Social Science Research Council

DÆDALUS The End of Tolerance:

Engaging Cultural Difference

Fall 2000 Publication October 27

"Tolerance" is a word often heard in discussion about difference. But what does that word really mean, especially in countries like the United States, where a wide range of diverse cultural groups hold contradictory beliefs about appropriate social and family life practices? For example, some women and men from Sierra Leone take pride in the ritual practice of both female and male circumcision, while legislators in Congress have permitted boys but not girls to be circumcised. In cases like this, what and whose values should prevail? How should we decide?

These and similar questions are explored by the contributors to "The End of Tolerance: Engaging Cultural Differences." Several essays look at the grounds upon which a given cultural practice--e.g., wearing a head scarf, presenting a photo exhibit in public schools of gay and lesbian families, constructing a mosque--should be deemed tolerable within societies that embrace democratic values. Others consider the circumstances under which a democratic and liberal order should treat certain practices--e.g., women killed for family honor, forced marriage--as intolerable violations of fundamental human rights.

The title “The End of Tolerance" has several meanings: the aim of tolerance, the scope of tolerance, the limits of tolerance, the possibility of going beyond "mere tolerance," and, of course, the discontinuation of tolerance. The essays in this issue of Daedalus are concerned with the end of tolerance for cultural differences in all of those senses, bringing together a variety of experts from a number of different disciplines. As “The End of Tolerance” shows, coming to terms with diversity is one of the toughest challenges that judges, legislators, and policymakers--as well as citizens of a democracy--now face.

The ideas of some of our contributors to this issue edited by Richard Shweder, Martha Minow, and Hazel Rose Markus:

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco
"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Assimilation But Were Afraid to Ask"
Professor of human development and psychology, and co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project, Harvard University

It is hardly surprising what questions many are asking today: Are the new immigrants of color recreating the structures of the foundational myth co-historic narrative--the grammar of which was articulated in Irish, Italian, and Eastern European accents on the streets and docks of the Lower East Side of Manhattan one hundred years ago? Or is today's unprecedented racial and cultural diversity--think of the over one hundred languages now spoken by immigrant children in New York City schools--generating an entirely new script? Is what we hear today an incomprehensible Babelesque story, which is not only unlike anything we have heard before but is quite likely to contribute to our already polarized race relations and chronic "underclass" problems? Will today's new arrivals turn out to be like our mythical immigrant ancestors and assimilate, becoming loyal and proud Americans? Or, conversely, will they by the sheer force of their numbers redefine what it is to be an American?

Martha Minow
"About Women, About Culture: About Them, About Us"
Professor at Harvard Law School

To anyone committed to the advancement of women, questioning a woman's ability to make choices is itself a disturbing reminder of the rationales for denying women choices. Those rationales, historically, pointed to women's vulnerabilities, lack of education, inadequate rationality, overweening emotionality, or other impairments. To question the choices of women who wear scarves, defend and engage in genital cutting, or undergo arranged or polygamous marriages is to echo those arguments for denying women any self-determination. Demonstrating how women--or any oppressed groups--adapt to curtailed choices can demolish claims of inherent inferiority or impairment, but even this risks reinforcing images of their vulnerability. However problematic, the exchanges over false consciousness and choice produce intriguing twists. The liberal can claim that internal hierarchies prevent women from exercising control over the shape of "traditional" practices. Culture defenders counter that liberal interventions neglect larger colonial and anticolonial struggles or other ongoing intergroup conflicts. In these contexts, immigrant and minority group women may well rather align with the men in their group than be "rescued" by outsiders.

Richard A. Shweder
"What About ‘Female Genital Mutilation’? And Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place"
Professor of human development at the University of Chicago

Imagine a sixteen-year-old female Somali teenager living in Seattle who believes that a genital alteration would be "something very great." She likes the look of her mother's body and her recently circumcised cousin's body far better than she likes the look of her own. She wants to be a mature and beautiful woman, Somali style. She wants to marry a Somali man or at least a man who appreciates the appearance of an initiated woman's body. She wants to show solidarity with other African women who express their sense of beauty, civility, and feminine dignity in this way, and she shares their sense of aesthetics and seemliness. She reviews the medical literature and discovers that the surgery can be done safely, hygienically, and with no great effect on her capacity to enjoy sex. After consultation with her parents and the full support of other members of her community, she elects to carry on the tradition. What principle of justice demands that her cultural heritage should be "eradicated" and brought to an end?

Lawrence G. Sager
"The Free Exercise of Culture: Some Doubts and Distinctions"
Robert B. McKay Professor of Law at New York University

There are some matters--for example, some aspects of child-rearing--that connect to things that groups of people understandably value, but that are not necessarily portable between or among groups. Whether or not children sleep with their parents at various ages, whether or not parents spank their children, whether parents encourage independence and free choice or demand strict obedience and narrow conformity, whether parents are open or closed about nudity, encourage or discourage physical touchings of various body parts, etc.--some or all of these may be matters of what a group is comfortable with, of how a group thinks people should live, rather than questions of what is morally required. But other matters are not like that: slavery is not like that; the historic treatment of women is in many particulars not like that; the physical or psychological injury of children or the radical foreshortening of their life options is not like that.

Contributors to “The End of Tolerance”

Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco
"Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Assimilation But Were Afraid to Ask"
Professor of Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University
Katherine Pratt Ewing
"Legislating Religious Freedom: Muslim Challenges to the Relationship between ‘Church’ and ‘State’ in Germany and France"
Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
Unni Wikan
"Citizenship on Trial: Nadia’s Case"
Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo
Usha Menon
"Does Feminism Have Universal Relevance? The Challenges Posed by Oriya Hindu Family Practices"
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Drexel University
David L. Chambers
"Civilizing the Natives: Marriage in Post-Apartheid South Africa"
Wade H. McCree, Jr., Collegiate Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School
Martha Minow
"About Women, About Culture: About Them, About Us"
Professor, Harvard Law School
Austin Sarat
"The Micropolitics of Identity/Difference: Recognition and Accommodation in Everyday Life"
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
Nomi Maya Stolzenberg
"The Culture of Property"
Professor of Law, University of Southern California Law School
Lawrence G. Sager
"The Free Exercise of Culture: Some Doubts and Distinctions"
Robert B. McKay Professor of Law at New York University
Richard A. Shweder
"What About ‘Female Genital Mutilation’? And Why Understanding Culture Matters in the First Place"
Professor of Human Development, University of Chicago
Hazel Rose Markus, Claude M. Steele, and Dorothy M. Steele
"Colorblindness as a Barrier to Inclusion: Assimilation and Nonimmigrant Minorities"
H. R. Markus and C. M. Steele are professors of psychology; D. M. Steele is associate director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity; Stanford University