Multicultural Citizenship

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. Thebook 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.

L'autore intende... portare ordine in un dibattito largamente confuso e percorso da posizioni che spesso hanno rischiato più di mistificare che di analizzare i termini reali dei problemi., This is a very important book, one that is indispensable for the present discussion of multiculturalism ... this is an immensely rich, informative, and above all clarifying work, written by a first-class philosophical mind, animated by a humane outlook. It ought to be compulsory reading for all those who want to carry on the debate in this area., Will Kymlicka is among the most important and interesting liberal political theorists writing today ... [he] produces an elegant and extremely interesting liberal account of the character, applicability and conditions suitable for the deployment of the notion of the rights of minority cultures considered as group rights. The book is subtitled a liberal theory of minority rights and it is not too exaggerated to say that Kymlicka provides not only the first fully worked out theory of liberal minority rights but one of the most successful and satisfying accounts of liberal political theory in recent years., The overall argument of his book, and its attentive consideration of almost every issue vital to a complex notion of multiculturalism make invaluable reading for anyone weary of simplistic declamations., This timely and well-argued book offers a liberal defense, based on individual autonomy and social equality, of certain group-specific rights to self-government, to support for cultural differences, and to political representation. Clear, unpolemical, and open-minded, it nicely marries normative political theory and institutional analysis ... In all, this is a fine book, and the one to which students of multiculturalism must first be sent.

Will Kymlicka is Research Director of the Canadian Centre for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Ottawa, and Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, Carleton University. His previous books include: Liberalism, Community and Culture; Contemporary Political Philosophy and Justice in Political Philosophy.