Multiculturalism as a public policy and philosophy has become increasingly controversial in many democracies over the last decade. While the specific issues can vary across national contexts, a common anxiety is that multiculturalism sanctions minority practices that conflict with prevailing social values or legal norms. Central to this concern is the value liberal societies place on the autonomy of the individual. Many of our most charged public controversies involve a perception that certain minority practices jeopardize the autonomy of their individual (...) members and, especially, their women and children. Just as the value of autonomy is central to these disputes, so the idea of 'authenticity' is often pivotal to the understanding of autonomy in such cases. The autonomous individual acts on reasons that are truly his or her own. But the issue of authenticity also arises in claims for cultural recognition regarding whether a particular minority practice is a genuine or authoritative expression of that minority's culture. Geoffrey Brahm Levey and his distinguished group of philosophers, political theorists, and anthropologists critically explore these twin notions of 'authenticity' – of autonomous persons and of cultures – in our multiculturalism debates. Discussing a wide range of illustrative cases and controversies drawn from Britain and continental Europe, North America, Australia, and the Middle East, they address various issues raised by the complex interactions between authenticity, autonomy, and the accommodation of minority cultural practices. Moving beyond theoretical discussion to consider the practical and policy implications, Autonomy, Authenticity and Multiculturalism challenges and complicates conventional assumptions about authenticity that inform liberal responses to minority cultural claims in Western democracies today. A helpful resource to scholars worldwide in Political and Social Theory, Political Philosophy, Legal Anthropology, Multiculturalism, and, more generally, of cultural identity and diversity in liberal democracies today. (shrink)

Book Information Culture and Equality. Culture and Equality Brian Barry , Cambridge: Polity Press , 2001 , xi + 399 , US$19.95 ( paper ) By Brian Barry. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pp. xi + 399. US$19.95 (paper:).

The dissertation explores the implications of the liberal value of individual autonomy for the rights of cultural minorities in liberal societies. Liberals traditionally have assumed that respect for autonomy precludes the political recognition of citizens' cultural identities. But in recent years a number of self-styled "liberal nationalists" have argued that honoring the value of autonomy actually entitles cultural minorities and their members to a plethora of cultural rights, including political autonomy, minority jurisdiction over land and language, the public subsidization of (...) ethnic festivals, the symbolic recognition of ethnic and religious groups, and even a right to national self-determination. I argue that both the "liberal neutralist" and the "liberal nationalist" accounts of what individual autonomy stands for are mistaken. I present an alternative way of viewing the connection between the value of individual autonomy and claims for cultural recognition, one that preserves the primacy and inherent complexity of this central liberal value. Rightly understood, liberal autonomy supports the political recognition of cultural identity in principle and in a wide range of cases, but the principle and the cases fall well short of the extravagant claims recently made in its name. My analysis suggests that the principle of liberal autonomy sustains a civil right to cultural expression in the manner of classical civil rights, an approach that many liberal democracies implicitly have been moving toward in recent years. (shrink)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between its appeals (...) to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism. (shrink)

A standard problem in empirical inquiry is how to adjudicate between contending theories when they work from different fundamental assumptions. In the field of political sociology, several strategies are adopted, from metatheoretical and comparative historical approaches to the recent formal models of scientific growth proposed by Imre Lakatos and Larry Laudan. After considering the limitations of these approaches, I develop an alternative strategy—"second—order empiricism"—based on the idea that successor theories have an onus to explain the apparent success of their rivals, (...) not only their own and their rivals' anomalies. Such a strategy, I argue, underscores some of the most effective analysis and argument in political sociology, yet is obscured by the appeal to other methodologies. (shrink)