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Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights
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 "collective rights" of minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to such rights can be answered. However, the author emphasizes 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. He looks at issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession--issues central to an understanding of multicultural politics, but which have been neglected in contemporary liberal theory. Scholars of political theory and philosophy, as well as the general reader,
will find this work to be the most comprehensive analysis to date of this crucial political issue.
will find this work to be the most comprehensive analysis to date of this crucial political issue.
290 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
25 people are currently reading
638 people want to read
About the author
Will Kymlicka
47 books76 followersWill Kymlicka received his B.A. in philosophy and politics from Queen's University in 1984, and his D.Phil. in philosophy from Oxford University in 1987. He is the author of seven books published by Oxford University Press: Liberalism, Community, and Culture (1989), Contemporary Political Philosophy (1990; second edition 2002),Multicultural Citizenship (1995), which was awarded the Macpherson Prize by the Canadian Political Science Assocation, and the Bunche Award by the American Political Science Association, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (1998), Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship (2001), Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (2007), which was awarded the North American Society for Social Philosophy’s 2007 Book Award, and Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson, which was awarded the 2013 Biennial Book Prize from the Canadian Philosophical Association
He is also the editor of Justice in Political Philosophy (Elgar, 1992), and The Rights of Minority Cultures (OUP, 1995), co-editor with Ian Shapiro of Ethnicity and Group Rights (NYU, 1997), co-editor with Wayne Norman of Citizenship in Diverse Societies (OUP, 2000), co-editor with Simone Chambers of Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (PUP, 2001), co-editor with Magda Opalski of Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? (OUP, 2001), co-editor with Alan Patten of Language Rights and Political Theory (OUP, 2003), co-editor with Baogang He of Multiculturalism in Asia (OUP, 2005), co-editor with Keith Banting of Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies (OUP, 2006), co-edior with William M. Sullivan of The Globalization of Ethics: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge UP, 2007), and co-editor (with Bashir Bashir) of The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies (OUP, 2008), co-editor with Avigail Eisenberg of Identity Politics in the Public Realm: Bringing Institutions Back In (UBC Press, 2011), co-editor with Kathryn Walker of Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World (UBC Press, 2012), and co-editor with Eva Pfostl of Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (OUP, 2014).
He is currently the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University, and a visiting professor in the Nationalism Studies program at the Central European University in Budapest. His works have been translated into 32 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. From 2004-6, he was the President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.
He is also the editor of Justice in Political Philosophy (Elgar, 1992), and The Rights of Minority Cultures (OUP, 1995), co-editor with Ian Shapiro of Ethnicity and Group Rights (NYU, 1997), co-editor with Wayne Norman of Citizenship in Diverse Societies (OUP, 2000), co-editor with Simone Chambers of Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society (PUP, 2001), co-editor with Magda Opalski of Can Liberal Pluralism Be Exported? (OUP, 2001), co-editor with Alan Patten of Language Rights and Political Theory (OUP, 2003), co-editor with Baogang He of Multiculturalism in Asia (OUP, 2005), co-editor with Keith Banting of Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies (OUP, 2006), co-edior with William M. Sullivan of The Globalization of Ethics: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge UP, 2007), and co-editor (with Bashir Bashir) of The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies (OUP, 2008), co-editor with Avigail Eisenberg of Identity Politics in the Public Realm: Bringing Institutions Back In (UBC Press, 2011), co-editor with Kathryn Walker of Rooted Cosmopolitanism: Canada and the World (UBC Press, 2012), and co-editor with Eva Pfostl of Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (OUP, 2014).
He is currently the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen's University, and a visiting professor in the Nationalism Studies program at the Central European University in Budapest. His works have been translated into 32 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, of the Canadian Institute For Advanced Research, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. From 2004-6, he was the President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.
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March 3, 2015
göçmenler, mülteciler ve etnik azınlıklara yapılan ayrı muameleler konusunda (ve başka bazı noktalarda da) geliştirilen argümantasyonu zayıf buldum.
fakat güzel yanı; kitapta azınlık hakları meselelerinde ve özellikle liberal perspektiften bu sorun tartışılırken işe yarayacak bazı araçlar ve sorular yer alıyor.
