Search Results

Explores the main arguments in favour of group‐differentiated rights for ethnic groups and national minorities. In particular, it distinguishes between equality‐based arguments, which aim to show that the minority is facing some sort of unfair disadvantage that can be rectified by a group‐differentiated right, and various history‐based arguments, which aim to show that the minority has some historical claim to the group‐differentiated right, based on prior sovereignty, treaties, or some other historical agreement or precedent. It also considers arguments that appeal to the intrinsic value of cultural diversity, and how these relate to both the equality‐based and history‐based arguments.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Susan Okin, in her essay on group rights, gender, and realistic rights of exit, is mostly concerned, not with the oppression of traditional groups by the liberal state, but with the oppression of individuals, and especially of girls and women, by the traditional community. She is critical of those liberal theorists who argue that a right of exit is sufficient to qualify a cultural or religious group for special recognition in liberal societies, and to counter these views, she notes that the unequal treatment of girls and women can mean that even though they may have a formal right to exit a group, their actual opportunities for doing so are far less adequate than those of their male counterparts. She holds, then, that the right of exit is not sufficient and that the liberal state should have a higher requirement, namely, that girls and women should be treated fairly within the group and thus should be able to take advantage of any formal right of exit. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Section 12.1, Gender and Other Forms of Inequality in Group Rights Theories, shows, by looking at three examples of liberal defenders (as exemplified by Joseph Raz, William Galston, and Chandran Kukathas) of group rights, that they tend not to take gender inequality seriously when considering group rights and limitations; Section 12.2, Cultural Factors Affecting Women’s Realistic Rights of Exit, specifies and discusses a number of reasons that contribute to women being significantly less able than men, in many cultural contexts, to chart their own courses of life outside their community of origin; and Section 12.3. Rights of Exit and Realistic Rights of Exit for Women, concludes that the theories examined contain several problematic elements concerning rights of exit for women.

Cultural rights‐claims and policies of multicultural accommodation are not all of a piece; they are not all, e.g. ‘group rights’ in any meaningful sense. So‐called cultural rights can be disaggregated and clustered into: exemptions from generally applicable laws; special assistance to allow a minority to take part in the same activities as the majority; internal restrictions on what members of a community may do and still remain members; external restrictions on the activity of outsiders who might weaken a community; self‐government; the recognition and enforcement of customary law; and claims for symbolic recognition.

This chapter traces the development of the contemporary debate about minority group rights in political theory, and shows its lack of attention to solidarity. It (a) charts the bifurcation of the multiculturalism literature into two branches: one concerned with the justice of temporary group rights as compensation for historic racial injustice and another focused on permanent group rights for cultural minorities as enduring terms of fair coexistence; (b) analyzes the consequences of this split; and (c) argues that the two branches need to be reintegrated. Drawing on examples from Latin America—where indigenous peoples suffer from racial discrimination and racialized groups make claims relating to language, culture, and territory—it shows that the artificial theoretical division between race and culture in theories of multiculturalism can be misleading, and suggests that as a result of this bifurcation neither strand has sufficiently considered the potential effects of minority group rights on political solidarity.

This chapter argues that taking racialized solidarity into account in theories of multiculturalism requires that existing normative justifications of minority group rights be reframed in order to make whiteness visible. This entails focusing arguments for such rights on the need to reverse past and continuing disadvantages suffered by subordinated groups as a result of either cultural difference and/or racial hierarchy, thereby reintegrating the two branches of the multiculturalism literature. This would bring questions of collective injustice to the forefront of debates about minority group rights, which are one of the few instances where the content of the political community's public memory is challenged and the differences between the ethical-political perspectives of dominant and subordinated groups are confronted. Through such processes of contestation the ethical-political perspectives of dominant groups might be transformed, thereby leading to the development of greater political will to achieve racial justice.

What is the effect of the institutional design of minority group rights on political solidarity? Can debates about such rights begin to address racialized solidarity? This chapter examines these questions more concretely by analyzing the model of multiculturalism adopted in Nicaragua, where multiple indigenous and Afro-descendant groups requiring remedies for both racialized oppression and the accommodation of cultural difference are present (as in Latin America generally). The Nicaraguan case is analyzed in order to evaluate the kinds of minority group rights that might best enable the fair accommodation of ethnocultural diversity, remedy racialized oppression, and foster political solidarity. It suggests that debates about such rights can begin to address racialized solidarity by ushering in contestation about the content of public memory, but only if and when arguments for these rights reveal the existence of a state organized on the basis of cultural difference and racial hierarchy.

Addresses issues of political representation, particularly, proposals to guarantee seats in the central legislature for members of certain ethnic or national minority groups. It discusses some of the practical and theoretical difficulties raised by such proposals, and considers alternative ways of ensuring a voice for minorities in political decision‐making. It also discusses the tension between self‐government rights (demanding that power be delegated from central government to the minority community) and representative rights (demanding guaranteed representation for the community within central government).

The principle of nationality defended in this book is contrasted with conservative nationalism on one side and radical multiculturalism on the other. Conservative nationalists treat national identities as rigid and authoritative, and therefore resist the changes in identity that immigration, for example, requires. Radical multiculturalists support the political expression of group identity, but fail to see how a secure sense of national identity can benefit minority groups. It is a defensible aim of public policy to integrate groups into such an identity, in particular, through the education system. Cultural minorities can legitimately demand equal treatment, but special rights for such groups are in general unjustified.

