Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging: Religion and Multiculturalism from Israel to Canada

by René Provost (Editor)

For several decades, culture played a central role in challenging the liberal tradition. More recently however, religion has re-emerged as one of the central challenges facing Western liberal societies' conception of multiculturalism. Mapping the Legal Boundaries of Belonging explores the complex relationship between religion and multiculturalism and the role of the state and law in the creation of boundaries.

The intersection between religion, nationalism and other vectors of difference in Canada and Israel offer an ideal laboratory in which to examine multiculturalism in particular and the governance of diversity in general. The contributors to this volume investigate concepts of religious difference and diversity and the ways in which these two states and legal systems understand and respond to them. As a consequence of a purportedly secular human rights perspective, they show, state laws may appear to define religious identity in a way that contradicts the definition found within a particular religion. Both state and religion make the same mistake if they take a court decision that emphasizes individual belief and practice as effecting a direct modification of a religious the court lacks the power to change the authoritative internal definition of who belongs to a particular faith. Similarly, in the pursuit of a particular model of social diversity, the state may adopt policies
that imply a particular private/public distinction foreign to some religious traditions.

340 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2014

About the author

Professor René Provost, Ad. E., teaches and conducts research in public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, legal theory and legal anthropology. He is particularly interested in human rights, international criminal law, the law of armed conflict, and the intersection of law and culture. In September 2015, he was awarded a fellowship by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation for his research project that aims to explore the possibility of convincing armed, non-state groups to apply justice by respecting minimum standards of international humanitarian law in conflict zones.

He is the author of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (Cambridge University Press, 2002), the editor of State Responsibility in International Law (Ashgate/Dartmouth, 2002) and Mapping the Boundaries of Belonging: Law Between Religious Revival and Post-Multiculturalism (Oxford university Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of International Law Chiefly As Applied and Interpreted in Canada (Emond Mongtgomery, 2006), Confronting Genocide (Springer Verlag, 2011), and Dialogues on Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (Springer Verlag, 2013). Professor Provost served as Law Clerk to Justice L'Heureux-Dubé of the Supreme Court of Canada. He was the President of the Société québécoise de droit international from 2002 to 2006. Professor Provost was the founding Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism from 2005 to 2010.

Professor Provost is currently the principal investigator for the Centaur Jurisprudence Project, an interdisciplinary research team in law and anthropology that explores the ways in which the concept of culture is transformed by its consideration through different legal processes. Professor Provost seeks to apply to international law the insights of legal pluralism, with particular attention to the normative implications of this perspective for non-state actors.

Professor Provost was awarded the Barreau du Québec's Advocatus Emeritus (Ad. E.) distinction in 2017.