Abstract

In recent decades, group autonomy approaches to have gained kgitimacy within both academic and policy circles. This article examines the centrality of group autonomy in the multiculturalism debate, particuhrly in the highly influential approach of Will Kymlicka. I argue that his response to the dilemmas of liberd-democratic multiculturalism relies on an underdeveloped conceptualization of group autonomy. Despite presumably good intentions, his narrow notion of cultural group autonomy obscures the requirements of minority group members' democratic capabilities and thereby works against the kind of transformative change that "accommodated" groups are seeking from the state. Although some critics (Young 1990; Benhabh 2002) have gone so far as to reject autonomy-based approaches to accommodation altogether (Young 1990,251) I suggest that this position goes too far. In response, I offer an intermediary position between those that defend and those that reject an autonomy-based approach. Instead of fully rejecting autonomy as a guiàng principle for multiculturalism, I devebp an ethics of care approach to group autonomy based on relationality, which addresses the inadequacies of the dominant approach to multiculturalism. Such an account of group autonomy is a vital step toward recondling multiculturalism with the necessary components of Uberd-democratic citizenship