Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take Paul (...) Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

In her book, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Saba Mahmood analyzes the practices of the women in the mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt. Mahmood argues that in order to recognize the participants as agents, we need to question the assumption that agency entails resistance to norms; moreover, we need to question the feminist allegiance to an unquestioned ideal of freedom. In this paper, I argue that rather than giving up the ideal of freedom, we can (...) explore the possibility that there are different conceptions of freedom, and that the agency of the women in the mosque movement can be understood through a conception of freedom as a practice of connection, or belonging. I develop this alternative paradigm through discussions of four conceptions of freedom: Foucault's theory of agency as self-creation, positive freedom, communitarian freedom, and freedom as resistance. (shrink)

The mass popular dissent which has marked the early twenty-first century, from al-Qaeda to the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, can be read as expressions of collective, subjective, existential mutation. This reading is inspired by Félix Guattari, who described the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Polish Solidarity movement and the 1989 Chinese student demonstrations as demands for subjective singularisation. In each of these examples of social discontent, past and present, demands vary widely even within the same movement, spanning economics, lifestyle, (...) religion and politics, and ranging from cries for liberation to conservative returns to ancient tradition. In order to perform a schizoanalysis of such amorphous movements, Guattari developed a four-part ecosophic object, composed of existential Territories, Universes of value, material-energetic Flows and machinic Phyla. Assemblages can be dynamically mapped along these four dimensions. Of crucial importance in the age of extreme deterritorialisation is the existential Territory, which could potentially take the form of a homeland based on poetry or music rather than on ethnicity or even place. Such portable homelands would characterise the dissensual processual post-media era for which Guattari longed. (shrink)

Assuming similarities between the domestic and global spheres of justice, I consider how lessons from the debate over women's rights and multiculturalism can be applied to global justice. In doing so, I focus on one strain of thinking on global justice, current moderations and modifications to cosmopolitanism. Discussions of global justice tend to approach the question of gender equity in one of two distinct ways: through articulations a cosmopolitanism ethic, advancing women's rights with the discourse of universal human rights or (...) through the lens of Care Ethics. The former approach emphasizes a universal core shared by all human beings, the latter the specific relationships we each are situated within. Recently, the discourse of global justice has moved away from this universal/particular dichotomy, with a range of theories, call them rooted cosmopolitanisms. My goal in this paper is to consider how these rooted versions of cosmopolitanism might respond to issues of gender equity and women's rights. (1) In pursuit of this aim, I first outline the parameters that define rooted cosmopolitanism. (2) I then assume, for the sake of argument, a continuity between domestic and global domains of justice, a continuity which allows for a translation of insights gained in domestic debates over multiculturalism into the global domain. (3) Finally, offering an answer to my leading question, I claim that rooted cosmopolitanism might assist in the struggle to protect the well-being of women as it endeavors to advance global justice. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a conception of multiculturalism that is compatible with Mill's liberal framework. I argue, drawing from Mill's conception of the nation-state, that he would expect cultural minorities to assimilate fully into the political sphere of the dominant culture, but to assimilate only minimally, if at all, into the cultural sphere. I also argue that while Mill cannot permit cultural accommodations in the form of self-government rights, he would allow for certain accommodation rights which assist cultural minorities (...) in preserving their cultural particularity. While this is indeed a modest multiculturalism, it helps to demonstrate that Mill was not as hostile towards custom or minority groups as certain passages may appear to suggest. (shrink)

With reference to a qualitative study on everyday religiosity among Muslims in St. John's, Canada, this paper examines trends in academic sources and public policy on Islam that over-privilege the most committed practitioners, thereby narrowly depicting “Muslimness.” I situate this overemphasis by reflecting on what Mamdani calls “culture talk,” an essentializing discourse heightened in the post-9/11 west. Interview data, along with a trend in social scientific research on Muslims that emphasize the most pious and the outcomes following the Ontario “Boyd (...) Report” and the Quebecois “Bouchard–Taylor Report” show the pervasiveness of culture talk that erases Muslim multiplicity. (shrink)

