Articulating Difference, Negotiating Diversity: Multiculturalism in Canada and Europe.

The question as to "how to respond to demands for the legal and political recognition of cultural differences through democratic negotiation" has become one of the central concerns in recent academic and public debates about governance in multicultural societies. Nation states are now experiencing a condition of complexity, triggered by the visibility of transnational communities and by the political demands of cultural identities. The cartoon controversy in Denmark and other European countries; the recent riots in France; the use of /ban on wearing headscarfs in public institutions in France and Germany; and the failure to integrate large immigrant populations into national discourses are but a few examples of recent political events in Europe that indicate that legal and political recognition of cultural differences remains a serious shortcoming in European democracies. Furthermore, these incidents raise the question of whether the current nation state model is adequate to address the political and cultural recognition of minority cultures. In this paper, we seek an answer to this question by employing a theoretical and comparative framework in which we focus on Canada and Europe as two interesting and important sites where this question has generated alternative responses to this debate. Canada represents an interesting case in which questions of difference and the negotiation of diversity have not been preconditioned by a strong national cultural framework. In contrast, within the continental European context, responses to these questions are still being debated within the context of national culture. Furthermore, there is now a rich theoretical debate that has emerged within Canada, that reflects on questions of multiculturalism and the democratic negotiation of differences. The main argument of the paper is that, in comparison to the European experience, the Canadian experience and its postnational framework provides a more effective response to the issue of political and cultural recognition through democratic negotiation. In the first part of the paper we will review the theoretical debate on multiculturalism and postnationalism in Canada and try to elaborate upon the possible impact of this debate on the European experience. In the second part of the paper we will concentrate on several cases such as the cartoon controversy, the headscarf issue and the sharia debate in order to explain and compare the divergent responses that these issues have generated both within the Canadian and European context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]