How should democratic societies define justice for cultural minority groups, and how might such justice be secured? This book is a nuanced and judicious response to a critical issue in political theory—the challenge of according equal respect and recognition to minority groups and accommodating their claims for special cultural rights and arrangements.Monique Deveaux contends that liberal theorists fail to grant enough importance to identity and the content of cultural life in their attempts to conceive of political institutions for plural societies. She takes to task the spectrum of theories on pluralism, from weak and strong theories of tolerance through neutralist liberalism to comprehensive liberalism, and finally to arguments for deliberative politics that build on Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics. The solution proposed here is "deliberative liberalism," which incorporates both critically reconceived principles of deliberative democracy and central liberal norms of consent and respect. Cultural conflicts in democratic societies include clashes involving Aboriginal peoples, ethnic and linguistic minorities, and recent immigrant groups in Europe, North America, and Australia. Drawing on examples from several countries, Deveaux concludes that genuine respect and recognition for cultural minorities requires full inclusion in existing institutions and the right to help shape the political culture of their own societies through democratic dialogue and deliberation.

Sexual Justice defends a robust a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights, emphasizing protection against discrimination and recognition of queer relationships and families. Synthesizing materials from law, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literature, Kaplan argues that sexual desire is central to the pursuit of happiness: equal citizenship requires individual freedom to shape oneself through a variety of intimate associations.

Despite decades of nation-building exercise, ethnic-based claims for substantive equality, justice and equitable political inclusion and socio-economic order continue to result in communal rivalries. These are claims that define and represent the issue of minorities in Africa, of which these conflicts are manifestations. Although ethnic conflicts in Africa have been a subject of a large number of studies, the potential and role of norms on minority rights to address claims that ethno-cultural groups raise has not received the attention it deserves. Based on materials from normative political theory and international human rights law and using an empirical and prescriptive analysis, this book defends a robust system of minority rights built around culture, equality and self-determination. This is employed to elaborate an adequate constitutional design providing policy frameworks (multilingual language policy, recognition and affirmation of cultural diversity,), structures (that ensure just representation and participation of members of all groups) and norms (that guarantee substantive equality and the rights to language, religion and culture). The study then proffers two cases studies (South Africa and Ethiopia) to ascertain how such constitutional design might be translated into actual policy frameworks, institutions and norms.

"Irene Taviss Thomson gives us a nuanced portrait of American social politics that helps explain both why we are drawn to the idea of a 'culture war' and why that misrepresents what is actually going on." ---Rhys H. Williams, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago "An important work showing---beneath surface conflict---a deep consensus on a number of ideals by social elites." ---John H. Evans, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego The idea of a culture war, or wars, has existed in America since the 1960s---an underlying ideological schism in our country that is responsible for the polarizing debates on everything from the separation of church and state, to abortion, to gay marriage, to affirmative action. Irene Taviss Thomson explores this notion by analyzing hundreds of articles addressing hot-button issues over two decades from four magazines: National Review, Time, The New Republic, and The Nation, as well as a wide array of other writings and statements from a substantial number of public intellectuals. What Thomson finds might surprise you: based on her research, there is no single cultural divide or cultural source that can account for the positions that have been adopted. While issues such as religion, homosexuality, sexual conduct, and abortion have figured prominently in public discussion, in fact there is no single thread that unifies responses to each of these cultural dilemmas for any of the writers. Irene Taviss Thomson is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, having taught in the Department of Social Sciences and History at Fairleigh Dickinson University for more than 30 years. Previously, she taught in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

This key volume explores the relationship between cultural justice and sexual justice in multicultural societies in a new light. The authors challenge the framing of ‘feminism and multiculturalism’ as one of inevitable conflict, as well as the portrayal of liberal sexual equality and cultural rights as irreconcilable, moving the debate beyond the culture/gender impasse. Focusing on three theoretical themes from a feminist perspective: the meaning and role of culture and identity in politics the problem of autonomy in relation to culture and identity the crucial role of democracy in addressing the theoretical and practical problems raised by this set of issues. The diverse contributors break new theoretical ground by providing detailed engagement with the concrete experiences of women and minorities who are caught in the dilemmas of gender and cultural justice. The collected chapters address sexual/cultural justice in a range of different countries, offering illuminating case studies on Britain, South Africa, Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, Mexico, and the United States. Sexual Justice / Cultural Justice will be of strong interest to students and researchers working in the areas of gender and feminist theory, politics, law, philosophy and sociology.

Traditionally social science treated culture as a peripheral issue, but the last twenty years have witnessed a cultural turn throughout the social sciences. Culture is now at the core of debate. Culture and Economy After the Cultural Turn examines the impact of the cultural turn for the social sciences in relation to the decline of interest in economic aspects of society. It presents a number of responses to the changing relationship between culture and economy, and to the way in which the cultural turn has sought to understand it. Contributors from a wide range of disciplines present differing views oon these matters in relation to issues of political sensibilities and movements, equality and recognition, `cultural manageme

Gender and Justice in Multicultural Liberal States explores the challenges that culturally plural liberal states face when they hold competing political commitments to cultural rights and sexual equality, and advances an argument for resolving such dilemmas through democratic dialogue and negotiation. Exploring recent examples of gendered cultural conflicts in South Africa, Canada, and Britain, this book shows that there is an urgent need for workable strategies to mediate the antagonisms between the cultural practices and arrangements of certain ethno-cultural and religious groups and the norms and constitutional rights endorsed by liberal states. Yet such strategies will be successful only insofar as they can resolve conflicts without either reinforcing women's subordination within cultural communities or unjustly dismissing calls for cultural recognition and forms of self-governance. To this end, the book develops an approach to mediating cultural tensions that takes seriously the demands of justice by cultural and religious minorities in liberal democratic states. Grounded in an argument for democratic legitimacy, this approach invokes norms of political inclusion and democratic dialogue, and highlights negotiation and compromise as the best vehicles for arriving at resolutions to conflicts of cultural value. However, it also reconceives the basis of democratic legitimacy so as to include not merely formal expressions of political consent, but also a range of non-formal democratic activity that occur in the private and social spheres, from acts of cultural reinvention and subversion to outright expressions of dissent and cultural refusal.