A culture is the customary way of life of a specific community. A particular state may provide a remedy for a rights violation whose effect is that a specific community is not allowed to live in its accustomed manner whereas the law has provided otherwise. An example would be, a country may protect the culture of an indigenous group living in an isolated area. By custom, they hunt a particular animal at a particular time. Some action by an organ of state or private party prevents that community carrying on the activity. The Courts may order that the obstruction be removed or some compensation be paid.
To say that human beings have rights and that human beings are born into particular cultures is not to say that every culture in every jurisdiction has any legal remedy if they are unable to perform some accustomed activity. It may be that no collective or cultural rights are recognized or protected by law. It may be that only the rights of certain cultures are protected. It is never the case that any possible culture has equal protection. This follows because a culture could involve highly repugnant acts like slow-cooking judges and then feeding their corpses to their own children.
Some thirty years ago, Avishai Margalit and Moshe Halbertal wrote a paper suggesting Liberalism involved a 'right to culture'. It is mischievous nonsense as most people have now very thoroughly realized.
Human beings have a right to culture- not just any culture, but their own.
No. They may have rights as individuals and there may be a right to form associations of certain sorts. But there is no right to 'your own culture' because, if we go far enough back in time, this may involve feasting on the slain corpses of your enemies or, at the very least, killing them or selling them into slavery.
The very notion of a vinculum juris- a bond of law- and 'Hohfeldian incidents' may be wholly antithetical to the cultures of many peoples who may have recently settled in a spot. It may be they would each prefer to be released from the customary obligations and practices of their 'culture' though it may be dangerous or unwise to actually come out and say this. What is certain however is that a doctrine which expands rights without considering how the remedies will be afforded is highly mischievous. It undermines faith in the incentive compatibility of the entire regime. Virtue signallers who attempt to expand the ambit of the law in this foolish way may well provoke a more than proportional reaction.
The right to culture has far-reaching implications for the liberal conception of the state.
It is nonsense. The liberal conception of the State seeks to overcome what is cultural save in so far as it is harmless or purely a private matter which imposes no cost on society. If the thing is beneficial, it comes under the rubric of merit or 'civilizational' goods and has the property of universality. It can be appropriated by anybody. Oikeiosis, in this case, is unrestricted as is the case when different tribes or cultures enjoy the same 'homonoia' or universal law code.
A culture essentially requires a group, and the right to culture may involve giving groups a status that contradicts the status of the individual in a liberal state.
A liberal state is welcome to be majoritarian or to give special protection to indigenous groups in isolated areas or, indeed, to create SEZs with a different legal code and fiscal arrangements. So long as Hohfeldian incidents are linked to incentive compatible mechanisms, no great mischief or Hegelian 'contradiction' arises.
The right to culture may involve a group whose norms cannot be reconciled with the conception of the individual in a liberal society. For example, the group may recognize only arranged marriages and not those resulting from the free choice of the partners.
So what? Any group is free not to recognize things they don't like provided they don't break the law. I may feel that Mr. Cohen should not be allowed to marry Miss Levy because she is a divorced woman, but provided I cause no nuisance to either, the Law has no business interfering.
Protecting cultures out of the human right to culture may take the form of an obligation to support cultures that flout the rights of the individual in a liberal society. And this is not the only difficulty- there is also the problem that this right may be used to protect cultures within a state which reject the "civil religion," the "ethos," the "narrative" or the "meta-narrative," or any other appellation you may choose for the shared values and symbols of the state's citizens. But these shared values and symbols are meant to serve as the focus for citizens' identification with the state, as well as the source of their willingness to defend it even at the risk of their lives. A central problem for the liberal society's protection of the right to culture- especially if the culture involved is not itself liberal- is that protecting it often requires the state to use illiberal means.
Provided the action is limited in scope and proportionate in nature, no illiberalism is involved.
For example, granting a particular cultural group the opportunity to preserve its cultural homogeneity in a given region under certain circumstances may exact the price of preventing outsiders from living there, even if they are willing to pay the going price for homes in that area.
I suppose, the authors mean 'restrictive covenants'. That is a justiciable matter. Due process of law is not illiberal though, no doubt, some may find the result not to their liking.
