Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism

Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism
Author: Sarah Song
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2007-08-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139466658

Justice, Gender and the Politics of Multiculturalism explores the tensions that arise when culturally diverse democratic states pursue both justice for religious and cultural minorities and justice for women. Sarah Song provides a distinctive argument about the circumstances under which egalitarian justice requires special accommodations for cultural minorities while emphasizing the value of gender equality as an important limit on cultural accommodation. Drawing on detailed case studies of gendered cultural conflicts, including conflicts over the 'cultural defense' in criminal law, aboriginal membership rules and polygamy, Song offers a fresh perspective on multicultural politics by examining the role of intercultural interactions in shaping such conflicts. In particular, she demonstrates the different ways that majority institutions have reinforced gender inequality in minority communities and, in light of this, argues in favour of resolving gendered cultural dilemmas through intercultural democratic dialogue.

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States
Author: Associate Professor of Political Science Monique Deveaux
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2006-11-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199289794

This book offers a persuasive new argument for reconciling the tensions that arise when liberal democratic states try to protect two important kinds of equality: sexual equality and cultural equality.

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States
Author: Monique Deveaux
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2006-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191537284

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States explores the challenges that culturally plural liberal states face when they hold competing political commitments to cultural rights and sexual equality, and advances an argument for resolving such dilemmas through democratic dialogue and negotiation. Exploring recent examples of gendered cultural conflicts in South Africa, Canada, and Britain, this book shows that there is an urgent need for workable strategies to mediate the antagonisms between the cultural practices and arrangements of certain ethno-cultural and religious groups and the norms and constitutional rights endorsed by liberal states. Yet such strategies will be successful only insofar as they can resolve conflicts without either reinforcing women's subordination within cultural communities or unjustly dismissing calls for cultural recognition and forms of self-governance. To this end, the book develops an approach to mediating cultural tensions that takes seriously the demands of justice by cultural and religious minorities in liberal democratic states. Grounded in an argument for democratic legitimacy, this approach invokes norms of political inclusion and democratic dialogue, and highlights negotiation and compromise as the best vehicles for arriving at resolutions to conflicts of cultural value. However, it also reconceives the basis of democratic legitimacy so as to include not merely formal expressions of political consent, but also a range of non-formal democratic activity that occur in the private and social spheres, from acts of cultural reinvention and subversion to outright expressions of dissent and cultural refusal.

Sex, Culture, and Justice

Sex, Culture, and Justice
Author: Clare Chambers
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2010-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271045949

Autonomy is fundamental to liberalism. But autonomous individuals often choose to do things that harm themselves or undermine their equality. In particular, women often choose to participate in practices of sexual inequality&—cosmetic surgery, gendered patterns of work and childcare, makeup, restrictive clothing, or the sexual subordination required by membership in certain religious groups. In this book, Clare Chambers argues that this predicament poses a fundamental challenge to many existing liberal and multicultural theories that dominate contemporary political philosophy. Chambers argues that a theory of justice cannot ignore the influence of culture and the role it plays in shaping choices. If cultures shape choices, it is problematic to use those choices as the measure of the justice of the culture. Drawing upon feminist critiques of gender inequality and poststructuralist theories of social construction, she argues that we should accept some of the multicultural claims about the importance of culture in shaping our actions and identities, but that we should reach the opposite normative conclusion to that of multiculturalists and many liberals. Rather than using the idea of social construction to justify cultural respect or protection, we should use it to ground a critical stance toward cultural norms. The book presents radical proposals for state action to promote sexual and cultural justice.

Sexual Justice

Sexual Justice
Author: Morris B. Kaplan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136039104

Sexual Justice defends a robust a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights, emphasizing protection against discrimination and recognition of queer relationships and families. Synthesizing materials from law, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, Kaplan argues that sexual desire is central to the pursuit of happiness: equal citizenship requires individual freedom to shape oneself through a variety of intimate associations.

