Minority Cultural Rights Research Articles

Caste in a new light: Jati in British multiculturalism

Advocates of multiculturalism claim that it supports the rights of cultural minorities and the public recognition of cultural differences. However, this article shows that this cannot be true of Indian culture as it has become transported to Britain, where multiculturalism actually poses a threat to it. Using the resources of the research programme of the Ghent School on the comparative study of India and Europe, this article substantiates this claim by showing how the dominant conception of cultural differences as well as the classical conception of the Indian caste system, which takes over the Indian social structures of jati, are both imported by multiculturalist thought and practice. The concretizing of multiculturalism in the form of anti-discrimination law is not only anticipated by a destructive politics of identity, but the law itself can be used to foster the destruction of Indian culture on the pretext of targeting the discriminatory caste system.

Le conseguenze della pandemia da COVID-19 sui diritti culturali delle minoranze nazionali in Europa centro orientale, baltica e balcanica

The analysis of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on the cultural rights of national minorities in the countries of Central Eastern, Baltic and Balkan Europe (CEBBE) cannot ignore the fact that since the end of the 1980s, the forms of State of these countries – “inspired”, albeit in different measures, by the Socialist one – have been affected by a number of changes, which in turn influenced their models of minority protection. The article therefore pays particular attention to the relationship between the evolution of the forms of States in CEBBE countries and the shaping of new models of protection of cultural rights of minority groups. This analysis is functional not only to identify in a comparative perspective similarities and differences between the models of protection of minority cultural rights, but above all to verify the effective guarantee of the same in the context of the democratic backsliding experienced by some CEBBE countries, further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

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.

My body, my territory: Indigenous women, territoriality, and the rights of cultural minorities

ABSTRACT Scholars often frame questions of cultural pluralism as a simple binary: Is the protection of “illiberal cultures” detrimental to the rights of women and other internal minorities within these cultures? In this article, I argue that this reductive binary is insufficient and show how Indigenous women from Peru actually navigate the simultaneous articulation of their collective cultural rights and their individual rights as women. I build on interview and ethnographic research during two months of fieldwork (2019) in Peru to argue that Indigenous women in this country strategically engage the concept of territoriality in their dual struggle for collective Indigenous rights, and individual rights as women within the realm of patriarchal traditions. Using the idea that “our body is our territory,” Peruvian Indigenous women transcend the limitations of liberal rights by reimagining them in a culturally specific vocabulary of sovereignty. In contrast to critics of multiculturalism who fear for the individual rights of women and vulnerable populations from minority cultures, I find that the protection of “illiberal cultures” does not necessarily reinforce oppression, but may, in fact, have unexpected democratic potential.

Locating Multiculturalism and the Cultural rights of Minorities

Locating Multiculturalism and the Cultural rights of Minorities

Direct Democracy and the Rights of Cultural Minorities in Swiss

The minorities in Switzerland are in the first place ethno-linguistic minorities, whose are unified by a common language. Therefore, since the foundation of the Confederation in 1848 the Helvetic state has been considered a multilingual country. The confederation and cantons are obliged to protect linguistic minorities. The grounds of the Swiss social structure, with traditional multiculturalism and four national languages are two principles: language freedom (Sprachenfreiheit) and territoriality (Territorialitätsprinzip). Switzerland has no official state religion. Predominant religion is Christianity, the largest religious minorities is established by Islam. The largest Christian denominations are Catholic Church (37.7%) and Swiss Reformed Church (25.5%). The influx of new cultural minorities to Switzerland began after the Second World War and was directly connected with economic migration, with the large influx of gastarbeiters from southern European countries and refugees from the Third World and from the former Yugoslavia.International law includes the protection of national, yet not cultural minorities. In Switzerland the protection of national minorities is also based on international standards. Is the Swiss multiculturalism an example for other countries?

Intangible cultural heritage, inequalities and participation: who decides on heritage?