Another problem is posed by the prevalent view among liberal thinkers that the state must be neutral with respect to its citizens' way of life.
It is enough for the due processes of law are conducted in an impartial manner. It is a separate matter that a particular society may decide questions of fact in one way at one time whereas a later, more enlightened age, might consider the outcome illiberal. The fact is, if you are not taking money for sex, you are not a whore though some may say that you receive various valuable services from your wife which is why you are no better than a prostitute- Daddy! Similarly, a State is still considered Liberal even if, from some point of view, it is no better than a fucking prostitute who polished off all the idlis though you knew very well I might drop in and would certainly want to eat some idlis. Mummy has always favoured you because you shamelessly gratify her carnal desires! I would never dream of doing any such thing to my own wife just to get her to cook me breakfast. That's because I'm not a fucking man-whore like you, Dad!
The right to culture demands
nothing. Either there is a right with a remedy under a vinculum juris, in which case there is a justiciable claim, or there is no fucking right- just a demand of a demented type. Why not demand the right to levitate instead?
that the state abandon its neutral position and actively assist needy cultures, even when these cultures preach their own view of the good life which conflicts with other views within the state. In our opinion, the right to culture in a liberal state permits the state to be neutral, if at all, only with respect to the dominant culture of the majority, on the assumption that the dominant culture can take care of itself. But a liberal state may not be neutral with respect to the cultures of minorities, especially those in danger of dwindling or even disappearing. The state is obligated to abjure its neutrality, in our view, not for the sake of the good of the majority, but in order to make it possible for members of minority groups to retain their identity. Kymlicka's discussion of the rights of minority groups in a liberal state has become well-known (Kymlicka, 1989). One of the reasons this discussion is so powerful is that it uses the concrete example of native Canadians.
Who have a very good claim to territorial autonomy. Also their way of life is admired by other Canadians. They are a significant part of Canada's great Cultural wealth.
We, too, will use two concrete examples to illustrate our principled discussion- two minority cultural groups in Israel: Israeli Arabs and Ultra- Orthodox Jews.
Neither of whom inhabit a Liberal State. Zionism is not some variant of Liberalism. It is ethno-nationalistic with a Socialist underpinning. I'm not saying the Israelis aren't marvellous people. But most of its Jewish inhabitants are relatively recent immigrants. It was not in their power to set up a Liberal State. They had to cut their coat according to their cloth.
Both of these groups are comprised of Israeli citizens living within the borders of Israel proper. We are not discussing the case of the Palestinian Arabs who have been living under Israeli occupation since 1967 and are not Israeli citizens. This group of nearly two million people living against their will under military occupation presents a much harder problem for Israel's aspiration to being a liberal state. Some background information about the Ultra-Orthodox is in order: Ultra-Orthodox culture is essentially anti-liberal. There is no aspect of its members' lives in which it does not actively interfere, sometimes to the extent of compulsion. This includes aspects that are considered prototypically private in liberal societies, such as having a television set in one's home, which is forbidden in Ultra-Orthodox society. Similarly, there is a ban on reading any newspapers other than those published by the community itself. The community may even react with violence against individuals who violate its rules. In some Ultra-Orthodox communities there are "morality squads" that follow, report on, threaten, and sometimes act violently against members whose "morality" does not accord with the community's extreme puritanism. In short, the Ultra-Orthodox way of life is rigidly enforced by the community and its institutions. The members' economic dependency on the community is almost absolute, so that any deviance can be punished by boycott, leading to the loss of one's livelihood. This society also makes "illiberal" demands on the conduct of outsiders in their public space. People walking in certain Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods are categorically requested to wear "modest dress," which means, for example, that women may not wear sleeveless or even short-sleeved clothing. Since driving a vehicle is forbidden on the Sabbath by Orthodox Jewish law, anyone riding in a car in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on the Sabbath- or even on a public road which the Ultra- Orthodox consider part of their public space- is liable to be greeted by shouts or even a hail of stones thrown at them. The most important value in Ultra-Orthodox society is the study of Torah (the body of law and wisdom contained in the Jewish Scriptures and its sacred commentaries), and so it is not surprising that they consider education an issue of central importance. The school curriculum is controlled exclusively by the community, and there is a clear discrimination between the education of girls and of boys. Not only are they taught different subjects, but girls generally complete their education by the age of 18-19, while the education of males continues in some sense throughout their lives. Except arithmetic, boys are taught almost no secular subjects. Their instruction is very intensive, but it is radically limited to religious subjects. The two groups discussed here together constitute more than a quarter of the citizens of Israel (18 percent Arabs and about 7-10 percent Ultra-Orthodox).
