The Politics of Difference:Statehood and Toleration in a Multicultural World*

MICHAEL WALZER

Abstract. The author identifies four possible attitudes of tolerance toward groupswith different ways of life: resignation, indifference, curiosity and enthusiasm. Heexplores the potential for these attitudes and concludes by discussing the role ofboundaries within communities in modernism and postmodernism. The author isnot going to focus on toleration of eccentric or dissident individuals in civil society;he is interested in individual rights primarily when they are exercised in common—in the course of voluntary association or religious worship or cultural elaboration—or when they are claimed by groups on behalf of their members.

I.

I will begin with a couple of distinctions. I am not going to focus in thispaper (except at the very end) on the toleration of eccentric or dissidentindividuals in civil society or even in the state. Individual rights may well lieat the root of every sort of toleration, but I am interested in those rightsprimarily when they are exercised in common (in the course of voluntaryassociation or religious worship or cultural elaboration) or when they areclaimed by groups on behalf of their members. The eccentric individual,solitary in his difference, is fairly easy to tolerate, and at the same time socialrepugnance for and resistance to eccentricity, while certainly unattractive,isn’t terribly dangerous. The stakes are much higher when we turn toeccentric and dissident groups.

Nor am I going to focus here on political toleration, where the groups inquestion are oppositional movements and parties. These are competitors for political power, necessary in democratic regimes, which quite literallyrequire that there be alternative leaders (with alternative programs), even if

Ratio Juris. Vol. 10 No. 2 June 1997 (165–76)

* First published in The Morality of Nationalism, ©1997 Robert McKim and Jeff McMahan. Usedby permission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

they never actually win an election. They are fellow participants, like themembers of the opposing team in a basketball game, without whom therecould not be a game, and who therefore have a right to score baskets andwin, if they can. Problems arise only in the case of people who want to dis-rupt the game, while still claiming the rights of players and the protection ofthe rules. These problems are often hard, but they don’t have much to dowith the toleration or difference, which is intrinsic to democratic politics, butrather with the toleration of disruption (or the risk of disruption)—anothermatter entirely.

My concern here is with toleration when the differences at stake are cul-tural, religious—way-of-life differences—when the others are not fellowparticipants and there is no common game and no intrinsic need for differ-ence. Even a liberal society does not require a multiplicity of ethnic groupsor religious communities; nor do any of the groups require any or all of the others. The groups may be competitive with one another, seeking con-verts or supporters among uncommitted or loosely committed individuals,but their primary aim is to sustain a way of life among their own members,reproducing their culture or faith in successive generations. They are in-wardly focussed, which is exactly what political parties cannot be. At thesame time, they require some kind of extended social space (outside thehousehold) for the sake of assembly, worship, argument, celebration, mutualaid, schooling, and so on.

Now, what does it mean to tolerate groups of this sort? Understood as anattitude or state of mind, toleration describes a number of possibilities. Thefirst of these, which reflects the origins of religious toleration in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, is simply a resigned acceptance of difference forthe sake of peace. People kill one another for years and years, and thenmercifully, exhaustion sets in, and we call this toleration. But we can trace acontinuum of more substantive acceptances. A second possible attitude ispassive, relaxed, benignly indifferent: “It takes all kinds to make a world.” Athird expresses openness to the others, curiosity, respect, a willingness tolisten and learn. And, furthest along the continuum, there is the enthusiasticendorsement of difference: an aesthetic endorsement, if difference is taken torepresent in cultural form the largeness and diversity of God’s creation orof the natural world; or a functional endorsement, if difference is viewed asa necessary condition of human flourishing, offering to individual men andwomen the choices that make their autonomy meaningful.

But perhaps this last attitude falls outside my subject: How can I be saidto tolerate what I in fact endorse? If I want the others to be here, in this society, among us, then I do not tolerate otherness, I support it. I do not,however, necessarily support this or that version of otherness. I might wellprefer another other, culturally or religiously closer to my own practices andbeliefs (or, perhaps, more distant, exotic, posing no competitive threat). So itseems right to say that though I support the idea of difference, I tolerate the

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instantiated differences. And there will always be people, in any democraticsociety and however well-entrenched the commitment to pluralism is, forwhom some particular difference—this or that form of worship, familyarrangement dietary rule—is very hard to tolerate. I shall say of all peoplewho actually accept differences of this sort, without regard to their standingon the continuum of resignation, indifference, curiosity, and enthusiasm,that they possess the virtue of tolerance.