ABSTRACT Ever since the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (CSICH) in 2003, indigenous and minority cultural rights have enjoyed increasing recognition. At the same time, they have been exposed to public discourses and homogenising language that might detrimentally affect their right to access and participation in the creation of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and ultimately cultural life. As a consequence, respective inequalities in ICH enjoyment have come to the fore, being further reinforced by strategies of tourism, commodification and to some extent digitalisation. Calling for adaptability, submission and homogenisation, such external pressures have jeopardised right holders' voices in self-defining their very identities in new institutionalised ICH contexts. The novel ‘human dimension’ of cultural heritage inherent to ICH is explored by means of two cases, that is Andean Carnival celebrations in Oruro (Bolivia) and Barranquilla (Colombia). In the cases at hand, it is critically examined how marginalised peoples have found their way into a supposedly equalising regime facilitating celebrations of cultural life, religious identities and spiritual practice in decolonising contexts. In the following, these spaces for inclusion are assessed based on indigenous peoples', Afro-descendants' and similarly marginalised groups’ eventual share in negotiating their very identities.

Cultural mediators and the protection of ethnic minority cultural rights: reflecting on successes and challenges around quilombo heritage in Brazil

ABSTRACT This article discusses the protection of quilombo land and cultural rights in Brazil, through an examination of pottery production in a quilombo community in Maranhão state. Quilombos are village communities with a legally protected status that is similar to that of indigenous peoples in Brazil. In this article, the focus is placed on the production and management of ‘quilombo heritage’ by the potters and the different cultural mediators involved in various stages of this process. In doing so, the article examines what the different parties regard as the major advances achieved and the challenges currently faced in the protection of their cultural rights. The discussion critically explores cultural mediators’ role in promoting, enriching or restricting quilombo cultural production and their different views on heritage. Finally, the article reflects on the need for community participation in the drafting and implementation of cultural heritage policies.

Minority Cultural Rights and Bullfighting in a Portuguese Context

Abstract A topic in contemporary political philosophy that has received substantial attention recently is whether minorities have the right to mistreat nonhuman animals. Mostly the debate is focused on minority practices in the West, such as Muslim religious slaughtering. However, other minority contexts, especially Iberian ones, have been largely ignored. In this article, I place the Portuguese case study at the center of political philosophy debates and assess whether this cultural practice ought to be banned. I do this by looking at four arguments routinely used in these debates. These arguments are that Portuguese bullfighting ought to be allowed because it has an economic role in the community, it helps address social prejudice, it promotes friendship and, and allowing it is a way to be legally consistent. I reject the four arguments and defend that bullfighting, in the Portuguese case, should be banned.

Transnational Culture: From Diasporic Nationalism to Cultural Citizenship

Transnational migration and the politics of multiculturalism, despite all their discrepancies, are making the cultural dimensions more and more important, as the cultural rights of minorities and immigrants are becoming an essential part of citizenship. The article questions transnational cultural practices in relation to citizenship by exploring two waves of the Lithuanian and other East European emigration to the USA of two periods – after the WWII and after the Cold War. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork done in Chicago in 2006 and 2013 two patterns of transnational culture are revealed – diasporic (homeland) nationalism as well as cultural citizenship. It is sought to prove that the first pattern is shaped in the form of ethno-cultural community in exile and based on the imperative ‘to save the national culture’ which became under siege in homeland, while the second pattern is enacted as inter-ethnic networking, and it is based on social remittances and habits of moral economy brought from the post-socialist Eastern Europe.

Majority-Minority Constellations: Towards A Group-Differentiated Approach

Multiculturalism has taken a life of its own, swinging too far in one direction. The authors claim that the rapidly changing reality calls for a new majority-minority theory and argue that the moral justifications for cultural minority rights should also apply to majority groups. They present two areas in which majorities may become culturally vulnerable and need legal protection: the regulation of immigration and representations of national identity in the public sphere. The core of the argument is rooted in a unique framework to address majority-minority constellations. This intergroup differentiation approach distinguishes between “homeland majorities” and “migratory majorities”, alongside the traditional distinction of indigenous/national and migratory minorities. In doing so, the authors criticize the tendency in the multiculturalism literature to gloss over differences between the Anglo-Saxon classical immigration countries, where majorities are of migratory origin, and the countries of the Old World, where new minorities of immigrant origin face indigenous majorities. The authors provide practical examples for the implementation of their approach and explain the different meanings of cultural majority rights. Only by a contextualized and relational consideration of groups, they thus conclude, can competing demands of majorities and minorities be fairly evaluated.

The Right of Cultural Minorities to Binding Consent: Case Study of Judicial Dialogue in the Framework of a Ius Constitutionale Commune en Ammrica Latina

This paper presents case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of Colombia during a 25-year period (1992 to 2017). By seriously contemplating the rights of indigenous peoples, afro-descendants and other cultural minorities, this study illustrates the standards of the afore-mentioned courts regarding prior and informed consultation and binding informed consent as an alternative to the problematic category of so-called “veto power”. In addition, it focuses on the principal outcomes of the landmark case Saramaka v. Suriname (2007) and decision T-129/11 Embera Katio v. Executive Power, which currently encompass the highest standard of protection. However, the outcomes of judicial dialogue are at risk of being annulled. The problematic situations of these minorities and the inadequate application of a prior consultation requirement highlights the relevance of articulating standards in the transnational arena and within the framework of a broader Ius Constitutionale Commune en America Latina.

Fairness and equal recognition

An important contribution of Alan Patten’s Equal Recognition is the conception of neutrality that grounds his defence of minority cultural rights. Built in to his conception of neutrality of treatment is a notion of ‘fairness’ whose effect is to provide an upfront, across the board limitation on the demands cultural minorities may legitimately make on the rest of society. There must be limits on the duty to accommodate, but it obscures more than it illuminates to build this into the content of the right to equal recognition itself. We see more clearly what is at stake in these conflicts by articulating the value of self-determination independently and taking account of necessary limits to its satisfaction as part of a second-stage analysis of what duties may be claimed and against whom. Familiar principles of discrimination law exemplify this alternative model. This presents the interest in self-determination more robustly, while acknowledging that the claims of duty arising out of it are defeasible. The result is a more flexible and nuanced exploration of the complex moral issues involved when fundamental interests clash.

Kymlicka on cultural rights and liberalism

Kymlicka’s Liberalism, Community, and Culture originated a highly influential argument about the ethical foundations of minority cultural rights. The argument is explained and assessed in its original context and in the more developed form it took in his later book, Multicultural Citizenship. In its original version the argument was seriously underspecified, but the later version cleared up some problems only to create others. Minority cultural rights were either classed as the rights to self-government of national minorities or the rights of immigrants to integration into the receiving society, a form of incorporation that welcomes the retention of hyphenated cultural identities. The argument still left ample room to doubt that nationality suffices to justify self-government and that reasons derived from the value of multicultural integration could really support immigrant rights. Alan Patten’s recent book, Equal Recognition, goes far to remedy these shortcomings while remaining firmly within the liberal paradigm of cultural rights that Kymlicka established with his first book.

