After decades of extraordinary successes as a multicultural society, new debates are bubbling to the surface in Canada. The contributors to this volume examine the conflict between equality rights, as embedded in the Charter, and multiculturalism as policy and practice, and ask which charter value should trump which and under what circumstances? The opening essay deliberately sharpens the conflict among religion, culture, and equality rights and proposes to shift some of the existing bound...

The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures.It argues that certain sorts of `collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individu...

We are currently witnessing the global diffusion of multiculturalism, both as a political discourse and as a set of international legal norms. States today are under increasing international scrutiny regarding their treatment of ethnocultural groups, and are expected to meet evolving international standards regarding the rights of indigenous peoples, national minorities, and immigrants. This phenomenon represents a veritable revolution in international relations, yet has receivedlittle pub...

The idea of civil society has long been central to the Western liberal-democratic tradition, where it has been seen as a crucial site for the development and pursuit of basic liberal values such as individual freedom, social pluralism, and democratic citizenship. This book considers how a host of other ethical traditions define civil society. Unlike most studies of the subject, which focus on a particular region or tradition, it considers a range of ethical traditions rarely addressed in o...

The assumption that only humans can engage in politics - that only humans are 'zoon politikon' - is foundational to the Western tradition of political philosophy. While there is increasing recognition of animals' moral status (both within moral philosophy and at the level of public opinion), animals are not recognized as political subjects. This carefully researched but accessibly written volume - following on from the authors' earlier book Zoopolis - argues that animals too have ...

Zoopolis offers a new agenda for the theory and practice of animal rights. Most animal rights theory focuses on the intrinsic capacities or interests of animals, and the moral status and moral rights that these intrinsic characteristics give rise to. Zoopolis shifts the debate from the realm of moral theory and applied ethics to the realm of political theory, focusing on the relational obligations that arise from the varied ways that animals relate to human societies and ...

The politics of identity and ethnicity will remain a fundamental characteristic of African modernity. For this reason, historians and anthropologists have joined political scientists in a discussion about the ways in which democracy can develop in multicultural societies. In Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa, the contributors address why ethnicity represents a political problem, how the problem manifests itself, and which institutional models offer ways of ameliorating the challen...

Is animal labour inherently oppressive, or can work be a source of meaning, solidarity, and social membership for animals? This challenging question drives this thought-provoking collection which explores the possibilities and complexities of animal labour as a site for interspecies justice. The book assembles an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who carefully grapple with the many facets, implications, and entanglements of animal labour, and who, crucially, place anima...

Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request—asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty.While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanzees are persons on superficial and so...

Projects of democratic reform in the Middle East and North Africa have said little about the place of minorities and minority rights in their vision of reform, implying that these issues are best deferred to some indefinite future. While many people describe the Arab Spring as a ‘battle for pluralism’, there is a reluctance to discuss what this pluralism might actually mean for the political claims of minorities, for fear of triggering divisive conflicts and undemocratic tendencies. Is the...

Building and sustaining solidarity is a compelling challenge, especially in ethnically and religiously diverse societies. Recent research has concentrated on forces that trigger backlash and exclusion. The Strains of Commitment examines the politics of diversity in the opposite direction, exploring the potential sources of support for an inclusive solidarity, in particular political sources of solidarity. The volume asks three questions: Is solidarity really necessary for success...

Around the world, we see a 'participatory turn' in the pursuit of gender equality, exemplified by the adoption of gender quotas in national legislatures to promote women's role as decision-makers. We also see a 'pluralism turn', with increasing legal recognition given to the customary law or religious law of minority groups and indigenous peoples. To date, the former trend has primarily benefitted majority women, and the latter has primarily benefitted minority men. Neither has effectively...