This chapter focuses on the issue of multiculturalism and identity. It first outlines multiculturalism's concept of recognition in relation to social group identity, in both negative (ascribed) and positive (claimed) terms. It then relates these to the core concept identified in Chapter 2 for the Bristol School of Multiculturalism (BSM), namely ethno-religious. It develops that discussion and argues that ethno-religious can represent a form of misrecognition of religious identities for two main reasons: in how the religious more often serves as a proxy for the ethnic and in questions of the adequacy of the notion of identity itself. It suggests the implications of this for wider considerations of public religion, which then sets up the subsequent chapters. In this, it begins to set out the argument of how the post-works in relation to the issue of identity, so core to multicultural theorizing, acknowledging the important overlaps but not conflating ethnic with religious identity categories (especially where the latter becomes reduced to the former) and the need to at times consider these categories separately and as distinct. Through this discussion the chapter also sets out the initial parts of the framework of recognition that this book develops.

Why identity matters

We can start by saying something about why identity matters in multicultural societies and for theories of political multiculturalism. There are two main reasons for this. One is what we might call a negative reason: discrimination and the need to address it. Patterns of disadvantage and discrimination can often form along group-lines.