This article offers an alternative approach to multicultural theories, called ‘caring multiculturalism’. It argues that, despite good intentions, multicultural theory reproduces rhetoric that constructs groups as substantive entities, which leaves little room to accommodate changing power relations. Caring multiculturalism, drawing on caring ethics, feminist critiques of multiculturalism and discursive social psychology, advocates instead the contextualisation of groups’ claims to diversity and of governments’ practices of multiculturalism. As a framework rooted in discursive psychology, caring multiculturalism sees individual and collective identities as (...) relational, negotiated and political, and therefore non-totalising and changeable. As a feminist approach to multiculturalism, it analyses and attempts to change gendered power asymmetries embedded in intra- and intergroup relations by advocating an attentive and responsive approach to the needs and claims of minority groups and of the individuals within them. The article outlines the main tenets of caring multiculturalism with illustrations from multicultural practices in three European municipalities. (shrink)

Ethnic minority status and female gender convey a risk for suicidal behavior, yet research of suicidality of ethnic minority female immigrants is scarce. The authors of this article conducted qualitative interviews with 15 young women in the Netherlands, who either had attempted suicide or contemplated suicide, and analyzed these in a narrative psychology tradition. Suicidality was associated with despair and frustration over the violation of the women’s personal autonomy and self-integrity regarding strategic life choices. Autonomy restrictions and violations followed two (...) patterns, which are interconnected with four criteria regarding the capacity for autonomy. Findings are discussed with referral to Durkheim and feminist theories of autonomy. (shrink)

In this article I argue that it does not make sense – either empirically or normatively – to speak of ‘authentic’ cultures. All we need when talking about cultures is a relatively weak concept that still carries enough normative weight to function as the meaningful background of a person’s identity, autonomy and good life. Discussing the authentic culture, I refer to the debates around the German Leitkultur as well as the Dutch populist movement as examples. However, I am interested not (...) only in the concept of the authenticity of a culture but also in the concept of the authenticity of persons: if an ‘authentic culture’ is not feasible, does this have repercussions on the concept of the autonomy and authenticity of persons? In suggesting that this might be the case, I argue that persons can be autonomous without always being fully authentic. (shrink)

This essay addresses the relationships between prescription and description in legal rules. The analysis will focus on the culture-laden connotations of factual categories implied in all legal sentences and/or provisions. This investigation is spurred by the need to assess the impact of cultural difference in people’s understanding of legal imperatives and, symmetrically, how that impact is to be considered in the application of law. Differences in ways of categorizing the world could position the cultural pre-understanding required by law, and the (...) pluralism recognized and protected by constitutional principles and human/fundamental rights discourse, at a crossroads. Hence, even when we find an illegitimacy or an ignorance about what legal rules do not explicitly state but instead implicitly presuppose, this does not exclude that behind that ignorance there may be something worthy of legal protection. A question emerges: is it legitimate and reasonable to consider the ignorantia facti resulting from differing ways of categorizing the factual world as automatically and uncritically subject to the principle ignoratia legis non excusat? The essay continues with an assessment of the possible consequences of ignorantia facti in the administration of justice in multicultural societies and migration contexts. For this purpose, the opportunity for an intercultural use of law—including within national law—will be considered as a means of avoiding the discriminatory application of ignorantia facti. This topic will be addressed by leveraging both semiotic and cultural-anthropological analytical tools, including the well-known greimasien “contrat de véridiction”. (shrink)

This article examines the debate on whether to analyse ‘honour crimes’ as gender-based violence, or as cultural tradition, and the effects of either stance on protection from and prevention of these crimes. In particular, the article argues that the categorisation of honour-related violence as primarily cultural ignores its position within the wider spectrum of gender violence, and may result in a number of unfortunate side-effects, including lesser protection of the rights of women within minority communities, and the stigmatisation of those (...) communities. At the same time it is problematic to completely dismiss any cultural aspects of violence against women, and a nuanced approach is required which carefully balances the benefits and detriments of taking cultural factors into account. The article examines the issues within the context of the legal response to cases involving honour-related violence, arguing that although the judiciary has in a number of cases inclined towards viewing ‘honour’ as primarily cultural rather than patriarchal, in some cases they have begun to take a more gender-based or ‘mature multiculturalism’ approach. (shrink)