Similarly, I shall treat all the social arrangements through which we incorporate difference, co-exist with it, allow it a share of social space, as theinstitutionalised forms of this same virtue. Historically, there have been fourdifferent sorts of arrangements that make for toleration, four models of atolerant society. I want now to describe these briefly and roughly, and then to say something about the self-understanding of the men and womenwho make them work today (insofar as they actually work: Toleration isalways a precarious achievement). What exactly do we do when we toleratedifference?

II.

The oldest arrangements are those of the great multi-national empires—beginning, for our purposes, with Persia and Rome. Here the various groupsare constituted as autonomous communities, political/legal as well ascultural/religious in character, ruling themselves across a considerable rangeof their activities. The groups have no choice but to co-exist with oneanother, for their interactions are governed by imperial bureaucrats inaccordance with an imperial code, like the Roman jus gentium, designed tomaintain some minimal fairness, as fairness is understood in the imperialcentre. The bureaucrats do not, however, interfere in the internal life of theautonomous communities for the sake of fairness or anything else—so longas taxes are paid and peace maintained. (An exception to this rule: TheBritish decision to ban the suttee—the self-immolation of a Hindu widow—in India, which they rightly regarded as an extreme example—they did notpursue other examples—of the oppression of women.) Hence they can besaid to tolerate the different ways of life, and the imperial regime can becalled a regime of toleration, whether or not the members of the differentcommunities are tolerant of one another. Under imperial rule, they willynilly manifest tolerance in their everyday interactions, and some of them,perhaps, learn to accept difference, standing somewhere on the continuumthat I have described. But the survival of the different communities does notdepend on this acceptance. It depends only on bureaucratic toleration,sustained, mostly, for the sake of peace (though individual bureaucrats havebeen variously motivated, a few of them famously curious about differenceor even enthusiastic in its defense).

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This is probably the most successful way of incorporating difference and enabling (requiring is more accurate) peaceful co-existence. But it is not, or at least it never has been, a democratic way. Whatever the characterof the different “autonomies,” the incorporating regime is autocratic. I do not want to idealise this autocracy; it can be brutally repressive, for thesake of maintaining its conquests, as the history of Assyria and Israel, Rome and Carthage, Spain and the Aztecs, Russia and the Tatars, amplydemonstrates. But settled imperial rule is often tolerant—and tolerantprecisely because it is everywhere autocratic, which is to say, not bound by the interests or prejudices of any of the conquered groups, equally distant from all of them. Roman proconsuls in Egypt or British regents inIndia ruled more even-handedly than any local majority was (or is) likely to do.

Imperial autonomy tends to lock individuals into their communities andtherefore into a singular ethnic or religious identity. It tolerates groups, not(except in a few cosmopolitan centers and capital cities) free-floating menand women. Lonely dissidents or heretics, cultural vagabonds, intermarriedcouples and their children will flee to the imperial capital, which is likely tobecome as a result a fairly tolerant place—and the only place where socialspace is measured to an individual fit. Everyone else will live in homogen-ous neighbourhoods or districts, tolerated there but not likely to be welcomeor even safe across whatever line separates them from the others; they canmix comfortably only in neutral space—the market, say, or the imperialcourts and prisons. Still, they live, most of the time, in peace alongside oneanother, respectful of cultural as well as geographic boundaries.

Today, all this is gone (the Soviet Union was the last of the empires): theautonomous institutions, the carefully preserved boundaries, the ethnicallymarked identity cards, the far-flung bureaucracies. Autonomy did not meanmuch at the end (one reason, perhaps, for imperial decline); its scope wasgreatly reduced by the impact of modern ideas about sovereignty and bytotalizing ideologies uncongenial to the accommodation of difference. Butethnic and religious differences survived, and wherever they were territoriallybased, local agencies, more or less representative, retained some minimalfunctions and some symbolic authority. These they were able to convert veryquickly, once the empires fell, into a kind of state machinery, driven by nation-alist ideology, aiming at sovereign power. With sovereignty, of course, comesmembership in international society, the most tolerant of all societies but,until very recently, not so easy to get into. This is where and how most groupswould prefer to be tolerated: as nation-states (or religious republics) withgovernments, armies, and borders, co-existing with other nation-states inmutual respect. But will these new nation-states tolerate their own minoritygroups? And how can we respect them if they don’t? There ought to be limitsto international toleration, but no one has yet figured out how to establishthese limits or maintain them.