That figure is now 13 percent. I think there is a trade-off here. The Ultras, whose social arrangements are conducive to a higher birth-rate are enabling the Jewish population to recover to what it should have been. The Price Equation means there is a benefit for the rest of the Jewihs, particularly Ashkenazi, population.
The Ultras are exemplary in devotion to Scripture and ritual observance. Surely, there is some 'positive externality' available to the non-observant even if there is also some annoyance or nuisance at certain times?
In comparison, Canada's native population constitutes only one percent of the whole. It might seem that these numerical data are not important for a principled discussion of the proper attitude of liberal societies towards cultural groups, since principles are principles regardless of the number of people to which they apply.
We expect something more from our own kith and kin than Liberal benevolence based on abstract principles. In particular, the Ultra-Orthodox surely deserve love and admiration from their fellow Jews for their good qualities and their pious devotion to the ancestral religion. The fact is, no political regime makes higher demands than such as good and decent people readily yield to without any mealy mouthed talk of 'principles' and 'rights'. We give more when we are not obligated to do so. We may escape onerous obligations by ourselves finding some countervailing grievance and demand for assistance. At the margin, there is an exit of those with higher capacity to discharge obligations and entry of those with opposite traits.
The authors go on to mention some points of tension between mainstream Zionist Israelis and certain orthodox sects but this is a problem between Jewish people whose Faith is far more important to them than any merely 'cultural' baggage they have acquired.
The problem of Israeli Arabs is the difficult dilemma of divided loyalty: they are citizens of the State of Israel in which there is a Jewish majority that is involved in a continual war with their Arab brothers (particularly the members of their own people, the Palestinian Arabs). On the one hand, they are required to be loyal to the State of Israel, yet, on the other, they need to be loyal to their brothers who are at war with Israel. The two groups we have presented constitute a challenge to Israel's aspiration to be a liberal society:
Israel aspires to be a rich and secure country just as its neighbours do. Sooner or later, there is a mutually beneficial deal to be made. This won't involve 'Liberal' insistence on the collective right of LGBTQ cats to marry Ultra-orthodox camels. It may involve recondite clauses regarding the transfer of nano-technology and profit sharing from Fintech.
Three issues are important in explicating the right to culture: What is the content of the right?
A right is a Hohfeldian immunity or entitlement with a corresponding obligation holder under a bond of law. That right must be unambiguously specified and there needs to be an incentive compatible mechanism for the remedy to become available. Otherwise, the 'right' is bullshit.
Who has the capacity for this right?
The right must be confined to people whose eligibility is unambiguous and relatively easy to establish. We should look for 'uncorrelated asymmetries' which pick out all and only members of a specific identity class.
What is the justification for this right?
This need not be specified. If there is an incentive compatible remedy, the justification is known to the obligation holder.
Only after these issues have been clarified can we consider how to apply the right to culture in specific cases,
This is stuff lawyers are good at. These two academics don't seem to have a clue about 'Law & Econ'.
such as the two that have been the focus of our discussion. What Is the Content of the Right to Culture?
It is what the law says it is. This is either a justiciable matter or the thing is bullshit.
There are various levels of the right to culture.
No. There is only one level- that of an individual whose claim is justiciable or, in the case of multiple claims, Class Certification by a court.
The first one is the right to maintain a comprehensive way of life within the larger society without interference, and with only the limitation of the harm principle.
This is an individual right. It makes no difference whether or not the way of life is 'comprehensive' though the doctrine of proportionality may apply. This can provide leeway for what we might call 'conscientious' objection to a particular practice which others would find innocuous. Thus if I fail to wear a helmet because I was careless, I accept a small fine for riding my motorcycle in a negligent manner. But if I omit to wear a helmet because I am a Sikh, the Judge may say, that to convict me of an offense would not be a proportional response given my high standing in the community and long record of riding my bike without causing any accident.
