Multiculturalism,liberal fundamentalism and banal nationalism: Dilemmatic aspects of Dissolving the Diaspora

In this commentary I point to some inherent tensions within the article Dissolving the Diaspora. First, I suggest that the author may be in danger of underestimating the extent to which the values of the multiculturalism promoted in the article rely upon an acceptance of the incorrigible stats of culturally‐specific ideologies of liberalism. Second, I point to the way in which the author adopts a banal nationalist frame of reference whereby constructs such as ‘society’ and ‘polity’ and understood to be conterminous with ‘nation‐state’. I suggest that, in this respect, the author may be in danger of overlooking the ways in which the same liberal values which under pin an advocacy of multiculturalism might also be associated with utopian visions of transnational or cosmopolitan forms of solidarity and polity. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.