Feminism and Multiculturalism : Recognition of Difference and Beyond

• Women who have immigrated, as well as teh questions of ethnicity and multiculturalism have been invisible in mainstream feminist research in Sweden. In the context of the international feminist debate, however, these issues are gaining high priority. For some time now the importance of pursuing politics of recognition of cultural differences hu been on the agenda. But now the debate is turning towards a critical examination of inherent traps. The article examines the problematic of cultural essentialism - a discursive terrain shared by Feminism and Multiculturalism. Multicultural policies and politics of recognition risk reducing social inequalities to cultural differences and thereby promoting the social exclusion of ethnic minorities. If “recognition” is of an oppositional “other”, and if it fails to acknowledge that identities are hybrid and composite, it risks lapsing into cultural essentialism. In order to counter culturalism. feminists need, it is maintained, to develop a conception of social citizenship which links citizenship to issues of social rights as well as the exigenc’es of a transethnic dialogue and politics of solidarity.

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