The second level includes the first and adds the right to recognition of the community's way of life by the general society. This may be expressed, for example, in opportunities for this way of life to appear in the general media (as in the special "gay" programs on Britain's Channel Four).
Heteros like Gay people coz they are...well, gay as opposed to morose and moronic like most of us straight dudes. However, in this case, no right was involved. Channel 4 took a punt on the 'pink Pound' and did well out of it.
The third level includes both the previous levels and adds the right to support for the way of life by the state's institutions so that the culture can flourish.
Again, this is not a right but a gratuitous subsidy to a 'merit good'. I'm not saying the thing might not be a way of buying votes, but that's how it should be dressed up.
In our example of Ultra-Orthodox culture this means financial support for Torah institutions and Torah scholars, which is a crucial condition for this culture's flourishing.
Torah scholarship flourished because Jews were pious, not because they were paid. Still, no harm in buying a few votes. This is 'transferable utility' and the reason democratic Social Choice aint incessantly stalemated.
The question of the level at which the right to culture exists is very important for understanding the right itself,
No. Rights are either justiciable or they are bullshit. Political claims, however, are part of a bargaining game and are generally covered under the doctrine of political question- i.e. aren't justiciable per se.
and not only its political application as made possible by the activity of the cultural group as a pressure group. Due to the pivotal position of the Ultra-Orthodox political parties in Israel, the culture of Ultra-Orthodox society is not only permitted to exist but is also able to flourish, as it is given massive financial support by the government.
In return for which they have more babies. Demographics matter as Lebanon's history has shown.
The culture of Arab society, in contrast, is allowed to exist but not to flourish and is given only partial recognition. The rest of our discussion is focused on the third level of the right to culture.
Who Has the Capacity for the Right to Culture? We began this essay with the declaration that human beings have a right to culture. The clear meaning of this declaration is that this is a right possessed by each and every individual -in other words, it is the individual who has the capacity for this right. Yet, we presented the content of the right to culture as the right to maintain a way of life. And since we defined a way of life as an attribute of a group rather than an individual, the right to maintain it seems prima facie available only to a collective and not to individuals. The last of the Mohicans does not seem to be someone with the right to a Mohican way of life since by assumption there are no other Mohicans, and the Mohican way of life requires a group. Thus, the only way to fulfill the last of the Mohicans' right to culture would be to force other people to become Mohicans and, thus, abandon their own culture and identity for this purpose- obviously an absurd demand.
Nope. So long as the Mohican is alive, he is the Mohican culture. The guy aint gonna be terribly pleased if I turn up with a tomahawk and try to smoke the peace pipe with him.
Joseph Raz proposes a definition of a right which is the best we have encountered (Raz, 1986). The gist of this definition is that X has a right if X's interests constitute a sufficient reason to place other people under some obligation.
This is foolish. X has a right only if other people have an obligation to him even if there is no fucking sufficient reason for it. They just lost a bet is all.
This definition makes it clear that the individual cannot have the capacity to be a bearer of the right to culture, since the interests of one person cannot constitute a sufficient reason for placing others under the obligation to help him or her maintain his or her culture, and culture in the sense of a way of life requires a group.
It can. If a group of people bound themselves by contract or some other legal instrument to do things for me which would enable me to maintain my cultural identity- e.g. they must carry me around on a shield because I'm actually Chief Vitalstatistix from the Asterix cartoons- then that is precisely what they must do.
It is the requirement of a sufficient reason in Raz's definition that leads one to deny the individual's right to culture, assigning it to the collective instead.
The law of contract differs from country to country. Generally speaking English law- and, I assume, Israeli law, doesn't consider 'sufficient reason' to be a condition for a contract. It is your own lookout if you make silly deals.
We now intend to adapt Raz's definition of the concept of right so as to make it possible for the individual to be considered the bearer of the right to culture. Our adaptation of this definition suggests that even though the individual's right to culture does not provide a sufficient reason to place an obligation on others, it is an important and sometimes even a necessary component of a reason which is sufficient for obligating others to help maintain a culture.
This is nonsense. No necessary or sufficient reasons of this type are known to jurisprudence. If they were, people would stockpile similar obligations against others. If I am obligated to help you maintain your culture, you are obligated to help me maintain my culture by sucking off a large number of goats.
