Political liberalism, social pluralism and group conflict

This dissertation develops a political liberal approach to multiculturalism as an alternative to its dismissal by some egalitarian liberals and its celebration by some multicultural liberals. Some egalitarian liberals overstate the liberal tension with group-specific claims, disregard the role of culture in a person's life, and exaggerate the propensity of group-specific claims to exacerbate conflict. Confusing religion with culture, they assign to religion the status of an all purpose good that liberals traditionally assign to income and wealth. While political liberals require that the state grant exemptions to religious practices that violate uniform rules, these egalitarian liberals do not. Some multicultural liberals overstate the liberal failure to accommodate group-specific political claims, exaggerate the role of culture in a person's life, and ignore the invented nature of culture. Confusing culture with religion, they assign to culture the moral weight liberals traditionally assign to religion. Political liberals, however, assign to culture the same social weight they assign to a person's family, firm, neighborhood and other associations. Political liberals also distinguish encompassing groups, such as language-nations or factory-towns, whose members primarily live, work and socialize with their own group, from other groups, whose members do not. The former have greater social weight, though not moral weight, than the latter. This leads political liberals to require state support for encompassing groups to adjust to new social and economic circumstances, irrespective of whether they are cultural.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2001

Author dc:creator

• Manikkalingam, Ramanujam

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Joshua Cohen.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8239

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8239