Over the years, Western generalizations about certain Asian countries, such as Thailand or Japan, as “remarkably homogenous” have become less common. There is increasing recognition of cultural and other diversity within Asian societies. It is less clear to what extent there is multiculturalism in Asia, in the sense of the official recognition and accommodation of cultural diversity by national authorities. This book offers engagements with the topic of multiculturalism from three partially connected perspectives: historical, theoretical, and ethnographically critical. To varying degrees, all the chapters situate cultural diversity historically in their separate case studies. In addition to country studies on China, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, and six countries in Southeast Asia (Burma, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand), there is one chapter on foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong and Singapore.
Kymlicka's chapter on liberal multiculturalism offers the second key element of the book, a discussion of the fundamental aspects...