Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Political Science General

Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World

edited by Will Kymlicka & Eva Pföstl

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
Mar 2014
Category
General

  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780199675135
    Publish Date
    Mar 2014
    List Price
    $100.00

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Since the Arab Spring, Arab states have become the new front line in the struggle for democratization and for open societies. As the experience of other regions has shown, one of the most significant challenges facing democratization relates to minority rights. This book explores how minority claims are framed and debated in the region, and in particular, how political actors draw upon, re-interpret, or resist both the new global discourses of minority rights and more local traditions and practices of co-existence.

The contributors examine a range of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial factors that shape contemporary minority politics in the Arab world, and that encumber the reception of international norms of multiculturalism. These factors include the contested legacies of Islamic doctrines of the "dhimmi" and the Ottoman millet system, colonial-era divide and rule strategies, and post-colonial Arab nation-building. While these legacies complicate struggles for minority rights, they do not entail an "Arab exceptionalism" to global trends to multiculturalism.

This volume explores a number of openings for new more pluralistic conceptions of nationhood and citizenship, and suggests that minority politics at its best can serve as a vehicle for a more general transformative politics, supporting a broader culture of democracy and human rights, and challenging older authoritarian, clientalistic, or patriarchal political tendencies. The chapters include both broad theoretical and historical perspectives as well as more focused case studies (including Western Sahara/Morocco, Algeria, Israel/Palestine; Sudan; United Arab Emirates, and Iraq).

About the authors

Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University. He is the author of seven books published by Oxford University Press, most recently Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson. His previous books include Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (1995) and Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (2007). In 2013, he delivered the HLA Hart Memorial Lecture at the University of Oxford on Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship.

 

Will Kymlicka's profile page

Eva Pföstl's profile page

Other titles by

Animal Labour

A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice?

edited by Charlotte E. Blattner, Kendra Coulter & Will Kymlicka

Federalism and the Welfare State in a Multicultural World

edited by Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant, Richard Johnston, Will Kymlicka & John Myles

The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought: From Machiavelli to Nietzsche

edited by Andrew Bailey, Samantha Brennan, Will Kymlicka, Jacob T. Levy, Alex Sager & Clark Wolf

The Strains of Commitment

The Political Sources of Solidarity in Diverse Societies

edited by Keith Banting & Will Kymlicka

International Approaches to Governing Ethnic Diversity

edited by Jane Boulden & Will Kymlicka

Criminal Law and Cultural Diversity

edited by Will Kymlicka, Claes Lernestedt & Matt Matravers

Rooted Cosmopolitanism

Canada and the World

edited by Will Kymlicka & Kathryn Walker

The Broadview Anthology of Social and Political Thought: Essential Readings

Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary Texts

edited by Andrew Bailey, Samantha Brennan, Will Kymlicka, Jacob T. Levy, Alex Sager & Clark Wolf

Zoopolis

A Political Theory of Animal Rights

by (author) Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka

Identity Politics in the Public Realm

Bringing Institutions Back In

edited by Avigail Eisenberg & Will Kymlicka