Diversity and Equality

This is a thoughtful and smart book; highly recommended for those working on the hard questions that multiculturalism generates for our theories of rights and justice. -- Duncan Ivison, author of Postcolonial Liberalism

Critically examines the challenge of protecting rights in diverse societies.The tension between diversity and equality is central to debates about multiculturalism, self-determination, identity, and pluralism. How, for example, can the claims of ethnic and religious groups be respected when they conflict with individual rights and liberal equality? Diversity and Equality critically examines the challenge of protecting rights in diverse societies such as Canada. It develops new approaches in philosophy, law, politics, and anthropology to address the goals and problems associated with cultural, religious, and national minority rights. The contributors to this volume explore the conflicts between group demands for cultural autonomy and individual assertions of basic interests. At stake in these debates about rights and autonomy in multicultural and multinational democracies is the very meaning of freedom.