FLAVIA MONCERI

Quale diversità 'conta'? Considerazioni sul rapporto fra multiculturalismo e 'religione'

221

Maggio-Agosto 2009

Anno LXXIV    n. 2

Abstract - Multiculturalism’s main assumption is that ‘diversity matters’, and within contemporary multicultural societies the different religious experiences of the members are perceived as one of their most relevant features, one that might also lead to a number of dangerous and (at least seemingly) unsolvable conflicts. In the first and second sections of this article, I consider Bhikhu Parekh and Tariq Modood’s positions concerning the relationship between multiculturalism and the variety of religious experiences, wh il e in the third section I discuss the main theoretical problems that remain open. Essentially, such problems have all to do with the lack of an explicit addressing the issue of religious diversity from an effective intercultural perspective. Lastly, I try to bring back the variety of religious experiences to a different theoretical paradigm, which aims at importing some of the conceptual achievements of contemporary complexity theories into the social sciences’ discourse. In doing so, my goal is not to elaborate a single model able to give definite answers, but rather, to the extent to which it is possible, to secure its flexib il ity, as well as its ab il ity to adequate to the inputs coming from an unceasingly changing ‘reality’.