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?
Author: Susan Moller Okin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 1999-08-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1400840996

Polygamy, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, punishing women for being raped, differential access for men and women to health care and education, unequal rights of ownership, assembly, and political participation, unequal vulnerability to violence. These practices and conditions are standard in some parts of the world. Do demands for multiculturalism--and certain minority group rights in particular--make them more likely to continue and to spread to liberal democracies? Are there fundamental conflicts between our commitment to gender equity and our increasing desire to respect the customs of minority cultures or religions? In this book, the eminent feminist Susan Moller Okin and fifteen of the world's leading thinkers about feminism and multiculturalism explore these unsettling questions in a provocative, passionate, and illuminating debate. Okin opens by arguing that some group rights can, in fact, endanger women. She points, for example, to the French government's giving thousands of male immigrants special permission to bring multiple wives into the country, despite French laws against polygamy and the wives' own bitter opposition to the practice. Okin argues that if we agree that women should not be disadvantaged because of their sex, we should not accept group rights that permit oppressive practices on the grounds that they are fundamental to minority cultures whose existence may otherwise be threatened. In reply, some respondents reject Okin's position outright, contending that her views are rooted in a moral universalism that is blind to cultural difference. Others quarrel with Okin's focus on gender, or argue that we should be careful about which group rights we permit, but not reject the category of group rights altogether. Okin concludes with a rebuttal, clarifying, adjusting, and extending her original position. These incisive and accessible essays--expanded from their original publication in Boston Review and including four new contributions--are indispensable reading for anyone interested in one of the most contentious social and political issues today. The diverse contributors, in addition to Okin, are Azizah al-Hibri, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Homi Bhabha, Sander Gilman, Janet Halley, Bonnie Honig, Will Kymlicka, Martha Nussbaum, Bhikhu Parekh, Katha Pollitt, Robert Post, Joseph Raz, Saskia Sassen, Cass Sunstein, and Yael Tamir.

Multicultural Jurisdictions

Multicultural Jurisdictions
Author: Ayelet Shachar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2001-09-06
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521776745

Outline of the book

Multicultural Citizenship

Multicultural Citizenship
Author: Will Kymlicka
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 1996-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191622451

The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of `collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individual freedom, social justice, and national unity, can be answered. However, Professor Kymlicka emphasises that no single formula can be applied to all groups and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. The book discusses issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession - issues which are central to understanding multicultural politics, but which have been surprisingly neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Toward a Humanist Justice

Toward a Humanist Justice
Author: Debra Satz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2009-06-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019045072X

The late Susan Moller Okin was a leading political theorist whose scholarship integrated political philosophy and issues of gender, the family, and culture. Okin argued that liberalism, properly understood as a theory opposed to social hierarchies and supportive of individual freedom and equality, provided the tools for criticizing the substantial and systematic inequalities between men and women. Her thought was deeply informed by a feminist view that theories of justice must apply equally to women as men, and she was deeply engaged in showing how many past and present political theories failed to do this. She sought to rehabilitate political theories--particularly that of liberal egalitarianism, in such a way as to accommodate the equality of the sexes, and with an eye toward improving the condition of women and families in a world of massive gender inequalities. In her lifetime Okin was widely respected as a scholar whose engagement went well beyond the world of theory, and her premature death in 2004 was considered by many a major blow to progressive political thought and women's interests around the world. This volume stems from a conference on Okin, and contains articles by some of the top feminist and political philosophers working today. They are organized around a set of themes central to Okin's work, namely liberal theory, gender and the family, feminist and cultural differences, and global justice. Included are major figures such as Joshua Cohen, David Miller, Cass Sunstein, Alison Jaggar, and Iris Marion Young, among others. Their aim is not to celebrate Okin's work, but to constructively engage with it and further its goals.

Culture and Equality

Culture and Equality
Author: Brian Barry
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 606
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745665640

All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by a common framework of laws. This solution is rejected by an influential school of political theorists, among whom some of the best known are William Galston, Will Kymlicka, Bhikhu Parekh, Charles Taylor and Iris Marion Young. According to them, this 'difference-blind' conception of liberal equality fails to deliver either liberty or equal treatment. In its place, they propose that the state should 'recognize' group identities, by granting groups exemptions from certain laws, publicly 'affirming' their value, and by providing them with special privileges or subsidies. In Culture and Equality, Barry offers an incisive critique of these arguments and suggests that theorists of multiculturism tend to misdiagnose the problems of minority groups. Often, these are not rooted in culture, and multiculturalist policies may actually stand in the way of universalistic measures that would be genuinely beneficial.