In order to demand its right to culture that constitutes a sufficient reason for obligating others, a group must pass some numerical threshold of right-bearers.
In which case you will have an exponential increase in aggrieved groups demanding special treatment under numerous different headings.
The Mohican community, for example, can be divided into a number of groups each of which is large enough to pass this threshold. Let us now focus on the right to culture of one particular Mohican, Hawkeye. Hawkeye alone cannot pass the threshold, but let us assume that he is joined by a certain group of Mohicans which demands the right to culture and is large enough to pass the threshold. In this particular claim, Hawkeye's right is a necessary but not sufficient component of the reason to impose an obligation on others, while the entire group's claim is sufficient but not necessary for this purpose. The group's claim is not necessary because the claims of other Mohican groups could serve the same purpose. But what happens when of all the Mohicans only Hawkeye remains- "the last of the Mohicans?" He clearly has no partners in his claim for the right to culture who could make this claim sufficient to impose an obligation on others. But the fact that only the last of the Mohicans has survived does not mean that he has no right to culture. It simply means that this right is not effective- it cannot by itself impose any obligation on others. But this is true of all rights: there are always accompanying conditions that must be fulfilled to make any right an effective one- that is, a justification for obligating others.
The justification does not matter. What matters is whether the obligation holder has an incentive to provide the remedy. If they don't, there is entitlement collapse.
In the case of the right to culture, the accompanying condition is the existence of a sufficient number of other people demanding the right to the same culture.
Either this is a political bargaining problem- in which any gain could be easily reversed or rationed amongst beneficiaries- or it is a justiciable matter where there could be entitlement collapse. Essentially, only a 'quasi-rent' is secured. Moreover, increased rent contestation and dissipation may make everybody worse off.
What Justifies the Right to Culture? The question of who has the capacity for the right to culture is intimately related to the question of what justifies this right.
No. Justification does not matter. Justiciability does- provided remedies are incentive compatible.
Since this is the right that determines the "ontology" of the liberal society,
No. 'Law & Econ'- i.e. mechanism design- are the hypokeimenon undergirding liberal society. If mechanisms turn to shit goodbye Liberalisms, hello Donald Trump!
in a certain sense, one cannot ask who has the capacity for this right independently of the right itself: it is the culture that determines one of the important senses of the term "individual." The point is that the central term we have been using freely, "the individual," is systematically ambiguous between the concept of the metaphysical individual and the concept of the anthropological individual- between "person" and "personality."
Because political philosophy is bedevilled by intensional fallacies. The Law specifies the extension of its terms. There has to be a specific individual or set of individuals who have locus standi for a claim to proceed.
The criterion for what constitutes personal identity over time is different from the criterion for the features constituting personality identity.
There is no such thing. Personal identity is tied to a specific body. Personality is an aspect of personal identity.
The same person can undergo a radical change in personality yet remain the same person, while the converse is not the case.
How do we know? It may be that if the same person undergoes a radical change in personal identity- e.g. has her brain transplanted into the body of a giraffe- her personality may or may not change.
Culture plays a crucial role in shaping the personalities of individuals,
unless it doesn't at all.
especially in those aspects that they and their environment consider central for constituting their personality identity.
Which is just the affiliation of their personal identity.
Ultra-Orthodox culture determines that the attribute of being a Torah scholar is central to the personality identity of men in that society,
It is desirable but not central. Spending two minutes saying the Shema may be the best you can do.
while Israeli Arab culture determines that speaking Arabic is central to the personality identity of individuals in Arab society.
No. It is natural or desirable but not central. A dumb person does not cease being an Arab.
The right to culture is, thus, not only the right to identify with a group but the right to secure one's personality identity.
But this is already covered by your individual right to do the fuck you want to do provided you don't break the fucking law.
The individual in the personality sense has no less a moral and political role than the individual in the metaphysical sense.
That sense is nonsense.
Thus, for example, the statute of limitations on criminal prosecution can be justified by the assumption that the criminal's personality has changed over such a long period of time, and so today's personality should not be prosecuted for acts performed by the long-gone criminal personality.
No. It is justified on grounds of economy and administrative convenience and the fact that witnesses may be fucking dead.
