Multicultural Odysseys

We are currently witnessing the global diffusion of multiculturalism, both as a political discourse and as a set of international legal norms. States today are under increasing international scrutiny regarding their treatment of ethnocultural groups, and are expected to meet evolving international standards regarding the rights of indigenous peoples, national minorities, and immigrants. This phenomenon represents a veritable revolution in international relations, yet has received little public or scholarly attention. In this book, Kymlicka examines the factors underlying this change, and the challenges it raises. Against those critics who argue that multiculturalism is a threat to universal human rights, Kymlicka shows that the sort of multiculturalism that is being globalized is inspired and constrained by the human rights revolution, and embedded in a framework of liberal-democratic values. However, the formulation and implementation of these international norms has generated a number of dilemmas. The policies adopted by international organizations to deal with ethnic diversity are driven by conflicting impulses. Pessimism about the destabilizing consequences of ethnic politics alternates with optimism about the prospects for a peaceful and democratic form of multicultural politics. The result is often an unstable mix of paralyzing fear and naïve hope, rooted in conflicting imperatives of security and justice. Moreover, given the enormous differences in the characteristics of minorities (eg., their size, territorial concentration, cultural markers, historic relationship to the state), it is difficult to formulate standards that apply to all groups. Yet attempts to formulate more targeted norms that apply only to specific categories of minorities (eg., "indigenous peoples" or "national minorities") have proven controversial and unstable. Kymlicka examines these dilemmas as they have played out in both the theory and practice of international minority rights protection, including recent developments regarding the rights of national minorities in Europe, the rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas, as well as emerging debates on multiculturalism in Asia and Africa.

Using an innovative blend of political theory, international law, and studies on the sociological and geo-political foundations of minority rights, this landmark publication will set the debate on the likely future of the international politics of diversity.

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.

150 years after Confederation, Canada is known around the world for its social diversity and its commitment to principles of multiculturalism. But the road to contemporary Canada is a winding one, a story of division and conflict as well as union and accommodation. In Canada’s Odyssey, renowned scholar Peter H. Russell provides an expansive, accessible account of Canadian history from the pre-Confederation period to the present day. By focusing on what he calls the "three pillars" of English Canada, French Canada, and Aboriginal Canada, Russell advances an important view of our country as one founded on and informed by "incomplete conquests". It is the very incompleteness of these conquests that have made Canada what it is today, not just a multicultural society but a multinational one. Featuring the scope and vivid characterizations of an epic novel, Canada’s Odyssey is a magisterial work by an astute observer of Canadian politics and history, a perfect book to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Confederation.

Most countries around the world exhibit a long history of exclusion and discrimination directed against ethnic, racial, national, religious, or ideological groups. The underlying justifications for these forms of exclusion have been increasingly discredited by the post-war human rights revolution, decolonization, and by contemporary norms of liberal-democratic constitutionalism, with their commitment to equal rights and non-discrimination. However, even as these older practices and ideologies of exclusion are discredited and repudiated, they continue to have enduring effects. The legacies of exclusion can still be seen in a wide range of social attitudes, cultural practices, economic and demographic patterns, and institutional rules that obstruct efforts to build genuinely inclusive societies of equal citizens. Finding ways to overcome this problem is a major challenge facing virtually every society around the world. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies focuses on two parallel intellectual and political movements that have arisen to address this challenge: the 'politics of reconciliation', with its focus on reparations, truth-telling and healing amongst former adversaries, and the 'politics of difference', with its focus on the recognition and empowerment of minorities in multicultural societies. Both the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference are having a profound impact on the theory and practice of democracy around the world, but remarkably little has been written about the relationship between them. This book aims to fill that gap. Drawing on both theoretical analysis and case studies from around the world, the authors explore how the politics of reconciliation and the politics of difference often interact in mutually supportive ways, as reconciliation leads to more multicultural conceptions of citizenship. But there are also important ways in which the two may compete in their aims and methods. The Politics of Reconciliation in Multicultural Societies is the first attempt to systematically explore these areas of potential convergence and divergence.

The first close study of Jürgen Habermas's theory of socialization, a central but infrequently discussed component of his defense of deliberative democracy, The Idolatry of the Actual charts its increasingly uneasy relationship with the later development of Habermas's social theory. In particular, David A. Borman argues that Habermas's account of the development of the subject and of the conditions under which autonomy can be realized is fundamentally at odds with the increasingly liberal tenor of his social theory. This leads Borman to return to the set of concerns that guided Habermas's social theory in the early 1970s, paying particular attention to questions of crisis and the means by which public reactions are shaped—questions perhaps more relevant today than they have been at any time since the 1930s. Using Habermas's early work as a framework, Borman constructs an original critical-theoretical argument that draws on research in the sociology of schooling to understand how attitudes toward work, reward, achievement, class, gender, and race are shaped in economically functional ways, and draws on philosophical and empirical scholarship to demonstrate the challenges of multicultural integration and the impact of both on the potential for progressive social transformation.

What defines a multicultural city? Policy? Geography? Demography? In Multicultural Cities, Mohammad Abdul Qadeer offers a tour of three of North America’s premier multicultural metropolises – Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles – that demonstrates the critical qualities that make these cities multicultural. Guided by the perspective that multiculturalism is the combination of cultural diversity with a common ground of values and institutions, Qadeer examines the social geography, economy, and everyday life of each metropolitan area. His analysis spans the divide between Canada, where multiculturalism is official government policy, and the United States, where it is not. A comprehensive investigation of how some of today’s leading majority-minority cities thrive, written by a keen observer of North American urban life, Multicultural Cities is an important complement to any discussion about how cities can and should accommodate diversity.

To all of these animals we owe respect for their basic inviolable rights.