Bassam Tibi's Definition
Bassam Tibi first suggested a 'Leitkultur' in his 1998 book Europa ohne Identität ('Europe without identity'). He defined it in terms of what are commonly called western values, and spoke of an European rather than a German 'Leitkultur'. "The values needed for a core culture are those of modernity: democracy, secularism, the Enlightenment, human rights and civil society." (B. Tibi, Europa ohne Identität, p. 154). These core values are similar to those of the 'liberal-democratic basic order' (Freiheitlich-demokratische Grundordnung) which is considered the foundational value of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany, and the unified German state after 1990. Tibi advocated a cultural pluralism based on a value consensus, rather than monoculturalism. However, he also opposed a value-blind multiculturalism, and the development of parallel societies where immigrant minorities live and work, isolated from the western society around them. Tibi advocated a structured immigration policy, and opposed illegal immigration into Germany.
Read more about this topic: Leitkultur
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Beauty, like all other qualities presented to human experience, is relative; and the definition of it becomes unmeaning and useless in proportion to its abstractness. To define beauty not in the most abstract, but in the most concrete terms possible, not to find a universal formula for it, but the formula which expresses most adequately this or that special manifestation of it, is the aim of the true student of aesthetics.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)