On other issues, such as abortion, the key concept is the person rather than the personality. In short, both concepts of the individual play an important role in human life, and the liberal society needs both of them.
No society needs stupid professors when only scrupulous lawyers are trained to avoid intensional fallacies and only use words with well defined extensions in their pleas.
But, beyond our social interest in these two concepts, it is clear that all persons are supremely interested in their personality identity- that is, in their ability to preserve the attributes that are seen as central by them and the members of their group. The right to culture is not, in our opinion, a special case of the right to freedom of expression in the liberal society. On the contrary, freedom of expression is a special case whose principal justification is the right to culture.
Rubbish! There are plenty of cultures which deny any such freedom. We do have the right to say and do stupid shit but that arises from our right to be stupid, not the right of our stupid culture to get us to do stupid shit.
The Right to One's Own Culture: Comparison with Kymlicka At the beginning of this essay we mentioned Kymlicka's use of the example of native Canadians as lending force to his discussion and serving as a model for our own use of the examples of Israeli Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. We would now like to directly compare our view of the right to culture with Kymlicka's in order to elucidate the distinction between his and our concepts of the individual.
His stuff isn't obviously foolish because Canada is a big country with low population density and most Canadians do want the indigenous people to preserve their culture on their own land. Israel, by contrast, is very densely populated. By 2065, the population may reach 35 million. The country will be 'standing room only'.
Basically, he claims that an individual has a right to a culture;
the last Mohican should have a right to live as a Mohican on Mohican ground. We will mourn his death. Something invaluable has been subtracted from our world.
we claim that an individual has a right to his or to her culture.
Would these two gentlemen go claim that right from ISIS?
Kymlicka deals with the question of how the classic liberal view- as represented by Rawls and Dworkin- can be reconciled with the privileges granted to native Canadians. These rights, which are granted to the native Canadian tribes as groups, restrict the individual freedom of the whites to buy land or to vote in elections in those areas where the tribes are concentrated. Kymlicka, unlike other liberals such as Trudeau, does not want these privileges to be abolished. Yet, on the other hand, he does not want to abandon the classic liberal position that does not recognize the group as an intermediate between the state and the individual and does not accept the privileges intended to protect the existence of a particular culture- privileges that restrict the rights of individuals who are not members of that culture.
There is no great difficulty here. Canadian land law- depending on the Province- can be changed so stringent 'Partition' laws are relaxed in favour of certain types of coparacenary ownership. It is a different matter, that valuable resources may be at stake.
To extract himself from this dilemma, Kymlicka develops the following argument: the right to culture is actually part of the right to freedom and is, therefore, profoundly in accord with liberal values.
But liberal values aren't in accord with actually being liberal with your own money. Also Kymlicka is lying. Liberals are just as racist as the rest of us. They may be richer or better educated but everybody knows they are fucking hypocrites. This is 'Preference Falsification'.
For Kymlicka, the right to freedom is tied to the recognition that every person has a basic interest in being able to evaluate her goals and loyalties rationally and to change them when she believes them to be mistaken.
Nobody has any such 'basic interest' any more than they have a rational justification for breathing in and then breathing out.
In Kymlicka's view, individuals can have a variety of options from which to choose, as well as the ability to evaluate these options, only if they are part of a cultural context.
Not me. If I'm part of a 'cultural context', I'm definitely blind drunk. My options are getting an Uber or passing out on the sofa.
The culture creates a considerable number of both the options to choose from and the criteria to be used in judging the value of the various options.
No. A culture may be described as offering a menu of choice. But so can anything else. One may say 'Respirations creates a considerable number of options- e.g. not suffocating immediately but going for a pint instead'. But why bother doing so. It is obvious that cultural affiliation is a constraint on choice just like other types of affiliation.
No freedom is possible without cultural affiliation.
NO! No freedom is possible without RESPIRATION! That's way more important.
Thus, the importance of social affiliation in the liberal view is derived from the more primary value of freedom.
Fuck Freedom. RESPIRATION is what matters.
Kymlicka thus adds another condition to the accepted individualist conception of liberalism- the condition of cultural affiliation
Instead of RESPIRATION? That's absurd!
permiting the possibility of liberalism's central value as Kymlicka understands it.
