Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between identity and culture, which is an important issue in the multiculturalism debate from the perspective of “reflexivity.” Multiculturalism is a political doctrine of social integration in contemporary multicultural society, where the development of globalization makes it difficult for a nation-state to exclusively represent an entire public sphere. However, a lot of commentators, especially liberal ones, have doubted whether multiculturalism in fact has positive effects on social integration. Some of the most important issues on multiculturalism are related to the ideas of culture and identity, which multiculturalism supposes. These include three interconnected issues: the essentialistic understanding of culture, the intrinsic connection and distance between individual identity and group culture, and the crisis of individual autonomy caused by protecting cultural conventions. To respond to these issues imposed on multiculturalism, I demonstrate a model of the relationship between culture and identity through the critical review of Charles Taylor's identity theory and reference the reflexive modernity theory of Anthony Giddens, the identity management theory of Adachi Satoshi, the “culture” theory of Anne Phillips, and the talk theory of Paul Lichterman. I then discuss the fact that people can have “autonomy,”—that is, a will and capacity that make it possible for people to reflect their own group culture and to accept some, but not all, elements of their culture as an important part of their identities. Finally, it is shown that protesting individual autonomy should be a condition of multiculturalism that a liberal regime could support.
