The Liberal Archipelago

Download or read book The Liberal Archipelago written by Chandran Kukathas and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his major new work Chandran Kukathas offers, for the first time, a book-length treatment of this controversial and influential theory of minority rights. The work is a defence of a form of liberalism and multiculturalism. The general question it tries to answer is: what is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties? More particularly, it explains whether such a society requires political institutions which recognize minorities; how far it should tolerate such minorities when their ways differ from those of the mainstream community; to what extent political institutions should address injustices suffered by minorities at the hands of the wider society, and also at the hands of the powerful within their own communities; what role, if any, the state should play in the shaping of a society's (national) identity; and what fundamental values should guide our reflections on these matters. Its main contention is that a free society is an open society whose fundamental principle is the principle of freedom of association. A society is free to the extent that it is prepared to tolerate in its midst associations which differ or dissent from its standards or practices. An implication of these principles is that political society is also no more than one among other associations; its basis is the willingness of its members to continue to associate under the terms which define it. While it is an 'association of associations', it is not the only such association; it does not subsume all other associations. The principles of a free society describe not a hierarchy of superior and subordinate authorities but an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions. The idea of a liberal archipelago is defended as one which supplies us with a better metaphor of the free society than do older notions such as the body politic, or the ship of state. This work presents a challenge, and an alternative, to other contemporary liberal theories of multiculturalism.

Download or read book The Liberal Archipelago written by Chandran Kukathas and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003-06-05 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his major new work Chandran Kukathas offers, for the first time, a book-length treatment of this controversial and influential theory of minority rights. The work is a defence of a form of liberalism and multiculturalism. The general question it tries to answer is: what is the principled basis of a free society marked by cultural diversity and group loyalties? More particularly, it explains whether such a society requires political institutions which recognize minorities; howfar it should tolerate such minorities when their ways differ from those of the mainstream community; to what extent political institutions should address injustices suffered by minorities at the hands of the wider society, and also at the hands of the powerful within their own communities; what role,if any, the state should play in the shaping of a society's (national) identity; and what fundamental values should guide our reflections on these matters. Its main contention is that a free society is an open society whose fundamental principle is the principle of freedom of association. A society is free to the extent that it is prepared to tolerate in its midst associations which differ or dissent from its standards or practices. An implication of these principles is that political societyis also no more than one among other associations; its basis is the willingness of its members to continue to associate under the terms which define it. While it is an 'association of associations', it is not the only such association; it does not subsume all other associations. The principles of afree society describe not a hierarchy of superior and subordinate authorities but an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions. The idea of a liberal archipelago is defended as one which supplies us with a better metaphor of the free society than do older notions such as the body politic, or the ship of state. This work presents a challenge, and an alternative, to other contemporary liberal theories of multiculturalism.

Download or read book The Liberal Archipelago written by Chandran Kukathas and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chandran Kukathas offers an examination of this controversial theory of minority rights. He argues that the free society should not be seen as a hierarchy of superior and subordinate authorities but an archipelago of competing and overlapping jurisdictions.

Download or read book Immigration and Freedom written by Chandran Kukathas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling account of the threat immigration control poses to the citizens of free societies Immigration is often seen as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine their fundamental values, most notably freedom and national self-determination. In this book, however, Chandran Kukathas argues that the greater threat comes not from immigration but from immigration control. Kukathas shows that immigration control is not merely about preventing outsiders from moving across borders. It is about controlling what outsiders do once in a society: whether they work, reside, study, set up businesses, or share their lives with others. But controlling outsiders—immigrants or would-be immigrants—requires regulating, monitoring, and sanctioning insiders, those citizens and residents who might otherwise hire, trade with, house, teach, or generally associate with outsiders. The more vigorously immigration control is pursued, the more seriously freedom is diminished. The search for control threatens freedom directly and weakens the values upon which it relies, notably equality and the rule of law. Kukathas demonstrates that the imagined gains from efforts to control immigration are illusory, for they do not promote economic prosperity or social solidarity. Nor does immigration control bring self-determination, since the apparatus of control is an international institutional regime that increases the power of states and their agencies at the expense of citizens. That power includes the authority to determine who is and is not an insider: to define identity itself. Looking at past and current practices across the world, Immigration and Freedom presents a critique of immigration control as an institutional reality, as well as an account of what freedom means—and why it matters.

Download or read book Making Thatcher's Britain written by Ben Jackson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book situates the controversial Thatcher era in the political, social, cultural and economic history of modern Britain.

Download or read book Hayek and Modern Liberalism written by Chandran Kukathas and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the history of modern liberal thought, the work of F.A. Hayek stands out as among the most significant contributions since that of J.S. Mill. In this book, Kukathas critically examines the nature and coherence of Hayek's defense of liberal principles, attempting both to identify its weaknesses and to show why it makes an important contribution to contemporary political theory. Kukathas argues that Hayek's defense of liberalism is unsuccessful because it rests on presuppositions which are philosophically incompatible. In his view, the unresolved dilemma of Hayek's political philosophy is how to mount a systematic defense of liberalism if one emphasizes the limited capacity of human reason. Hayek's social philosophy, he argues, offers a significant theory of the nature of social processes, and is therefore an important account of how this must constrain our choice of political principles.

Download or read book The First Civil Right written by Naomi Murakawa and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The First Civil Right is a groundbreaking analysis of root of the conflicts that lie at the intersection of race and the legal system in America. Naomi Murakawa inverts the conventional wisdom by arguing that the expansion of the federal carceral state-a system that disproportionately imprisons blacks and Latinos-was, in fact, rooted in the civil-rights liberalism of the 1940s and early 1960s, not in the period after.