It is an arbitrary, but not unreasonable, stipulation in the context of an uncorrelated asymmetry where only some cultures of Canada are indigenous and the rest of the population has a strong preference to ensure the survival of that indigenous culture.
The link Kymlicka forges between cultural affiliation and freedom has important implications
if we are Canadian and share his views
for the scope of the right to culture and the conditions under which it is justified to grant political and legal privileges in order to preserve a minority culture. In Kymlicka's view, a minority's right to culture is not the right to preserve its particular culture with its traditional content, but the right of the individual members of the minority group to have some sort of cultural affiliation- not necessarily their original one. If the native Canadian minority were to assimilate successfully, even if unwillingly, into the white majority and become part of its Western, Anglo-Saxon culture, it would lose its justification to keep the privileges that have been granted to it.
Not in law. Either the indigenous population has special Hohfeldian immunities and entitlements in specific territories in which case it can do as it pleases there or else no actual concession has been made. A culture is welcome to develop on any lines it pleases. It is a separate matter that this may weaken its bargaining power or alter what others feel is owed to them,
Kymlicka justifies the preservation of demographic majority of the native Canadians within their own territory by restricting the right of others to buy land there not because the existence of a white majority in the native Canadians' territory would lead to the loss of their particular culture, but because experience has shown that this minority is not capable of assimilating into Western culture, and so it would be left without any cultural affiliation at all.
No. The quality of the culture would have declined but the affiliation would remain.
Without their special privileges, the members of the minority would be left in a state of "anomie" and, thus, would lack the capacity to choose, since this capacity depends on having some sort of a cultural context.
The same argument may be made of any under-class- e.g. the 'Trailer Park Boys'- suffering from high rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence etc.
Kymlicka's interpretation of liberalism, therefore, protects the right to a cultural context but not to a particular culture.
It does nothing whatsoever. Laws can protect things. Arbitrary assertions about what is or isn't 'Liberal' or in the National interest or otherwise desirable may motivate actions to change the Law but, then again, they may merely constitute an idle type of virtue signalling or a futile type of gesture politics.
If the native Canadians' culture were destroyed by the presence of a white majority in their territory, but the individual members of the minority were able to assimilate, albeit against their will, into the white culture, then Kymlicka would not see any reason to grant this minority any privileges.
But, if 'assimilation' to white culture had indeed occurred, it is likely that the indigenous population would have found financial, political and legal means to protect their interests. Indeed, they would probably be making a lot of money by finding ways to commercially exploit their culture.
We disagree with Kymlicka's view of the right to culture and, thus, also with his suggested restrictions on this right, which are derived from the justification he gives to it. In our view, the individual's right to culture stems from the fact that every person has an overriding interest in his personality identity-
NO! Our overriding interest is in RESPIRATION! Stupid professors should be banging on about Liberalism's duty to assist respiration by reminding everybody to breathe in and breathe out. It is utterly shocking that many Universities don't have Professors lecturing on the importance of this type of socio-political intervention.
that is, in preserving his way of life and the traits that are central identity components for him and the other members of his cultural group. Mainly, we consider the best formulation of the right to culture to be internal to the viewpoint of the members of a particular culture.
In which case there is a right for any group of people to consider themselves a culture which, for 'internal' reasons, can have no obligations to anybody else. Moreover, those who wish to influence the majority culture in a liberal direction may be ostracized with impunity by members of that culture.
In contrast to what Kymlicka defines as the reason for the importance of culture- the fact that it gives people alternatives from which to choose- the members of a particular culture consider it important because the particular content of the culture gives their lives meaning on a variety of levels.
Presumably, the Canadian professor is expressing a view common in his own culture. We like to think of the Canadians as nice guys who historically have been less oppressive to indigenous people. Moreover, Canada is a Commonwealth country and there have been parallel legal developments in Australia, India, etc. strengthening collective rights to land.
People who speak a particular language, for example, consider it important to preserve their language not because giving it up would mean giving up the use of language altogether, but because their culture is phrased in terms of this language, and they find particular linguistic treasures in it which they could not find in any other language.
People who speak a particular language may consider it more important to curb the use of meaningless jargon or a foolish or hysterical type of discourse, be it virtue signalling or hate mongering, such as that indulged in by Professors of useless subjects.
