Civic Pluralism

Tags: Southeast Asia, Promoting Pluralism
Additional tags: Civic pluralism

There are many ways to think and talk about pluralism. ‘Civic pluralism’ may be helpful to find practical solution to approaching diversity in society. Within the Indonesian Promoting Pluralism Knowledge Programme this concept will be further explored by the academic partners and civil society organisations. This has to result in improved strategies and activities to deal with diversity in society, in such a way that it is conducive to development.

Various perspectives exist on how to define pluralism and what it means in daily life. Academics speak of the different ‘discourses of pluralism’. Recently, dr. Diana Eck of Harvard University has come up with an idea that makes a distinction between different discourses of pluralism. Most importantly, one can distinguish discourses belonging to theological pluralism from - what she calls - civic pluralism.

‘Civic’ refers to a set of ideas about citizens, citizenship, civil and political rights and freedoms. Civic pluralism thus draws on the ideas that people enjoy the right to express and actively pursue their identity, be it on ethnic, religious or other grounds. People usually assume multiple identities; a person can belong to an ethnic group, member to a religious community, belong to a certain age category, professional circle; each of which comes along with certain characteristics, habits and so forth.

Diana Eck warns against a ‘confusion of arena of discourse’; an illegitimate blurring of two discourses of theological pluralism and civic pluralism. This happens for instance when a theological objection is translated into a rejection of a civic right or freedom.

Civic pluralism focuses on how people can live together, while to some extent avoiding theological divides. The, this pluralism is about arrangements of how to live in a plural society; ‘the plural polity’ (a term brought forward by Martin Marty, University of Chicago). This pluralism is therefore located in politics. Diversity is a fact of life. What is needed, are the rules of the game. However, these rules never cover all areas of social interaction (and they even should not). In addition to rules, there should be an ethos that is created and maintained by society. Lastly, one needs to acknowledge that certain (religious) values may play a role in the public sphere. To allow this to happen, is what pluralism distinguishes from secularism.

For organisations working on pluralism, to conclude, there may be opportunities in adopting a civic pluralism approach. The focus would be on the practice of pluralism in society, the daily life of citizens (including negotiating the ‘ethos of pluralism’. A second focus would be on how the state is instrumental to this purpose, having a substantial influence on the rules of the game.

This text is based on an article of Zainal Bagir (CRCS, Yogyakarta, indonesia), which is published in the Hivos Working Paper series. For the full article, have a look at the publication section.