Through illustrating the similarities between embodied practices rooted in different cultural contexts (such as `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery), feminist theorists seek to reveal the instability of essentialist binaries which distinguish various groups as culturally, ethnically and morally `different'. They also aim to query how the term `culture' is employed differentially on the basis of embodied axes such as race and nation. However, in emphasizing overarching commonalities between practices, feminist cross-cultural comparisons risk collapsing into economies of sameness (...) that elide the complex relations of power through which such practices have been constituted. They can also fix the imagined subjects of these practices in troubling ways. Using the ubiquitous `African' female genital cutting and `Western' cosmetic surgery binary as an example, this article explores the difference it might make to address culturally essentialist constructions of embodied practice with a focus on relationality rather than commonality. As a means to reorient feminist cross-cultural approaches which depend on assertions of similarity or sameness, it argues for the theoretical and pedagogical utility of thinking through relational webs. (shrink)

Los criterios de excelencia e innovación a la hora de valorar las tecnologías de la comunicación se ven afectados por un gran número de factores, pero al final hay uno que prima sobre todos los demás: la calidad de la imágenes utilizadas, como sucede con National Geographic y Walt Disney, dos empresas de comunicación que han sido determinantes a la hora de fijar los criterios estándar de excelencia e innovación. En este contexto se reconstruye el debate contemporáneo entre Wiesing, Levinson, (...) Crowther y Seel acerca de los criterios de excelencia e innovación usados a la hora de valorar la calidad de las imágenes virtuales mediáticas por parte de las tecnologías de la comunicación, teniendo en cuenta su cuádruple dimensión genético-retroductiva, simbólica, contextual y estrictamente escénica. (shrink)

Within now prolific debates surrounding the compatibility of feminism and multiculturalism in liberal societies, the need arises for a normative conception of women’s self-determination that does not violate the self-understandings or values of women of different backgrounds and forms of life. With reference to the recent British debate about forced marriage, this article proposes an innovative approach to this problem in terms of the idea of ‘plural autonomy’. While the capacity for autonomy is plural, in the sense of varying across (...) cultures, autonomy in any world-view involves a capacity to ‘endorse’ one’s decisions in certain crucial spheres of life. Non-endorsement, coercion or force occurs if one risks being alienated from the (cultural) goods and relationships that structure one’s capacity to act in the world. This approach counsels more caution than prominent liberal approaches with respect to negotiating the contested boundary between freedom and force in a diverse society. (shrink)

Freedom of religious expression is to many a fundamental element of their identity. Yet the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the Islamic headscarf issue does not refer to autonomy and identity rights of the individual women claimants. The case law focuses on Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides a legal human right to freedom of religious expression. The way that provision is interpreted is critically contrasted here with the right to personal (...) autonomy and identity now developed by that court in interpreting Article 8 which contains a right to respect one’s private life. (shrink)

This article critically addresses recent anthropological and feminist efforts to theorize and analyse Muslim women's participation in and support for the Islamic revival in its various manifestations. Drawing on ethnographic material from research on young Muslims engaged in Islamic youth and student-organizations in Norway, I investigate some of the challenges that researching religious subjectivities and practices pose to feminist theory. In particular, I deal with how to understand women's religious piety in relation to questions of self, agency and resistance. Engaging (...) with Saba Mahmood's work on The Politics of Piety, this article suggests ways of understanding the young women's religious engagement that move beyond the confines of a binary model of subordination and resistance, coercion and choice. Grounding the discussion in ethnographic analysis of how young Muslim women in Norway speak about the ‘self’, I argue that critically revisiting feminist notions of agency, autonomy and desire, is necessary in order to understand the kinds of self-realization that these women aspire to. However, the article argues against positing Muslim conceptions and techniques of the self as ‘the other’ of liberal-secular traditions. Rather, I show how configurations of personhood, ethics and self-realization drawn from Islamic and liberal-secular discursive formations inhabit not only the same cultural and historical space, but also shape individual subjectivities and modes of agency. (shrink)

This paper examines conflicts of rights and competing interests in the context of the British equalities framework. The expansion of the grounds of European Union and domestic discrimination law beyond the traditional categories of race and sex to also include disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion or belief and age has made this an important issue. In addition, the increasing recognition of ‘equality’ and ‘non-discrimination’ as important rights raises the spectre of conflict with other human rights such as the right (...) to freedom of expression. This is potentially a vast area for analysis. This paper is a selective treatment of some of the main issues. It sets out these issues and some general principles for reform as a first step in developing a principled approach to conflicts in equality law and policy. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of women's agency in traditionalist religion, through a study of self-narratives by women in the Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Women who study or work outside the boundaries of their community were interviewed about their experiences in negotiating gender ideologies by moving in and between the `secular' and `religious' spaces of higher education, work and home. Various subject positions emerged in terms of either rejecting, separating or reconciling dominant community norms regarding women's proper role (...) with personal trajectories of self-realization and individual autonomy. On the one hand, the results confirm the possibility of women's agency within religious-traditionalist settings and in that sense subscribe to some recent feminist theoretical challenges to secularism. However, it is argued that the younger generation faces more restrictions in negotiating religious and secular gender-role expectations in the Antwerp context. Their prospects depend on the dynamic between global fundamentalist tendencies and local liberal state policies of multicultural accommodation. (shrink)

