S0805 Multiculturalism in a Liberal State

In the last four decades, the term multiculturalism has been used in various contexts. In the 1970s Canada and Australia transformed their former national identities into multicultural national identities. In other countries, following massive waves of immigration, groups of immigrants began to press claims against the state to adopt multicultural policies.
Also, since the 1970s the \"politics of identity\" (promoted by racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, etc.) turned into \"a politics of multiculturalism\" aimed at advancing the status of the cultures of groups in state and civil society institutions that act for the preservation and promotion of cultural products. Following these developments, vivid discussion has taken place in the last two decades within the context of liberal thought on the extent to which a liberal state ought to intervene in the practices of cultural groups that violate the liberal rights of members of the groups (particularly women and children). This course will discuss these developments and their implications on liberal political theory.\r\n

In the first part of the course we shall discuss the concept of culture; we shall also review the contexts in which the term \"multiculturalism\" has been in use in the past four decades.
We shall then discuss the writings of liberal thinkers (Okin, Barry) who call for widespread intervention on the part of liberal states in the affairs of cultural groups for the protection of weak sub-groups (mainly women and children) from abusive cultural practices. We shall then discuss the writings of liberal thinkers (Galston, Kukathas) who advocate the opposite approach, namely utmost respect for and toleration of illiberal cultural practices. We shall then discuss three additional approaches: one that calls for inter-group and intra-group dialogues on the normative meaning of problematic cultural practices; application of the concept of human rights as criterion for the evaluation of problematic practices; application of a universalistic, essentialist perception of humanness as criterion. We shall conclude by discussing a new version of liberalism – Political liberalism - that evolved in the last decades of the 20th century to address the problems raised by the cultural diversity of the liberal state and the normative disagreements that ensue from it.

\r\nTeaching method: The students will be asked to read xeroxed materials to be discussed in class. The students will also be asked to submit a short \"reaction paper\" ahead of each meeting of the course.