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III.

Before I consider the nation-state as a possibly tolerant society, I want brieflyto turn to a morally but not politically more likely heir to the multi-nationalempire—the consociational or bi- or tri-national state. Examples like Belgium,Switzerland, Cyprus, Lebanon, and the still-born Bosnia suggest the range ofpossibility here and also the imminence of disaster. Consociationalism is aheroic program since it aims to maintain imperial co-existence without theimperial bureaucrats and without the distance that made those bureaucratsmore or less impartial rulers. Now the different groups are not tolerated bya single transcendent power; they have to tolerate one another and work outamong themselves the terms of their co-existence.

This is not impossible. Success is most likely where there are only tworoughly equal groups—and where the equality is stable over time. Then theproportionate allocation of resources and offices in the civil service is relat-ively easy, and neither group need fear the dominance of the other. It is thefear of dominance that breaks up consociations. Mutual toleration dependson trust, not so much in each other’s good will as in the institutionalarrangements that guard against the effects of ill-will. I cannot live tolerantlyalongside a dangerous other. What is the danger that I fear? That the con-sociation will collapse into an ordinary nation-state, where I will be a mem-ber of the minority, looking to be tolerated by my former associates, who nolonger require my toleration.

IV.

Most of the states that make up international society are nation-states. To callthem that does not mean that they have nationally (or ethnically or reli-giously) homogenous populations. Homogeneity is rare, if not non-existent,in the world today. It means only that a single dominant group organizes thecommon life in a way that reflects its own history and culture and, if thingsgo as intended, carries the history forward and reproduces the culture. It is these intentions that determine the character of public education, thesymbols and ceremonies of public life, the state calendar and the holidays itenjoins. Among histories and cultures, the nation-state is not neutral. At thesame time, nonetheless, it can, as liberal and democratic nation-states com-monly do, tolerate minorities. This toleration takes different forms, though itrarely reaches the full autonomy of the old empires. Regional autonomy isespecially unlikely, for then members of the dominant nation living in theregion would be subjected to “alien” rule in their own country.

Toleration in nation-states is commonly focused not on groups but on mem-bers of groups, minorities, generally conceived stereotypically, qua members,and allowed (or expected) to form voluntary associations, organizations formutual aid, private schools, publishing houses, and so on. They are not

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allowed to sustain a corporate existence or exercise legal jurisdiction overtheir fellows. Minority religion, culture, and history are matters for whatmight be called the private collective—about which the public collective, thenation-state, is always suspicious. Any claim to act out minority culture inpublic is likely to produce great anxiety among the majority (hence thecontroversy in France over the wearing of Muslim head dress in stateschools). In principle, there is no coercion of individuals, but pressure toassimilate to the dominant nation, at least with regard to public practices,has been fairly common and, until recent times, fairly successful. When nine-teenth century German Jews described themselves as German in the street,Jewish at home, they were aspiring to a nation-state norm that made privacya condition of toleration.

The politics of language is the key area where this norm is enforced andchallenged. The majority insists that all minorities learn and use the lan-guage of the dominant nation, at least in their public transactions. Minor-ities, if they are strong enough, and especially if they are territorially based,will seek the legitimization of their own language in schools, state docu-ments, public signage, and so on. Sometimes, one of the minority languagesis recognized as a second official language; more often, the dominant nationwatches its own language being transformed by minority use (which is also,I suppose, a test of toleration).

There is less room for difference in nation-states than in multi-nationalempires or consociations. Since the tolerated members of the minority groupare also citizens, with rights and obligations, the practices of the group aremore likely than in multi-national empires to be subject to majority scrutiny(the suttee is imaginable only in a Hindu nation-state). Nonetheless, a varietyof differences, especially religious differences, have been successfully sus-tained in liberal and democratic nation-states. Minorities may, in fact, dofairly well in sustaining a common culture precisely because they are underpressure from the national majority. Individuals drift away, pass themselvesoff as members of the majority or slowly assimilate to majority life-styles.But for most people, these self-transformations are too difficult or too hu-miliating; they cling to their own identities and to similarly identified menand women.