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. In the last chapter, on liberalism and group rights, according to Stephen Macedo, while the commitment of liberalism to individual freedom and equality is far more easily reconciled with group-based remedies for group-based inequalities than the critics of liberalism allow, the liberal commitment to freedom of association imposes limits on group recognition by insisting on intragroup openness and diversity. The chapter has two main parts. Section 15.1, Liberalism, Education, and Group Identities, rebuts the charge that a liberal public philosophy embraces a narrow individualism that is incompatible with tackling group-based forms of inequality, and surveys some of the myriad liberal reforms of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that promoted more equal respect for differing group identities, especially in schools. Section 15.2, Special Exemptions and the Rights of Traditional Communities, focuses on the difficulties raised by “traditionalistic” groups that seek special accommodations in part because they reject liberal values of equal freedom for all, and makes the point that a liberal regime should not seek to be equally hospitable or accommodating to groups that accept and those that reject educational policies designed to promote the equal freedom of all persons; various examples are presented and discussed.

This paper presents some criticisms against Kymlicka’s ideas on ‘ethnocultural justice’. It argues that many of Kymlicka’s suggestions do not apply to the realities of the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia. It identifies fundamental problems to Kymlicka’s approach: that his basic assumptions are arbitrary and disputable, the internal logic seems contradictory, potential gains are overestimated, and some potentially undesirable effects are not considered.

This chapter analyses whether political groups merit equal treatment to the four groups enumerated in the Genocide Convention. It first discusses what human ‘groups’ really are and the inherent difficulties of defining them for legal and social purposes. It details the linkages and interactions between international law and broader understandings of human groups as social collectives. It then proposes a new theoretical understanding of genocide as a rights-based offence. This theory links the legal protection of groups to certain individual rights of a collective nature that give rise to the group's existence in this context. This sets the stage for the subsequent analysis demonstrating that political collectives have many similar characteristics to the existing four groups, such that they likewise deserve specific protection from physical and biological destruction ‘as such’ through a separate crime of political genocide.

This chapter outlines and analyses the main human rights and minority rights instruments that have been adopted by a range of international and regional organizations; presents an overview of monitoring procedures and institutions concerned with minority rights; and identifies some never-ending problems such as the definition of the term ‘minority’ and the question of individual and group rights. It argues that current international activities relating to minority rights are characterized by scattered standards and weak institutions, and demonstrates the reluctance of governments in this field. The only notable international institutional trends concern the case-law of two treaty bodies and the dialogue functions of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities.

This chapter discusses group rights. It considers the good-based argument and justice-based argument for group rights. The first argument is unsuccessful while the second succeeds as an argument, but that it is not an argument for group rights. Many supposed group rights are also best not seen as rights at all, and some others can be reduced to individual rights. Two possibilities are discussed: exclusion and reduction.

This chapter takes up the question of group rights, which is one of the four areas of contemporary international controversy over internationally recognized human rights. The concept of human rights challenges the ideal of community that sees individuals, rights, and other social options as defined by group membership. Secularism sees society as transcending community in the way the universal transcends the particular. Although community has imperceptible historical roots extending back to antiquity, it is not a rational construct. The essential feature of communities is that one's presence in them is not a matter of choice; that is, one does not decide at a particular time to join such a community, even hypothetically. Human relationships in such communities are constituted more along the lines of status than contract, status inevitably being a matter of kinship. Societies, in contrast, are rational constructs that transcend the particularistic dimension of communities constituted by revelation. Subordination of community to society has been regarded as an indispensable facet of democratic governance, which is based on inclusive and equal membership of all citizens regardless of their religious affiliation in their respective faith communities. This sociological distinction between a community and a society does not fully resonate with the Islamic paradigm of a religious‐political society with a cosmic dimension that can be contrasted and compared with the secular model on the one hand, and the traditional religious community on the other. The essential feature of Muslim community is that although it is based on religious affiliation derived from revelation, it functions as a comprehensive political society, presupposing the natural and legally constructed entitlements of those who live under its domination. Such a view is in direct conflict with the human rights norms that attach fundamentality to individual existence without any reference to extraneous conditions.

The central aims of the book—to show that racialized solidarity poses a significant obstacle to racial justice, and to consider how theories of multiculturalism might incorporate the promotion of political solidarity (both between disadvantaged groups, and between subordinated groups and dominant groups) into their conceptual apparatus—are discussed. The principal contributions of the book are noted, including (a) developing the concept of racialized solidarity, (b) bringing together African American political philosophy, theories of multiculturalism, and the literature on solidarity in political theory in order to develop a distinctive approach to the problem of racial justice, and (c) bringing Latin American experiences with multiculturalism to the forefront of debates about minority group rights in political theory.

This chapter suggests that a nuanced account of early Enlightenment natural law theory may have something to offer modern debates that swing between a liberal emphasis on individual rights and a communitarian emphasis upon group rights. An examination of Pufendorf's work reveals that his natural law theory embraces two connected ways of thinking about toleration. One the one hand, his theory underpins the power of the magistrate to tolerate pragmatically for reasons of state. On the other, his account of natural religion defines a sphere that cannot be invaded legitimately by the state. Pufendorf's distinction between churches (as voluntary associations) and states (as guarantors of individual rights) offers resources for rethinking contemporary discussions that struggle to balance claims by religious communities to maintain their identities with the claims of their vulnerable members not to be oppressed.

This chapter proposes that rights are best seen as a complex amalgam comprising a claim of entitlement to an end-state necessary to protect an interest which has sufficient weight to activate action to achieve it. A distinction is drawn between a strong and weak sense of rights. Examples are given of the assertion of rights claims through political and judicial processes. Particular attention is given to the nature of human rights and children's rights, and their place in personal law. The role of judicially protected rights within democracies is defended. It is argued that cultural rights should not be seen as the rights of groups to control members of the group, but of members of the group to choose to follow practices they see important to their identity. This should be respected as an aspect of the privileged sphere subject to observation of the pre-requisites of an open society.