Recognition and toleration are ways of relating to the diversity characteristic of multicultural societies. The article concerns the possible meanings of toleration and recognition, and the conflict that is often claimed to exist between these two approaches to diversity. Different forms or interpretations of recognition and toleration are considered, confusing and problematic uses of the terms are noted, and the compatibility of toleration and recognition is discussed. The article argues that there is a range of legitimate and importantly different conceptions (...) of both toleration and recognition that are often not clearly distinguished, and that compatibility varies across this range and depending on what one considers the conceptions in relation to. (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)

Anne Phillips argues that definitions of the human are a trap for the political claims to equality contained in humanitarianism or human rights discourse. However, defining the human also hides the ontological and political problem addressed by the Philosophical Anthropology. There is an ethical and political stake in the philosophical anthropology of the last century when it insists on the indefinability of the human. With this, it criticizes the politics implicit in the definition of the human. And also, it questions (...) the metaphysical positions that the act of defining implies. -/- //// La lógica de inclusión/exclusión presente en toda definición de lo humano no solo es una trampa para las reivindicaciones políticas de la igualdad contenidas en el humanitarismo o el discurso de los derechos humanos, como ha argumentado Anne Phillips, sino que también oblitera la problemática ontológica contenida en la pregunta fundamental de toda antropología filosófica y su correspondiente dimensión práctica. Las tesis de la indefinibilidad del ser humano y la problematicidad ontológica constitutiva de lo humano —desarrolladas por la antropología filosófica crítica del último siglo— cuestionan toda política de la definición de lo humano y las posturas metafísicas que tales políticas implican. Por ello, el artículo también pone en cuestión la imagen negativa del aporte de la antropología filosófica a la ética y la filosofía social. -/- . (shrink)

Recognition and toleration are ways of relating to the diversity characteristic of multicultural societies. The article concerns the possible meanings of toleration and recognition, and the conflict that is often claimed to exist between these two approaches to diversity. Different forms or interpretations of recognition and toleration are considered, confusing and problematic uses of the terms are noted, and the compatibility of toleration and recognition is discussed. The article argues that there is a range of legitimate and importantly different conceptions (...) of both toleration and recognition that are often not clearly distinguished, and that compatibility varies across this range and depending on what one considers the conceptions in relation to. (shrink)

This article brings into conversation two important literatures in contemporary political theory that have, for the most part, failed to engage one another: work spanning more than two decades on multiculturalism and identity politics, and neo-republican work on nondomination. The authors take as their starting-point two widely endorsed claims: that identities are constructs and that state actors play a crucial role in their construction. Their question is how democratic states should shape identity, and their central claim is that states should (...) do so in ways that promote what they call democratic nondomination. This ideal, they stress, is multifaceted. It has both an action-level and a system-level component. In addition, it has both an inter-agentive and an impersonal dimension. Attending to democratic nondomination in its complexity is crucial to the project of evaluating alternative possible forms of state identity construction. (shrink)

How do we achieve social justice? How do we change society for the better? Some would argue that we must do it by changing the laws or state institutions. Others that we must do it by changing individual attitudes. I argue that although both of these factors are important and relevant, we must also change culture. What does this mean? Culture, I argue, is a set of social meanings that shapes and filters how we think and act. Problematic networks of (...) social meanings constitute an ideology. Entrenched ideologies are resilient and are barriers to social change, even in the face of legal interventions. I argue that an effective way to change culture is through social movements and contentious politics, and that philosophy has a role to play in promoting such change. (shrink)

In recent years anti-universalism has become a sine qua non for respectability in philosophy of education, along with several other disciplines. The standard ph.