National minorities are the groups most likely to find themselves at risk.If they are territorially concentrated, they will be suspected, perhaps rightly,of hoping for a state of their own or for incorporation into a neighbouring statewhere their ethnic relatives hold sovereign power. In time of war (whetherthey are territorially concentrated or not), their loyalty to the nation-statewill readily be called into doubt—even against all available evidence, as inthe case of German refugees in France during the first months of the SecondWorld War. Once again, toleration fails when minorities look, or when nation-alist demagogues can make them look, dangerous. The fate of the Japanese-Americans a few years later makes the same point—their fellow Americans

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imitating, as it were, conventional nation-statehood. In fact, the Japanesewere not, and are not, a national minority in the United States, at least not in the usual sense: Where is the majority nation? American majorities aretemporary in character, differently constituted for different purposes andoccasions, whereas a crucial feature of the nation-state is its permanentmajority. Toleration in nation-states has only one source, moves or does notmove in only one direction. The case of the United States suggests a verydifferent set of arrangements.

V.

The fourth model of co-existence and possible toleration is the immigrantsociety. Now the members of the different groups have left their territorialbase, their homeland, behind them, come individually or in families, one byone, to a new land and then dispersed across it. They cluster for comfort onlyin relatively small numbers, always intermixed with other, similar groups incities, states, and regions. Hence no sort of territorial autonomy is possible(Quebec is the crucial exception here—and another exception must be madefor conquered native peoples; I will focus primarily on the immigrants). Allethnic and religious groups have to sustain themselves as voluntary asso-ciations—which means that they are more at risk from the indifference oftheir own members than from the intolerance of the others. The state, once itis pried loose from the grip of the first immigrants (who imagined in everycase that they were forming a nation-state of their own), is committed tonone of the groups that make it up. It is, in the current phase, neutral amongthem, tolerant of all of them, autonomous in its purposes.

The state claims exclusive jurisdictional rights, regarding all its citizens asindividuals rather than as members of groups. Hence, the objects of tol-eration, strictly speaking, are individual choices, acts of adhesion, rituals ofmembership and worship, cultural expression, and so on. Individual menand women are encouraged to tolerate one another as individuals, differencebeing understood in each case as a personalized (rather than stereotypical)version of group culture—which also means that the members of each group,if they are to display the virtue of tolerance, must accept each other’s differ-ent versions. Everyone has to tolerate everyone else. No group is allowed toorganize itself coercively or to seize control of public space or to monopolizepublic resources. The public schools teach the history and “civics” or thestate, which is conceived to have no national but only a political identity. The history and culture of the different groups is either not taught at all or itis taught, as it were, in equal doses, “multi-culturally.” Similarly, the stateprovides no help to any group or it is equally supportive of all of them-encouraging, for example, a kind of general religiosity as in those subwayand bus advertisements of the 1950s that urged Americans to “Attend thechurch of your choice.”

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As this last maxim suggests, neutrality is always a matter of degree. Some groups are in fact favoured over others—in this case, groups with“churches.” But the others are still tolerated; nor is church attendance or anyother culturally specific practice turned into a condition of citizenship. It isrelatively easy, then, and not at all humiliating, to escape one’s own groupand take on the reigning political identity (“American”). But many people in an immigrant society prefer a hyphenated or dual identity, differentiatedalong cultural/political lines as in, say, Italian-American. The hyphen join-ing the two symbolizes the acceptance of “Italianness” by other Americans,the recognition that “American” is a political identity without particularcultural claims. The consequence, of course, is that “Italian” is a culturalidentity without political claims. That is the only form in which Italiannessis tolerated, and then it must sustain itself, if it can or as long as it can, pri-vately, through the voluntary efforts and contributions of committed Italians.And this is the case, in principle, with every cultural and religious group, notonly with minorities (but, again, there is no permanent majority).

Whether groups can sustain themselves under these conditions—withoutautonomy, without access to state power or official recognition, without aterritorial base or the fixed opposition of a permanent majority—is a questionstill to be answered. We might think of the toleration of individual choicesand personalized versions of culture and religion as the maximal (or the mostintensive) form of toleration, but whether its effect is to foster or dissolvegroup life is radically unclear. The fear that soon the only objects of tolerationwill be eccentric individuals leads some groups (or their most committedmembers) to seek some more positive support from the state. I have alreadyargued that support, in principle, can only be provided equally to every group.But the demand for quota systems and subsidies cannot be met equally; hardchoices would have to be made if policies like these were ever adopted.Toleration is, at least potentially, infinite in its extent; but the state can under-write group life only within some set of political and financial limits.

