For them, citizenship is by definition a matter of treating people as individuals with equal rights under the law. This is what distinguishes democratic citizenship from feudal and other pre-modern views that determined people's political status by ...

For many people "animal rights" suggests campaigns against factory farms, vivisection or other aspects of our woeful treatment of animals. Zoopolis moves beyond this familiar terrain, focusing not on what we must stop doing to animals, but on how we can establish positive and just relationships with different types of animals.

in a very different sense, to refer to the cultural community, or cultural structure, itself On this view, the cultural community continues to exist even when its members arc free to modify the character of the culture, should they find its traditional ...

This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last eleven years, particularly the new debates over issues of democratic citizenship and cultural pluralism. The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multiculturalism, in addition to updated chapters on utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, socialism, communitarianism, and feminism. The many thinkers discussed include G. A. Cohen, (...) Ronald Dworkin, William Galston, Carol Gilligan, R. M. Hare, Chandran Kukathas, Catherine Mackinnon, David Miller, Philippe Van Parijs, Susan Okin, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, John Roemer, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, Michael Walzer, and Iris Young. Extended guides to further reading have been added at the end of each chapter, listing the most important books and articles on each school of thought, as well as relevant journals and websites. Covering some of the most advanced contemporary thinking, Will Kymlicka writes in an engaging, accessible, and non-technical way to ensure that the book is suitable for students approaching these difficult concepts for the first time. This second edition promises to build on the original edition's success as a key text in the teaching of modern political theory. (shrink)

This article surveys recent work on the idea of "citizenship", not as a legal category, but as a normative ideal of membership and participation. We focus on two emerging issues. First, whereas traditional notions of citizenship assume that membership and participation are promoted by the possession of rights, many theorists now emphasize civic responsibilities. Second, whereas traditional theories assume that citizenship provides a common status and identity, some theorists now argue that the distinctive needs and identities of certain groups -such (...) as women, ethnic minorities, the disabled - can only be accommodated through "group-differentiated citizenship". The writings of neo-conservatives, participatory democrats, civic republicans, feminists, civil society theorists, virtue theorists and cultural pluralists are surveyed. (shrink)

Using an innovative blend of political theory, international law, and studies on the sociological and geo-political foundations of minority rights, this landmark publication will set the debate on the likely future of the international politics of diversity.

This book examines the politics of diversity, and explores potential sources of support for an inclusive solidarity, in particular political sources of solidarity.

Early defenders of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights invoked species hierarchy: human beings are owed rights because of our discontinuity with and superiority to animals. Subsequent defenders avoided species supremacism, appealing instead to conditions of embodied subjectivity and corporeal vulnerability we share with animals. In the past decade, however, supremacism has returned in work of the new ‘dignitarians’ who argue that human rights are grounded in dignity, and that human dignity requires according humans a higher status than animals. Against (...) the dignitarians, I argue that defending human rights on the backs of animals is philosophically suspect and politically self-defeating. (shrink)

In December 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in the New York State Supreme Court on behalf of Tommy, a chimpanzee living alone in a cage in a shed in rural New York (Barlow, 2017). Under animal welfare laws, Tommy’s owners, the Laverys, were doing nothing illegal by keeping him in those conditions. Nonetheless, the NhRP argued that given the cognitive, social, and emotional capacities of chimpanzees, Tommy’s confinement constituted (...) a profound wrong that demanded remedy by the courts. Soon thereafter, the NhRP filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of Kiko, another chimpanzee housed alone in Niagara Falls, and Hercules and Leo, two chimpanzees held in research facilities at Stony Brook University. Thus began the legal struggle to move these chimpanzees from captivity to a sanctuary, an effort that has led the NhRP to argue in multiple courts before multiple judges. The central point of contention has been whether Tommy, Kiko, Hercules, and Leo have legal rights. To date, no judge has been willing to issue a writ of habeas corpus on their behalf. Such a ruling would mean that these chimpanzees have rights that confinement might violate. Instead, the judges have argued that chimpanzees cannot be bearers of legal rights because they are not, and cannot be persons. In this book we argue that chimpanzees are persons because they are autonomous. (shrink)