Neutrality as a Basis for Minority Cultural Rights

Neutrality as a Basis for Minority Cultural Rights

On Patten’s Theory of Minority Rights

Theorists discussing cultural rights, whether they approve of them, or reject them, do so usually from an intra-statist perspective. Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship and his books following it, is a prominent example. Brian Barry’s Culture and Equality is another example. Patten’s new book follows this line. However, unlike his predecessors just mentioned, whose intra-statist perspective seems to be a matter of the mere habit of thinking about political morality as an intra-statist matter, Patten’s intra-statist approach seems to be a principled implication entailed by his arguments. He purports in his book, to “[…] denationalize the nature and content of minority cultural rights”. 1 He does so by conceiving of them as rights which national minorities have by virtue of being minorities within states rather than national groups in the world. The point of his account, as he states in the introduction to his book, is not cultural preservation. 2 Rather, it seems to be states’ neutrality toward their citizens’ conceptions of the good. I’m stressing this point because difficulties pertaining to the intra-statist perspective as a point of departure for the analysis of minority rights will stand at the heart of my critique of Patten’s argument. I believe that the global perspective, and the standing of national groups in the world, rather than the standing of minorities within states, is the appropriate perspective from which to account for the rights of national minorities (and majorities). But let me first present Patten’s argument. I will primarily concentrate in the main normative argument, which is presented in chapters 3–5 of the book. Chapter 1 is an introduction delineating the subject matter of the book by introducing important distinctions and then describing its course. Chapter 2 deals with the accusation often directed at culturalism and nationalism of being essentialist. Patten responds to this accusation by proposing a detailed and nuanced non-essentialist concept of a culture, according to which—in his apt formulation, “Culture […] is the precipitate of a common social lineage”. 3 “ A distinct culture” he says – “is the relation that people share when, and to the extent that, they have shared with one another subjection to a set of formative conditions that are distinct from the formative conditions that are imposed on others.” 4“ At any given moment, its content consists in various beliefs, meanings, and practices, but what makes these the beliefs, meanings, and practices of a shared culture is that the people who hold them share a common social lineage.” 5 After this chapter Patten proceeds to the three main chapters in which the main normative argument is presented. These chapters are then followed by three other chapters discussing the implications of his theory to or the difficulties arising to his theory from more specific issues pertaining to multiculturalism and nationalism: language rights, secession from multinational states, and how to justify the widely accepted normative distinction between the robustness of the cultural rights of national minorities on the one hand, and the not very robust rights of immigrant minorities on the other. I will address the arguments of these chapters later, as far as this will be required by my critique of Patten’s main argument in chapters 3–5. But let me first give an overview of this main argument of the book, on which my critical comment later will concentrate.

Neutrality as a Basis for Minority Cultural Rights

This comment examines the idea of ‘neutrality of treatment’ that is at the heart of Alan Patten’s defense of minority cultural rights in Equal Recognition. The main issue I raise is whether neutrality of treatment can do without an ‘upstream’ or foundational commitment to neutrality of justification.

Liberal Culturalism and the National Minority/Immigrant Dichotomy

Is the discrepancy between the cultural and linguistic rights of immigrants on the one hand and national groups on the other justified, with the latter group typically enjoying a fuller set of such rights than the former category? Patten presents a case for accepting some modest departures from neutrality in the treatment of immigrants’ cultural rights and that of majority and minority national groups. I challenge his thesis by asking whether such departures are justified with respect to already settled (as opposed to prospective) immigrants; whether the situational argument for unequal treatment is inconsistent with the theory of culture offered earlier in the book; and whether contexts of historical injustice against immigrant groups might complicate judgements about the national minority/immigrant dichotomy with respect to minority cultural rights.

On Protection of Minority Cultural Rights In National Autonomous Areas

On Protection of Minority Cultural Rights In National Autonomous Areas

Looking under Kachru's (1982, 1985) three circles model of World Englishes: the hidden reality and current challenges

This paper examines the pioneering model of World Englishes formulated by Kachru in the early 1980s that allocates the presence of English into three concentric circles: first of all, the inner circle (Great Britain, the USA) where the language functions as an L1 (or native language); secondly, the outer circle (India, Nigeria) where the language was forced upon the subjugated people by Britain; thirdly, the expanding circle (China, Brazil) where English is studied as a foreign language. Researchers in the area of language studies tend to put too much store in Kachru's model expecting it to expose the different circles: (i) the proficiency level of the speakers, (ii) the variation that exists in the different dialects of the language, and (iii) how the many users appropriate the language to perform their daily routine. Pung (2009) suggests "going beyond" the three circle model with his proposal of a Conical Model of English (CME), while Park and Wee (2009, p.402) state that models have no "magical efficacy in challenging dominant ideologies of English" and that change in the world is not brought about by models but my people. Based on Park and Lee's caution with regard to models, and in lieu of Pung's "going beyond" the well-known Kachruvian model, the thrust of this article is to look specifically under the inner circle, that is, the supposed "native speaker domain". It will be argued in this paper that the circles function as a palimpsest erasing and ignoring what happened in the past linguistically, historically and culturally before the appearance of English in the spaces that the language occupies at the present time in the inner, outer, and expanding circles. An examination of days gone-by, with a focus on Kachru's inner circle, can present a mirror to examine: (i) bilingual (multilingual) biases, (ii) migration of peoples and treatment of immigrants, (iii) respect (or lack of) for the linguistic and cultural rights of minorities, and (iv) the hegemony of English in relation to other languages - issues that concern us today and will continue to do so in the coming years.