How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught
with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying
conflicts over culture? This book brings unparalleled clarity to
the contemporary debate over this question. Maintaining that
cultures are themselves torn by conflicts about their own
boundaries, Seyla Benhabib challenges the assumption shared by many
theorists and activists that cultures are clearly defined wholes.
She argues that much debate--including that of "strong"
multiculturalism, which sees cultures as distinct pieces of a
mosaic--is dominated by this faulty belief, one with grave
consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be
redressed and human diversity achieved. Benhabib masterfully
presents an alternative approach, developing an understanding of
cultures as continually creating, re-creating, and renegotiating
the imagined boundaries between "us" and "them."
Drawing on contemporary cultural politics from Western Europe,
Canada, and the United States, Benhabib develops a double-track
model of deliberative democracy that permits maximum cultural
contestation within the official public sphere as well as in and
through social movements and the institutions of civil society.
Agreeing with political liberals that constitutional and legal
universalism should be preserved at the level of polity, she
nonetheless contends that such a model is necessary to resolve
multicultural conflicts.
Analyzing in detail the transformation of citizenship practices
in European Union countries, Benhabib concludes that flexible
citizenship, certain kinds of legal pluralism and models of
institutional powersharing are quite compatible with deliberative
democracy, as long as they are in accord with egalitarian
reciprocity, voluntary self-ascription, and freedom of exit and
association. "The Claims of Culture" offers invaluable insight to
all those, whether students or scholars, lawyers or policymakers,
who strive to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of
cultural politics in the twenty-first century.
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