Abstract
The question of how society should deal with social conflicts arising from cultural differences persists. Should we adopt an exclusivist approach by excluding reasons based on specific cultural traditions (culture-based reasons) from public debates about social policy, especially because these reasons do not appeal to the public at large? Or should we resort to an inclusivist approach by including reasons based on cultural traditions in public debate to give recognition to the diverse cultural identities of those who practice these traditions? While these two approaches assign different roles to cultural traditions in public debate, both seem to welcome compromise between conflicting parties. This paper reviews contending normative approaches for dealing with conflicts in multicultural societies and explores the place of culture-based reasons in public debates designed to resolve conflicts.
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Research for this paper was supported by the Globalization Research Programme of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the project “Applied Ethics: Technology and Governance of Health and Natural Resources” funded by the Research Council of Norway (217426). I am grateful to Peter Danielson, Michael McDonald, David Silver, and Michael MacKenzie for their suggestions and comments to an earlier version of the paper presented at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments which helped to further clarify key points. Any remaining errors, however, are mine.
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Alvarez, A.A. The place of culture-based reasons in public debates. Humaff 24, 232–247 (2014). https://doi.org/10.2478/s13374-014-0222-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/s13374-014-0222-0