In fact, there are moral limits to toleration, too, perhaps of the same sort indomestic as in international society, ruling out intolerant and oppressivepractices in any of the constituent groups. But if the groups are voluntaryassociations, and if exit is a real possibility for their members, these limitswon’t usually require legal enforcement. In multi-national empires, conso-ciations, and nation-states, the limits are historically given, which is to say,worked out over long periods of time. Most of the groups that require tolera-tion have been around for centuries and have accommodated themselves atleast to the minimal norms of the majority. Only new groups will be closelyscrutinized. In immigrant societies, by contrast, limits are sure to be politicallycontested, for all the groups are in some sense new. Old country cultures arereconstituted among the immigrants, but rarely in a single version, and oneof the versions is likely to be especially dogmatic and intolerant—represent-ing a desperate effort to deny that immigration involves any cultural loss. At

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the same time, new doctrines proliferate and gather followers, who experi-ment with new ways of life. The practice of polygamy among AmericanMormons suggests the limits of toleration in such cases. But no one hasdefined these limits with any precision.

VI.

Let me summarize the argument so far by considering these four regimes interms of the power relations they involve. It is often said that toleration isnecessarily a relationship of inequality, where the tolerated groups or indi-viduals are cast in an inferior position. Therefore we should aim at some-thing better, beyond toleration, like mutual respect. Once we have mappedout the four regimes, however, the story looks more complicated: Mutualrespect is one of the forms toleration can take—the most attractive form,perhaps, but not necessarily the most stable.

In multi-national empires, power rests with the central bureaucrats. Allthe incorporated groups are, in principle at least, equally powerless, henceincapable of coercing or persecuting their neighbors. Any local attempt at co-ercion will produce an appeal to the center. So Greeks and Turks, for example,lived peacefully side by side under Ottoman rule. Were they mutually re-spectful? Some of them probably were; some were not. But the character oftheir relationship did not depend on their mutual respect; it depended on theirmutual subjection. Consociation, by contrast, requires mutual respect at leastamong the leaders of the different groups—for the groups must not only co-exist but negotiate among themselves the terms of their co-existence. Cyprus,before its partition into Greek and Turkish states, represents a failed example.

In nation-states, power rests with the majority nation, which uses the state,as we have seen, for its own purposes. This is no necessary bar to mutualityamong individuals, which is in fact likely to flourish in democratic states.But minority groups are unequal by virtue of their numbers and will bedemocratically over-ruled on most matters of public culture. The case is sim-ilar early on in the history of immigrant societies, when the first immigrantsaspired to nation-statehood. Successive waves of immigration produce whatis, in principle again, a neutral state, the democratic version of imperialbureaucracy. But this state addresses itself to individuals rather than groups,and so creates an open society in which everyone is required to tolerateeveryone else. The much heralded move “beyond toleration” is, presumably,now possible. As I have argued, however, it remains unclear how much ofgroup difference will remain to be respected, once this move is made.

VII.

I haven’t said anything yet about regimes of intolerance, which is what manyempires and nation-states actually are. These sometimes succeed in obliterating

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difference but sometimes (when they stop short of genocide and mass de-portation) serve in fact to reinforce it. They mark off the members of minor-ity groups, persecute them because of their membership, compel them to relyon one another, forge intense solidarities. Nonetheless, neither the leaders ofsuch groups nor their most committed members would choose a regime ofintolerance. Given the opportunity, they usually seek some form of collectivetoleration: a recognized place in domestic or international society with this orthat degree of self-rule—autonomy, consociation, or sovereign statehood.

We might think of collective toleration as the central project of moderndemocratic politics: To provide all the victims of intolerance, all the unrecog-nized, invisible, oppressed, and vulnerable groups with a voice, a place, anda politics of their own. For many people on the political left, this was oncethought to require a struggle for inclusion, on the model of the working classand socialist movements, storming and breaching the walls of the bourgeoiscity. But the groups with which I am concerned here require a struggle forboundaries. The crucial slogan of this struggle is “self-determination,” whichimplies the need for a piece of territory or, at least, a set of independentinstitutions—hence, decentralization, devolution, autonomy, partition, sover-eignty. Getting the boundaries right, not only in geographic but also in func-tional terms, is enormously difficult, but it is necessary if the differentgroups are to exercise significant control over their own lives and to do sowith some security.

The work goes on today, adapting the old imperial arrangements, extend-ing the modern international system, proliferating nation-states, self-governingregions, local authorities, and so on. Note what is being recognized andtolerated here: It is always groups and their members, men and women withsingular or primary identities, ethnic or religious. The work obviouslydepends upon the mobilization of these people, but it is only their leaderswho are actually engaged with one another, across boundaries, one on one(except when the engagement is military in nature). Autonomy confirmsthe authority of traditional elites; consociation is a kind of power-sharingarrangement among those same elites; nation-states interact through theirdiplomatic corps and political leaderships. For the mass of group members,toleration is maintained by separation, on the assumption that these peopleunderstand themselves as members and want to associate mostly with oneanother. “Good fences make good neighbors.”

The last of my toleration models, however, suggests a different patternand, perhaps, a post-modern project. In immigrant societies (and also nowin nation-states under immigrant pressure), people experience what wemight think of as a life without boundaries and without secure or singularidentities. Difference is, as it were, dispersed, so that it is encountered every-where, everyday. The hold of groups on their members is looser than it hasever been. And the result is a constant intermixing of individuals, intermar-riage, and a literal multi-culturalism, instantiated not only in the society as a

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whole but in each and every individual. Now tolerance begins at home,where we often have to make ethnic, religious, and cultural peace with ourspouses, in-laws, and children—and with our own ambiguous (hyphenatedor divided) selves. Religious fundamentalism must be understood in part asa rejection of any such peace, an attack on ambiguity.

The Bulgarian-French writer Julia Kristeva has been the most importanttheoretical defender of this post-modern project, urging us to recognize aworld of strangers, and acknowledge the stranger in ourselves. In addition to a psychological argument, which I must pass by here, she restates a veryold moral argument, whose first version is the biblical injunction: Do notoppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Kristevachanges the verb tense and the geography for the sake of a contemporaryreiteration: Do not oppress the stranger, for you are strangers in this veryland. Surely it is easier to tolerate otherness if we acknowledge the other inourselves. I doubt, however, that this acknowledgement is sufficient byitself or in a merely moral form. We do not live in the world of strangers all thetime; nor do we encounter each other’s strangeness only one on one, but also,still, collectively, in situations where morality must be seconded by politics.

It is not the case that the post-modern project simply supersedes modern-ism, as in some grand metanarrative of historical stages. The one is super-imposed on the other, without in any way obliterating it. There still areboundaries, but they are blurred by all the crossings. We still know ourselvesto be this or that, but the knowledge is uncertain, for we are also this andthat. Strong identity groups exist and assert themselves politically, but theallegiance of their members is measured by degrees, along a broad con-tinuum, with larger and larger numbers clustered at the farther end (whichis why the militants at the near end are so strident these days).

This dualism of the modern and the post-modern, which is probably notas straightforward as I have presented it, requires that difference be doublyaccommodated, first in its collective version and then in its dispersed anddivided version (or the other way around; I am not committed to a sequen-tial argument, though the order as I have just stated it is the more likely). Weneed to be tolerated and protected as members and also as strangers. Self-determination has to be both political and personal—the two are related, butthey are not the same. The old understanding of difference, which tiedindividuals to their autonomous or sovereign groups, will be resisted bydissident and ambivalent individuals. But any new understanding, focusedsolely on the dissidents, will be resisted by men and women struggling toenact, elaborate, revise, and pass on a common religious or cultural tradi-tion. So difference must be twice tolerated, with whatever mix—it doesn’thave to be the same mix in both cases—of resignation, indifference, curiosity,and enthusiasm.

Even those of us who are enthusiasts are bound to come up againstdifferences, cultural and personal, that give us trouble. For we do not want

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to tolerate hatred and cruelty; nor does our respect for difference extend to oppressive practices within groups (which were commonly tolerated byimperial bureaucrats). The more closely we live together, the more the limitsof toleration become everyday issues. And closeness is one of the aims of thepost-modern project. So the solid lines on the old cultural and political mapsare turned into dotted lines, but co-existence along and across those lines isstill a problem.

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