Rural Identities in an Urban Canada: Minority Rights for Agrarian Communities?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Engaging with the theoretical literature on liberalism and minority cultural rights generated by Canadian scholars Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, and Alan Patten, this article offers an initial evaluation of the claim that rural agrarian communities exist as minority cultural communities bound together by a strong collective identity and conception of the good and are therefore deserving of certain group-differentiated rights designed to thwart their decline. Although it may appear unusual to locate a community held together by an economic activity on a scale equal to other, more commonly mentioned minority groups held together by ethnicity, religion, or language, this article highlights some shared “formative conditions” that bind this community together in a cultural way before concluding that there is reason to believe that liberal justice may require certain rights be made available to such communities. The article closes with a brief consideration of the policy implications of such a finding.