Whether the right to culture is justified
depends on whether it has incentive compatible remedies. I find that if I have problems with an Amazon or Ebay purchase, I get my money back. The Company has an incentive in giving me an effective remedy to a right's violation. There is a 'justification' accepted by the obligation holder. Philosophy can add nothing her though, no doubt, some Professor or other should harangue Jeff Bezos about this duty to promote RESPIRATION by telling everybody he meets to breathe in and then breathe out.
by the right to identity
an arbitrary assumption is made. The fact is rights of any type can conflict with each other. Arbitrarily imposing a hierarchy of rights merely begs the question. The other point is it doesn't matter what principles are adopted if determinations of fact greatly diverge. Do I have the right to be gay? Not if being homosexual is seen, as a matter of fact, as a medical problem which requires urgent treatment. My impression, is that the scientific evidence regarding homosexuality is irrefutable. But, I believe, it was possible for laws in this regard to change before this was made plain.
or by the right to freedom has important implications for the scope of this right and the conditions under which it is legitimate to grant particular privileges to make a full cultural life possible. Thus, we also disagree with Kymlicka on the question of when to grant privileges for the sake of preserving the culture of a minority group. In our view, which links the right to culture with identity rather than freedom, every person has the right to her own culture and not merely to culture in general.
This could be seen as in conformity with the Ottoman 'Millet' system. Different communities have their own codes and can impose sanctions to keep their own people in line. The problem here is that the Government can use 'community leaders' to impose its will. Consider the infamous case of Rumkowsky, head of the Jewish Council of Elders in Lodz. Indeed, in the case of 'indirect role' in African and other Colonies, Imperial powers often appointed 'elders' who would do their bidding. The argument was that the indigenous people were following their own culture under the type of leadership that was customary for them.
This right is basic and primary,
in which case it belongs to all human beings irrespective of domicile or legality of residence. On the other hand, it is good to now that those who belong to the Neo-Nazi culture will receive adequate support in Israel.
and so it is not restricted to cases in which an unprotected minority would be left without any culture at all but is applicable even in cases where the members of the minority group would lose their own culture and be compelled to assimilate.
This is foolish. Assimilation in some respects does not prevent retention of culture.
Moreover, the right to culture and to the privileges needed to protect it exists not only in cases where the culture is in danger of disappearing entirely.
In which case it is otiose like a right to respiration for people who have no difficulty in that regard.
We conclude that states, especially nation-states, must be neutral with respect to the majority culture yet assist minority cultures with special privileges.
This is foolish. A nation state can't be neutral to the nationality which mainly composes it. An Imperial State or some form of World Government may seek a neutral 'homonoia' but even it must give priority to its military and economic needs. After all, the first duty of a State is to seek to remain in existence.
This conclusion is not paradoxical
It may be helpful if organs of state show they are neutral because this increases confidence. After all, if I know a particular judge favours people of my race, I may not trust him to deal fairly with me in a case where my opponent is of the same race but more closely related to the Judge.
because states can afford to avoid intervening in their public space since they already determine its character through laws of entry to the state.
What if a particular ethnic enclave becomes a hotbed of terrorist activity? Clearly, Lebanon could not afford to give its Palestinian minority an autonomous space of their own. Even Jordan expelled a lot of Palestinian refugees.
Since the dominant culture is assured a majority by these laws, it can allow its public space to be shaped by free interaction among its citizens.
What if 'no go' areas are created where the Police and Fire Brigade can't enter and all sorts of illegal activities flourish?
The privileges we are willing to grant minorities for cultural preservation and creation- privileges that disturb the state's neutrality and seem to discriminate between individuals who are members of the majority or the minorities- are justified by the fact that liberal neutrality serves the majority culture.
No. Impartial and effective access to judicial and administrative and other such remedies serves everybody. Liberalism is merely the name of a bunch of fuckwits who should be ignored if they start posing as great moral arbiters or as the conscience of the country. But the same is true of nutters of all descriptions.
For if the matter were left to the forces of the market, the majority culture would soon take over the entire public space.
No. We would expect to see Schelling type self-segregation. Also, if the minority is richer, they may be able to appropriate more and more 'public space'.
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