1. öncelikle iç kısıtlamalar ve dış korumalar arasında yapılan ayrım bana bu konudaki tartışmalarda işe yarayacak çok faydalı bir araç gibi göründü. özellikle de sorunun ne kadar girift olduğunu ve politik liberalizmin bazı noktalarda nasıl yetersiz kaldığını göstermek adına. yüksek mahkeme kararları örnekleri de sorunu somut olarak ortaya koyuyordu: örnek, hofer v. hofer (kanada-hutterite) ve wisconsin v. yoder (abd-amish).
2. osmanlı hoşgörüsünün liberal olmayan bir hoşgörü anlayışı olarak tanımlanması ve din seçme/değiştirme özgürlüğünün liberal ve liberal olmayan hoşgörü arasındaki farkı belirlediği iyi bir noktaydı.
3. ikinci nokta devamında kültürler piyasası tartışmasını okumakta zevkliydi.
bütünsel olarak bakıldığında yetersiz kalan noktalar var ama tarihsel örnekler, davalar ve farklı tecrübelerden hareketle sorunların tespiti başarılı.
fakat güzel yanı; kitapta azınlık hakları meselelerinde ve özellikle liberal perspektiften bu sorun tartışılırken işe yarayacak bazı araçlar ve sorular yer alıyor.
1. öncelikle iç kısıtlamalar ve dış korumalar arasında yapılan ayrım bana bu konudaki tartışmalarda işe yarayacak çok faydalı bir araç gibi göründü. özellikle de sorunun ne kadar girift olduğunu ve politik liberalizmin bazı noktalarda nasıl yetersiz kaldığını göstermek adına. yüksek mahkeme kararları örnekleri de sorunu somut olarak ortaya koyuyordu: örnek, hofer v. hofer (kanada-hutterite) ve wisconsin v. yoder (abd-amish).
2. osmanlı hoşgörüsünün liberal olmayan bir hoşgörü anlayışı olarak tanımlanması ve din seçme/değiştirme özgürlüğünün liberal ve liberal olmayan hoşgörü arasındaki farkı belirlediği iyi bir noktaydı.
3. ikinci nokta devamında kültürler piyasası tartışmasını okumakta zevkliydi.
bütünsel olarak bakıldığında yetersiz kalan noktalar var ama tarihsel örnekler, davalar ve farklı tecrübelerden hareketle sorunların tespiti başarılı.
October 2, 2022
يوفر كتاب - ( المواطنة متعددة الثقافات : نظرية ليبيرالية لحقوق الأقليات )- اعادة صياغة أسئلة ليبيرالية لاستيعاب و مناقشة حقوق الأقليات اللاجئة و المهاجرة و القومية ..كما توفر مراجعة لنظرية العدالة عند جون رولز
July 6, 2013
Seni bir havaalanında ağırlık yüzünden çöpe bıraktığım için hala pişmanım..Yenisini alacağım bugünlerde sana ihtiyacım var..
November 7, 2018
Kymlicka attempts to create a framework theory for multicultural citizenship, one that recognizes and accounts for the differences between what he frames as two "minority" groups: national minorities, cultural groups who were subsumed under colonialism or imperialism under varying degrees of agency, and ethnic minority groups, cultural groups who immigrated to nations of their volition. Ultimately, Kymlicka wants to emphasize the need for group-based rights claims, as opposed to the "traditional" liberal basis for rights claims, the individual.
Though Kymlicka's work does much in creating a way of thinking through the necessity for group-based rights claims, and creates a much-necessary framework that "legitimizes" these claims against their detractors, Kymlicka's work is far from perfect. In creating such a strict dichotomy between the colonized and the immigrant, Kymlicka effectively erases complicated relationship between imperialism/colonialism and (im)migration. This speaks to a frame of reference that Kymlicka is limited to: though he speaks in absolutes about integration and assimilation, he is using immigration patterns of European immigrants to the US and Canada, who were very much racialized and made to be racial citizens in different ways than (im)migrants from Latin America and other places in the Global South.
Kymlicka's use of "culture" and tying it to nationhood/ethnic identity is also questionable. In arguing that marginalized groups who constitute groups within "new social movements" do not have a type of culture that constitutes a nation, we must ask ourselves to what ends and for what reason do we choose this frame of reference? Particularly in the context of queerness and queer communities before the real development of a homonationalist tradition, Kymlicka's conception of citizenship makes it so that there continues to exist a "gap" that requires theorization of citizen-types.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Kymlicka's failure to acknowledge or theorize blackness severely limits his theory. Kymlicka recognizes that blackness cannot be understood or theorized in the same frame as immigration, but also excludes blackness from his nationhood framework. In not theorizing from the bottom up, meaning, theorizing with blackness and black positionality at the forefront, Kymlicka effectively continues the work of excluding blackness from citizenship and understandings of being-ness. This is perfectly illustrative of afropessimist critiques of the world and the ways in which the world is framed, but it makes for a very weak theory. By not recognizing and understanding how blackness is fundamental to the idea of citizen/being/human, and by not theorizing through blackness, Kymlicka cannot comprehend or understand blackness in his theory or worldview, and instead, reifies systems of power that create blackness as constitutive outside.