International migration poses a dilemma for capitalist welfare states. This paper considers the ethical dimensions of that dilemma. It begins by addressing two questions associated with the provision of social rights for migrants: first, the extent to which differential forms of social citizenship may be associated with processes of civic stratification; second, the ambiguous nature of the economic, social and cultural rights components of the international human rights framework. It then proceeds to discuss, on the one hand, existing attempts to (...) classify or taxonomise different kinds of immigration/incorporation and welfare regime and, on the other, the different ways in which migrants may be socially constructed. Building on this analysis the paper develops an alternative taxonomy that is concerned with the different ethical premises from which the social rights of migrants may be constructed or justified. The paper concludes by applying the ideal of ?Migration without Borders? as a means to critique existing constructions of social rights. (shrink)

Bob Fischer has written a reply to my article ‘Animal Abolitionism and ‘Racism without Racists’’. In this article, Fischer contends that my arguments whereby animal abolitionism engages in acts of racism without racists are mistaken. I wish to reply to Fischer’s objections in this article, through four sets of contentions: Fischer’s arguments reveal some misunderstandings in terms of the concept of racism and, particularly, of ‘racism without racists’; his arguments also underestimate the burdens suffered by individuals who wish to become (...) vegan; Fischer’s views on infantilisation lead to counter-intuitive conclusions; and Fischer’s counter-argument against my neo-colonial critique of abolitionism misunderstands the points made in my previous article. (shrink)

Liberal approaches to multiculturalism and cultural nationalism have met with severe criticism in recent years. This article makes the case for an alternative, Aristotelian approach developed in the work of the ‘founding father’ of culture, J. G. Herder. According to Herder, culture is worthy of political recognition because it contributes to the realization of our common but contradictory human telos. Only a plurality of cultures, each realizing a unique balance of our contradictory needs, can bring wholeness to our common nature. (...) In conclusion, I argue for the merits of this Aristotelian approach in resolving some recurring problems of multiculturalism. (shrink)

The social sciences often explain behavioral differences by appealing to membership in distinct cultural groups. This work uses the concepts of “cultures” and “cultural groups” like any other demographic category (e.g. “gender”, “socioeconomic status”). I call these joint conceptualizations of “cultures” and “cultural groups” _demographic cultures_. Such demographic cultures have long been subject to scrutiny. Here I isolate and respond to a set of arguments I call _demographic skepticism_. This skeptical position denies that the demographic cultures concept can support metaphysically (...) plausible and empirically principled research. I argue against the skeptic, showing that their position relies on a questionable alignment between the demographic cultures concept and what I call the _folk anthropological model_. While the commitments of that model are problematic—they are not necessary for comparative work in the social sciences. In addition to clarifying skeptical arguments, then, I provide four recommendations for the comparative social scientist that allow them to avoid demographic skepticism. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to consider how multiculturalism, minority rights, and nationbuilding have been defended by Will Kymlicka. For this purpose, I will first attempt to spell out the answers to the following questions: is it possible to defend minority rights in a liberal state? What is the problem regarding this defence of national minorities? Does anybody benefit from minority rights within a nationbuilding process? In order to find out the answer to these questions, I will first introduce (...) the main line of thought found in Will Kymlicka’s views on the defence of the rights of national minorities, the nationbuilding process, and multiculturalism. Later, I will reassess the views of Kymlicka in finding the ways to defend national minorities with the aim of providing support to the minority cultures. (shrink)

North American writer Joan Didion’s eloquent testimonial speaks to the significance of storytelling in our lives. Personal storiesmake our lives meaningful. Part of this is because our stories, wittingly or not, become the means through which we fashion our identities for listeners. Or, as scholars from many disciplines have argued, identity and selfhoodare narrative accomplishments. In this formulation, an individual constructs a sense of self by telling stories or “personal narratives,” which describe “the evolution of an individual life over time (...) and in social context” (Maynes et al. in Telling stories: the use of personal narratives in the social sciences and in history. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2008, 2). While personal narratives contain unique autobiographical elements, the logics of storytelling and the values and beliefs of a particular time and place also influence the kinds of stories people tell. As feminist historian Mary Jo Maynes and her coauthors argue: “The stories that people tell about their lives are never simply individual, but are told in historically specific times and settings and draw on the rules and models in circulation that govern how story elements link together in narrative logics” (2008, 2). Put another way, even the most idiosyncratic story is always in some way social: what narrators decide to tell is often guided by the expectations of audiences (real or imagined); the conventions of various genres (such as life history or autobiography); as well as the broader cultural narratives located in particular historical times and places. In this light, personal narratives at once provide evidence of a storyteller’s viewpoint and experiences as well as the social and cultural milieu in which they live. (shrink)

