Gender and justice in multicultural liberal states
By: Monique Deveaux
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 265
ISBN-13: 9780199289790
Subjects: Women's rights; Minorities -- Civil rights; Pluralism (Social sciences); Multiculturalism; Culture conflict; Toleration; Social justice; Sex role; Liberalism
Description: "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, Monique Deveaux 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, Deveaux develops an approach to mediating cultural tensions that takes seriously the demands for 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, Deveaux also reconceives the basis of democratic legitimacy so as to include not merely formal expressions of political consent, but also a range of informal democratic activities that occur in the private and social spheres, from acts of cultural reinvention and subversion to outright expressions of dissent and cultural refusal."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [229]-244) and index
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: Liberal approaches to conflicts of culture; title: Women's rights as human rights; title: Democratic deliberation : empowering cultural communities; title: Native rights and gender justice : the case of Canada; title: Personal autonomy and cultural tradition : the arranged marriage debate in Britain; title: Gender and cultural justice in South Africa; title: Conclusion : legitimizing democracy and democratizing legitimacy