Though Kymlicka's work does much in creating a way of thinking through the necessity for group-based rights claims, and creates a much-necessary framework that "legitimizes" these claims against their detractors, Kymlicka's work is far from perfect. In creating such a strict dichotomy between the colonized and the immigrant, Kymlicka effectively erases complicated relationship between imperialism/colonialism and (im)migration. This speaks to a frame of reference that Kymlicka is limited to: though he speaks in absolutes about integration and assimilation, he is using immigration patterns of European immigrants to the US and Canada, who were very much racialized and made to be racial citizens in different ways than (im)migrants from Latin America and other places in the Global South.
Kymlicka's use of "culture" and tying it to nationhood/ethnic identity is also questionable. In arguing that marginalized groups who constitute groups within "new social movements" do not have a type of culture that constitutes a nation, we must ask ourselves to what ends and for what reason do we choose this frame of reference? Particularly in the context of queerness and queer communities before the real development of a homonationalist tradition, Kymlicka's conception of citizenship makes it so that there continues to exist a "gap" that requires theorization of citizen-types.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Kymlicka's failure to acknowledge or theorize blackness severely limits his theory. Kymlicka recognizes that blackness cannot be understood or theorized in the same frame as immigration, but also excludes blackness from his nationhood framework. In not theorizing from the bottom up, meaning, theorizing with blackness and black positionality at the forefront, Kymlicka effectively continues the work of excluding blackness from citizenship and understandings of being-ness. This is perfectly illustrative of afropessimist critiques of the world and the ways in which the world is framed, but it makes for a very weak theory. By not recognizing and understanding how blackness is fundamental to the idea of citizen/being/human, and by not theorizing through blackness, Kymlicka cannot comprehend or understand blackness in his theory or worldview, and instead, reifies systems of power that create blackness as constitutive outside.
to-keep-reference
July 3, 2018El planteo inicial de Taylor pronto recibiría un desarrollo mucho más sistemático en obras como Multicultural Citizenship (1995), de Will Kymlicka, y en The Struggle for Recognition (1996), del filósofo alemán Axel Honneth.
Teoría de la Justicia, Clase 1.
Teoría de la Justicia, Clase 1.
February 2, 2023
newfound respect for mitrani and political philosophy (who would’ve thunk). i think it takes months, probably years, to develop your thoughts to this degree, tease out the flaws and nuances in your argument. considering when this was written, i think kymlicks saw the impact migration would have on the social fabrics of our nation states, and what measures would need to be taken to account for increasing multiculturalism and difference.
excited to work on how this is transplantable to the malaysian case.
excited to work on how this is transplantable to the malaysian case.
January 20, 2025
Lu pour mon mémoire. Bien structuré, clair. Probablement à filer à Pascal Praud ou votre oncle qui "n'est pas raciste mais" qui craignent le multiculturalisme plus que le monstre sous leur lit quand ils étaient gosses alors que c'est pas la fin du monde, c'est même l'occasion d'accueillir la diversité et de vraiment traiter et débattre de questions légitimes plutôt que de refuser par principe tout droit aux minorités en les traitant comme si ses membres n'étaient pas des individus. Bref, permet d'élever le débat et c'est cool. Il comporte sûrement des limites mais j'ai pas fini l'analyse.
May 16, 2022
A pesar de ser un libro de 1995, con todos los cambios en este tema que han podido darse desde entonces, me parece un texto básico para entender y empaparse de todo lo que tiene que ver con los derechos de minorías (étnicas y nacionales). Además, lo cierto es que no se hace excesivamente complejo de leer, por lo que no tengo dudas de que si te interesa este tema, es un libro más que recomendado (y obligado).
February 28, 2022
Segunda vez que entro en este texto, la primera hace una década me sirvió de introducción a las miradas multiculturales del mundo, modificando para siempre mi visión académica de mi profesión. Hoy, después de muchas lecturas y reflexiones volví a entrar en él, y pude sacar más ideas nuevas que entonces no lo pude.