It is a commonplace amongst communitarians, socialists and feminists alike that liberalism is to be rejected for its excessive ‘individualism’ or ‘atomism,’ for ignoring the manifest ways in which we are ‘embedded’ or ‘situated’ in various social roles and communal relationships. The effect of these theoretical flaws is that liberalism, in a misguided attempt to protect and promote the dignity and autonomy of the individual, has undermined the associations and communities which alone can nurture human flourishing.My plan is to examine (...) the resources available to liberalism to meet these objections. My primary concern is with what liberals can say in response, not with what particular liberals actually have said in the past. Still, as a way of acknowledging intellectual debts, if nothing else, I hope to show how my arguments are related to the political morality of modem liberals from J.S. Mill through to Rawls and Dworkin. The term ‘liberal’ has been applied to many different theories in many different fields, but I’m using it in this fairly restricted sense. First, I’m dealing with a political morality, a set of moral arguments about the justification of political action and political institutions. Second, my concern is with this modem liberalism, not seventeenth-century liberalism, and I want to leave entirely open what the relationship is between the two. It might be that the developments initiated by the ‘new liberals’ are really an abandonment of what was definitive of classical liberalism. G.A. Cohen, for example, says that since they rejected the principle of ‘self-ownership’ which was definitive of classical liberalism, these new liberals should instead be called ‘social democrats.’My concern is to defend their political morality, whatever the proper label. (shrink)

While animal rights have been a central topic within moral philosophy since the 1970s, it has remained virtually invisible within political philosophy. This article explores two key reasons for the difficulties in locating animals within political philosophy. First, even if animals are seen as having intrinsic moral status, they are often seen as ultimately distant others or strangers, beyond the bounds of human society. Insofar as political philosophy focuses on the governing of a shared social life, animals are seen as (...) falling outside its remit. Second, even if animals are recognized as members of society, they are seen as lacking the capacities or competences said to be essential for politics, and for membership in the demos. We challenge both assumptions. Many animals live and work alongside us, within an interspecies society, and all members of society should have the right to shape decisions about how that society is governed. An interspecies society requires interspecies politics. (shrink)

This volume provides an up-to-date overview of the emerging debates over the role of language rights and linguistic diversity within political theory. Thirteen chapters, written by many of the leading theorists in the field, identify the challenges and opportunities that linguistic diversity raises for contemporary societies.

Does the increasing politicization of ethnic and racial diversity of Western societies threaten to undermine the welfare state? This volume is the first systematic attempt to explore this linkage between "the politics of recognition" and "the politics of redistribution".

Sullivan and Kymlicka seek to provide an alternative to post-9/11 pessimism about the ability of serious ethical dialogue to resolve disagreements and conflict across national, religious, and cultural differences. It begins by acknowledging the gravity of the problem: on our tightly interconnected planet, entire populations look for moral guidance to a variety of religious and cultural traditions, and these often stiffen, rather than soften, opposing moral perceptions. How, then, to set minimal standards for the treatment of persons while developing moral (...) bases for coexistence and cooperation across different ethical traditions? The Globalization of Ethics argues for a tempered optimism in approaching these questions. Its distinguished contributors report on some of the most globally influential traditions of ethical thought in order to identify the resources within each tradition for working toward consensus and accommodation among the ethical traditions that shape the contemporary world. (shrink)

This article gives a review of the welfare state and analyzes whether it is being undermined by the impact of increasing ethnic and racial diversity.

In his most recent work, John Rawls argues that political theory must recognize and accomodate the 'fact of pluralism', including the fact of religious diversity. He believes that the liberal commitment to individual rights provides the only feasible model for accomodating religious pluralism. In this paper, I discuss a second form of tolerance, based on group rights rather than individual rights. Drawing on historical examples, I argue that this is also a feasable model for accomodating religious pluralism. While both models (...) ensure tolerance between groups, only the former tolerates individual dissent within groups. To defend the individual rights model, therefore, liberals must appeal not only to the fact of social pluralism, but also to the value of individual autonomy. This may require abandoning Rawl's belief that liberalism can and should be defended on purely 'political', rather than 'comprehensive' grounds. (shrink)

Drawing on both theoretical debates and case studies from around the world, this book explores how the politics of reconciliation relates to various models of democratic citizenship.

Canadians take pride in being good citizens of the world, yet our failure to meet global commitments raises questions. Do Canadians need to transcend national loyalties to become full global citizens? Is the idea of rooted cosmopolitanism simply a myth that encourages complacency about Canada's place in the world? This volume assesses rooted cosmopolitanism both in theory and practice. By exploring how Canadians are accommodating "the world" in areas such as multiculturalism, climate change, and humanitarian intervention, the contributors test the (...) possibility of reconciling national allegiances with commitments to human rights, global justice, and international law. (shrink)

In his impressive and wide?ranging new book, Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor argues that modern moral philosophy, at least within the Anglo?American tradition, . offers a ?cramped? view of morality. Taylor attributes this problem to three distinctive features of contemporary moral theory ? its commitment to procedural rather than substantive rationality, its preference for basic reasons rather than qualitative distinctions, and its belief in the priority of the right over the good. According to Taylor, the result of these features (...) is that contemporary moral theories cannot explain the nature of a worthwhile life, or the grounds for moral respect. Indeed, they render these questions unintelligible. I argue that Taylor has misunderstood the basic structure of most modern moral theory, which seeks to relocate, rather than suppress, these important questions. In particular, he fails to note the difference between general and specific conceptions of the good, between procedures for assessing the good and specific outcomes of that procedure, and between society's enforcement of morality and an individual's voluntary compliance with morality. Each of these distinctions plays an important role in contemporary moral theory. Once they are made explicit, it is clear that many contemporary theorists operate with a more sophisticated account of moral sources than Taylor attributes to them. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible with Happy’s personhood.

Many post-communist countries in Central/Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are being encouraged and indeed pressured by Western countries to improve their treatment of ethnic and national minorities, and to adopt Western models of minority rights. But what are these Western models, and will they work in Eastern Europe? In the first half of this volume, Will Kymlicka describes a model of 'liberal pluralism' which has gradually emerged in most Western democracies, and discusses what would be involved in adopting (...) it in Eastern Europe. This is followed by 15 commentaries from people actively involved in minority rights issues in the region, as practitioners or academics, and by Kymlicka's reply. This volume will be of interest to anyone concerned with ethnic conflict in Eastern Europe, and with the more general question of whether Western liberal values can or should be promoted in the rest of the world. (shrink)

This volume assembles a group of leading regional experts to formulate the first rigorous and comprehensive consideration of multiculturalism debates in South and East Asia. Through close examination of pre-colonial traditions, colonial legacies, and post-colonial ideologies, this volume sheds new light on religious and ethnic conflict in the area, and presents a ground-breaking assessment of what role - if any - the international community should play in promoting multiculturalism.

This text considers how a host of ethical traditions define civil society.

Although Roberto Unger is sometimes described as a communitarian critic of liberalism, his recent three?volume work on Politics disavows the major tenets of contemporary communitarianism?for example, the?embedded self,? the critique of rights, the rejection of universalizing theory. Instead, Unger's aim is to criticize liberalism from the perspective of a?superliberalism"?a perspective which takes the original liberal desire to emancipate individuals from the chains of social custom and hierarchy and rids it of the stultifying economic and political institutions within which liberals have (...) sought to contain it. Three main components of Unger's theory are analyzed: the idea of?negative capability,? or the power of individuals to revise and transcend their social contexts; the idea of an?empowered democracy,? which seeks to open up all aspects of society to the collective exercise of negative capability; and the idea of?immunity rights,? which seek to protect individuals from the potential risks of radical democracy. I argue that all three underestimate the risks to individual liberty of the over?politicization of social life. (shrink)

It is increasingly acknowledged that animals have an intrinsic moral status, in part due to the influential work of many moral philosophers. However, surprisingly little has been written by philosophers on whether animals are owed social membership and the rights that attach to membership in society. In this paper, I explore why the idea of social membership matters, particularly in relation to domesticated animals, and how it can guide legal and political reforms. Focusing on social membership identifies neglected avenues for (...) transformative change, and offers new ways of challenging the deeply-embedded ‘human use typologies' that currently govern our relations to domesticated animals. It also raises fascinating philosophical questions about the definition of ‘society' and the role of an ethics of membership. Ultimately, we will need to develop a new philosophy of interspecies society. (shrink)

Western democracies have developed a number of effective models for accommodating ethnocultural diversity. One of these involves the use of federal or quasi-federal forms of territorial autonomy to enable self-government for national minorities and indigenous peoples. These forms of territorial autonomy are in general a success. The merits of these models have been underestimated because many people measure success by an inappropriate criterion: namely, the absence of secessionist mobilization. This cannot be the correct standard for evaluating democratic multination states. The (...) success of a common Western approach to territorial autonomy is related, in a complex way, to a particular view about the legitimacy and perhaps even inevitability of secessionist mobilization. (shrink)

The Politics of Belonging represents an innovative collaboration between political theorists and political scientists for the purposes of investigating the liberal and pluralistic traditions of nationalism. Alain Dieckhoff introduces an indispensable collection of work for anyone dealing with questions of identity, ethnicity, and nationalism.