Abstract
The cultural determination of politics drives the reflection on minority rights in a paradoxical direction, as it either reduces those rights to almost nothing, or allows for what can appear to be a politics of indifference, in the sense that what happens to individuals within minorities is not to be judged from a universalistic perspective, but in relation to a particular “culture”. On the contrary, a politics of human rights, which at first sight seems to be dismissive of culture and politics, might well appear at closer examination to be a fairer way of dealing with minority questions. The present paper shows that the reference to culture politics in the case of minority issues can be a useful way of getting rid of human rights, whereas a more stubborn, and less attractive, defence of human rights, even in the case of minority self-determination movements, does not necessarily gets rid of politics, replacing it by bureaucratic procedures or military interventions.
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Notes
- 1.
“Walzer’s approach simply makes national minorities disappear from view, unless the government engages in genocide against them or enslaves them” (Barry 2001: 137).
- 2.
One must make careful use of this term, as it is claimed both by Barry and his opponents. To make things clearer, it is possible to say that liberalism means for Barry a universalistic defence of human rights; whereas, for his adversaries (Walzer and Miller), it means a particularistic approach of human rights at home, and also a defence of the principle of self-determination and nationality.
- 3.
“However, in exactly the same way as liberals are pragmatic about what liberalism means in terms of boundaries, so here the move from principle to intervention has to be mediated by practical considerations” (Barry 2001: 138).
- 4.
The case for this rather sophistic argument is based on the “failure to achieve an international order in which states that violate human rights can effectively be made answerable” (Barry 2001: 139). The absence of such an international liberal order certainly contributes to the pragmatism of Barry’s human rights politics.
- 5.
Walzer is, of course, another example.
- 6.
Miller is very close to Walzer’s approach, which has been referred to in our introduction (Cf. Miller and Walzer 1995).
- 7.
- 8.
“The second proposition contained in the idea of nationality is that nations are ethical communities. In acknowledging a national identity, I am also acknowledging that I owe special obligations to fellow members of my nation which I do not owe to other human beings” (Miller 1995: 49).
- 9.
“The third and last proposition included in the idea of nationality that I am defending in this book holds that national communities have a good claim to be politically self-determining. As far as possible, each nation should have its own set of political institutions which allow it to decide collectively those matters that are the primary concern of its members” (Miller 1995: 81).
- 10.
The definition of nationality, provided by Miller, testifies of this status: “These five elements together—a community (1) constituted by shared belief and mutual commitment, (2) extended in history, (3) active in character, (4) connected to a particular territory, and (5) marked off from other communities by its distinct public culture—serve to distinguish nationality from other collective sources of personal identity.” (Miller 1995: 27)
- 11.
Miller answers the claim of minority rights to enjoy the same rights as nations by saying that “freedom of expression, association, occupation, and the like are sufficient to allow minority cultures to flourish” (Miller 1995: 147). He also wants to show that the “principle of nationality points us towards a republican conception of citizenship and towards deliberative democracy as the best means of making political decisions” (Miller 1995: 150), which implies that achieving consensus is the best way to advance a political agenda, and that this consensus must be obtained thanks to everybody, including minorities, making compromises.
- 12.
- 13.
A good example of modern conservativism is Roger Scruton’s affirmation against “communitarian liberals” like Miller that “the real price of community (…) is sanctity, intolerance, exclusion, and a sense that life’s meaning depends upon obedience, and also on vigilance against the enemy” (Scruton 1990: 310; quoted in Miller 1995: 125, note 9).
- 14.
This difference explains the following remark by Barry: “Rawls has by now abandoned most of the ideas that made A Theory of Justice worthwhile. I have no interest in defending what Rawls has written since about 1975 (…). Rawls’s current position, embodied in The Law of Peoples (1999), amounts to a rather muddled version of Walzer’s anti-Enlightenment’s particularism” (Barry 2001: 331, note 27).
- 15.
I prefer to speak of cultural liberalism rather than of political liberalism, as (1) the first expression allows for a distinction between a majority and a minority cultural liberalism, and (2) the nature of politics, in political liberalism, doesn’t refer clearly enough to a principle of nationality, as it is indeed the case.
- 16.
For a similar judgment based on the works of Walzer and Kymlicka, see B. Barry 2001: 138.
Bibliography
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Miller, D., and M. Walzer (eds.). 1995. Pluralism, justice and equality. Oxford: Clarendon.
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Walzer, M. 1980. The moral standing of states: A response to four critics. Philosophy and Public Affairs 9(3): 209–229.
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Foisneau, L. (2013). What Is “Political” About Minority Rights?. In: Merle, JC. (eds) Spheres of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5998-5_11
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