July 27, 2022
Interesting read on how group-differentiated rights can be reconciled with liberalism, which is normally concerned with the same individual rights and freedoms for all. The book is over 25 years old, but still relevant to this day and addresses issues that remain to be resolved with regards to how to best accommodate diversity (national minorities and immigrants).
July 23, 2016
Most liberals fear that ‘collective rights’ demanded by ethnic and national groups are, by definition, inimical to individual rights. This view has been popularized in Canada by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who explained his opposition to self-government rights for Quebec by saying that he believed in ‘the primacy of the individual’, and that ‘only the individual is the possessor of rights’ (Trudeau 1990: 363-4)
70 socialists today have jettisoned this ethnocentric conception of a ‘right of historical evolution’. They are now more likely to see ever-increasing centralization as evidence of economic imperialism which subverts local democracy, and which is insensitive to the needs of people for community on a smaller scale. Indeed, while Marx thought that bigger was better, many socialists now think that small is beautiful. Decentralization may actually work to the disadvantage of minority groups. Consider the claims of indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Amazon region. Devolving powers from the federal to the state or local level has hurt the Indian tribes there. Resource development and social policy not given to city or county councils.
72 for example, Lenin was convinced that it was entirely consistent to promote equality for national minorities through language rights an limited forms of local authonomy, yet suppress the religion and iteature of a culture, and rewrite its history.
75 the basic principles of liberalism, are principles of indivudla freedom. Liberal can only endorse minority rights in so far as they are consistent with respect for the freedom or autonomy of individuals.
77 when immigrants come to the US, they bring their language and historical narratives with them. But they have left behind the set of institutionalized practices, conducted in their mother tongue, which actually provided culturally significant ways of life to people in their original homeland. They bring with them a shared vocabulary of tradition and convention, but they have uprooted themselves from the social practices which this vocabulary originally referred to and made sense of.
82 a liberal society, by contrast, not only allows people to pursue their current way of life, but also gives them access to information about other ways of life (through freedom of expression), and indeed requires children to learn about other ways of life (through mandatory education), and makes it possible for people to engage in radical revision of their ends (including apostasy) without legal penalty. A liberal society does not compel such questioning an revision, but it does make it a geuine possibility.
132 in the US, this has primarily taken the form of redistricting—that is, redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts so as to create black-majority or Hispanic-majority districts. The fact that blacks form a majority in a particular istrcit does not guarantee that a black representative will be elected, but that is the clear tendency. However, this is a very limited mechanism for overcoming underrepresentation, since boundary-drawing techniques do not work for groups which are territorially dispersed. Even for African-Americans, redistricting has been most useful in the south. But blacks are increasingly dispersed throughout.
138 while the middle-class white men who dominate politics in most western democracies are not demographically representative of the population at large, they are the elected representatives of the population at large, and often have widespread electoral support from minority and disadvantaged groups. The claim that minority groups are not fully represented in the legislate, therefore, seems to presuppose that people can only be fully represented by someone who shares their gender, class, occupation, ethnicity, language, etc.
mirror representation—the legislature is said to be representative of the general public if it mirrors the ethnic, gender, or class characteristics of the public.
160 there is a cost to non-liberal minorities from accepting Rawls’ political conception of the person—namely, it precludes any system of internal restrictions which limit the right of individuals within the groups to revise their conceptions of the good… were the Hutteries to accept Rawls’s conception of the person, then they too would have to accept the view that freedom of religion must be interpreted in terms of an individual’s capacity to form and revise her religious beliefs. Accepting the value of autonomy for political purposes enables its exercise in private life, an implication that will only be favoured by those who endorse autonomy as a general value. Rawls has not explained why people who are communitarians in private life should be liberals in political life. Rawls may be right that within different contexts we can assume diverse points of view toward our person without contradiction so long as these points of view cohere together when circumstances require Rawls 1980: 545. But he has not shown that these points of view do cohere. On the contrary, they clearly conflict on issues of intra-group dissent such as proselytization, apostasy, and mandatory education.
One can ensure tolerance between groups without protecting tolerance of individual dissent within each group.
