proverbs are notoriously difficult to interpret, and thus also to translate. But this one means, roughly, that if the state is going to collapse, it will be from the belly. The idea, of course, is that states collapse from within; and the proverb is used to express the sentiment that people suffer as a result of their own weaknesses, not from the attacks of others. It is a rhetoric familiar enough, these days, here in the United States. In the latest episodes of American jeremiad—truly the longest-running series in our history—it is being suggested that having “won the cold war,” we have set out to destroy ourselves from within. American society is being destroyed not by drugs and poverty and political bungling but by multiculturalists intent on schism: here, then, is a society collapsing from the belly. Naturally, I do not believe it. In a world that contains Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belfast and Beirut and East Timor and Sri Lanka, events such as the Los Angeles riots (multicultural riots, if ever there were any) do not convince me that the United States is being destroyed by an excess of ethnicity. I am not of Arthur Schlesinger’s party. Those of us born and raised elsewhere, but happy to be living here in the United States, often find one thing above all odd in our adopted home, a tradition as old in America as American jeremiad, as old in the world as nationalism, namely, this country’s imagination of itself as so new a creature on God’s earth that it cannot learn from others. This exceptionalism flows, in part, from a general ignorance of others that it is the aim of one part of the multicultural movement to correct. So I begin by talking about pluralism and identity in Africa in order to draw some lessons (both positive and negative) about the way we have dealt with our ethno-regional complications.
Epistemology · Pluralism (philosophy) · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 1999 - 2016 (18) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |