Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity

Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity, Will Kymlicka (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 320 pp., $50 cloth, $28 paper. In Multicultural Odysseys, Will Kymlicka skillfully accomplishes a number of analytical tasks--not only extending his well-known and widely respected defense of a liberal conception of multiculturalism to all states of the world, but also asking causal questions about why liberal multiculturalism is spreading internationally, and why diversity policies do or do not take root in different parts of the world. He contends that multiculturalism emerged as an international issue among liberal Western states (rather than a domestic issue within individual states) in the early 1990s, primarily in response to the perceived security threat of escalating ethnic violence in the postcommunist and postcolonial world, but also in response to the apparent success of multiculturalism within Western countries. International organizations (IOs), including the United Nations and some of its specialized agencies, the Council of Europe, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, have since become a major conduit for the promotion of multiculturalism, and their activities are thus the book's main focus.