The building and maintaining of a tolerant society requires both a general policy of toleration on the behalf of the state, as well as a minimal number of acts of intolerance by individual citizens towards their fellow citizens. It is this second area of citizen‐citizen relations that is of most interest for education policy. There are those who argue that the best way to achieve a tolerant society is by encouraging, or even requiring, the respect and appreciation of difference amongst (...) a citizenry. In this paper I argue that using education to encourage the respect and appreciation of difference is deeply problematic for both adults and children. I argue that it is a poor servant of those whose differences it is meant to protect, and crucially that it cannot be justified on the key liberal premise of protecting the freedom of individuals to live their (non‐harming) lives as they see fit. I conclude by putting forward the educational alternative of respecting the basic rights of citizens irrespective of your view of their differences. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Sen's defence of liberal democracy suffers from a moralistic and pro-liberal bias that renders it unable to take pluralism as seriously as it professes to do. That is because Sen’s commitment to respecting pluralism is not matched by his account of how to individuate the sorts of preferences that ought to be included in democratic deliberation. Our argument generalises as a critique of the two most common responses to the fact of pluralism in contemporary (...) (i.e. post-Rawls) liberalism: a broadly procedural understanding of autonomy and the idea of deliberative democracy. That is to say, the difficulties with pluralism we identify can be traced back to the particular version of Kantian deontology prevalent in contemporary liberalism, and to the equally prevalent aspiration to ground political legitimacy in a moralised consensus. (shrink)

Amartya Sen argues that sectarian discord and violence are fueled by confusion about the nature of identity, including the pervasive tendency to see ourselves as members of singular social groups standing in opposition to other groups (e.g. Democrat vs. Republican, Muslim vs. Christian, etc.). Sen defends an alternative model of identity, according to which we all inevitably belong to a plurality of discrete identity groups (including ethnicities, classes, genders, races, religions, careers, hobbies, etc.) and are obligated to choose, in any (...) given context, which among our multiple affiliations to prioritize. While Sen’s model of discrete identity prioritization is a clear advance over single-factor accounts, it overlooks significant lessons about identity from over 150 years of scholarship by feminists of color. In ignoring the experiences of women of color, Sen’s model falsely assumes that identities are in-principle separable for the purposes of practical deliberation; and, in obligating individuals to make such identity-based “reasoned choices,” Sen’s model forces those with multiply marginalized identities to choose from a set of externally defined identity options, none of which sufficiently captures their experiences. (shrink)

This Thesis reconsiders the prospects for an approach to global justice centring on the proposal that every human being should possess a certain bundle of goods, which would include certain members of a distinctive category: the category of capabilities. My overall aim is to present a clarified and well-developed framework, within which such claims can be made. To do this, I visit a number of regions of normative and metanormative theorising. I begin by introducing the motivations for the capability approach, (...) and clarifying some of its most distinctive features. Next, I focus on Martha Nussbaum's version of the approach, and identify several problems therein. The most important concerns epistemology, and especially the challenges that constructivist theories pose. The middle part of the Thesis presents an alternative, based on the work of John McDowell, which I argue has superior prospects. Then, I turn to two further problems: that of making sense of the universalistic aspirations of cosmopolitanism, and that of integrating the microscopic prescriptions of ethics with the macroscopic analyses of political philosophy. Using the Aristotelian interpretation of its core framework that I have developed, I conclude that the capability approach can provide compelling answers to important questions about global justice. (shrink)

Multiculturalism has become a hot topic in political philosophy. This thesis investigates the philosophical foundations of multicultural theories through examining the key concepts commonly relied upon. A careful examination of each concept and the way in which they are interconnected, reveals an interesting strategy that the multiculturalist employs. It is my contention that the multiculturalist relies on a complex web of nebulous concepts which fools the reader into thinking that their theory rests on strong foundations. However, when we clear away (...) the fog of confusion, we can see that the multiculturalist has presented us with an illusion, and none of the concepts remain strong enough to hold any of the normative weight they need them to. Multiculturalism relies on grandiloquent rhetoric and muddled thinking, and will ultimately fail to achieve the liberal goals it purports to. (shrink)