70 socialists today have jettisoned this ethnocentric conception of a ‘right of historical evolution’. They are now more likely to see ever-increasing centralization as evidence of economic imperialism which subverts local democracy, and which is insensitive to the needs of people for community on a smaller scale. Indeed, while Marx thought that bigger was better, many socialists now think that small is beautiful. Decentralization may actually work to the disadvantage of minority groups. Consider the claims of indigenous peoples in Brazil’s Amazon region. Devolving powers from the federal to the state or local level has hurt the Indian tribes there. Resource development and social policy not given to city or county councils.
72 for example, Lenin was convinced that it was entirely consistent to promote equality for national minorities through language rights an limited forms of local authonomy, yet suppress the religion and iteature of a culture, and rewrite its history.
75 the basic principles of liberalism, are principles of indivudla freedom. Liberal can only endorse minority rights in so far as they are consistent with respect for the freedom or autonomy of individuals.
77 when immigrants come to the US, they bring their language and historical narratives with them. But they have left behind the set of institutionalized practices, conducted in their mother tongue, which actually provided culturally significant ways of life to people in their original homeland. They bring with them a shared vocabulary of tradition and convention, but they have uprooted themselves from the social practices which this vocabulary originally referred to and made sense of.
82 a liberal society, by contrast, not only allows people to pursue their current way of life, but also gives them access to information about other ways of life (through freedom of expression), and indeed requires children to learn about other ways of life (through mandatory education), and makes it possible for people to engage in radical revision of their ends (including apostasy) without legal penalty. A liberal society does not compel such questioning an revision, but it does make it a geuine possibility.
132 in the US, this has primarily taken the form of redistricting—that is, redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts so as to create black-majority or Hispanic-majority districts. The fact that blacks form a majority in a particular istrcit does not guarantee that a black representative will be elected, but that is the clear tendency. However, this is a very limited mechanism for overcoming underrepresentation, since boundary-drawing techniques do not work for groups which are territorially dispersed. Even for African-Americans, redistricting has been most useful in the south. But blacks are increasingly dispersed throughout.
138 while the middle-class white men who dominate politics in most western democracies are not demographically representative of the population at large, they are the elected representatives of the population at large, and often have widespread electoral support from minority and disadvantaged groups. The claim that minority groups are not fully represented in the legislate, therefore, seems to presuppose that people can only be fully represented by someone who shares their gender, class, occupation, ethnicity, language, etc.
mirror representation—the legislature is said to be representative of the general public if it mirrors the ethnic, gender, or class characteristics of the public.
160 there is a cost to non-liberal minorities from accepting Rawls’ political conception of the person—namely, it precludes any system of internal restrictions which limit the right of individuals within the groups to revise their conceptions of the good… were the Hutteries to accept Rawls’s conception of the person, then they too would have to accept the view that freedom of religion must be interpreted in terms of an individual’s capacity to form and revise her religious beliefs. Accepting the value of autonomy for political purposes enables its exercise in private life, an implication that will only be favoured by those who endorse autonomy as a general value. Rawls has not explained why people who are communitarians in private life should be liberals in political life. Rawls may be right that within different contexts we can assume diverse points of view toward our person without contradiction so long as these points of view cohere together when circumstances require Rawls 1980: 545. But he has not shown that these points of view do cohere. On the contrary, they clearly conflict on issues of intra-group dissent such as proselytization, apostasy, and mandatory education.
One can ensure tolerance between groups without protecting tolerance of individual dissent within each group.
January 31, 2018
This book was easy to read and make me think. I may even read it again.
August 25, 2018
CINCO DE CINCO ESTRELLAS PARA ESTE MARAVILLOSO CANADIENSE, que escribe para que todos lo entiendan.
Y al mundo,
Y al mundo,
May 3, 2025
Manchmal doch erstaunlich, was politische Philosophie alles leisten kann
January 29, 2008
I'm still working through my thoughts on Kymlicka's version of multicultural liberalism, especially in relation to Kwame Anthony Appiah's critiques of Kymlicka in _The Ethics of Identity_. But I certainly appreciated Kymlicka's attempts to break down broad and unhelpful generalizations into more specific terminology such as multinational, polyethnic, etc. I'm just still wary of those who align themselves so completely with Rawls and Dworkin, although I certainly am for many of Kymlicka's arguments.
May 13, 2009
Doesn't seem like it all works, but important as a treatment of this stuff from a liberal perspective, with good historical background.
Read
November 8, 2009quite a naive theory!
March 9, 2010
The intro was awesome, but I don't have time to read the rest right now.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews