Barry Limits of Cultural Politics

8/14/2019 Barry Limits of Cultural Politics

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Review of International Studies (1998), 24, 307319 Copyright British International Studies Association

307

* This essay is based on the twelfth E. H. Carr Memorial Lecture delivered at the University of Wales,

Aberystwyth on 1 May 1997. E. H. Carr was Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Politicsthere from 1936 to 1947.

1 This is made explicit in John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, 1971), e.g., p. 8.2 Ibid.

The limits of cultural politics*

B R IA N B A R RY

Abstract. This article argues against a recent development within anglo-phone politicalphilosophy which treats almost all group conflicts as deriving from cultural differences, thusdownplaying the notion that conflicts may simply be over the distribution of things to whichall the participants attach value: power, money, land and so on. Normative politicalphilosophy, it is claimed by those who take this view, should be primarily concerned with

issues of identity, recognition and culture at the expense of issues concerning distribution.There is however, little basis for these claims, whose implications are sketched in here andform the foundation for a defence of a liberalism that has confidence in its own insights, aliberalism possessed of clarity as well as compassion.

I begin with the commonplace observation that the liberal conception of the

polity currently faces a variety of changes. Fundamental to this liberal conception is

the idea of a single and undifferentiated grade of citizenship, expressing itself in

identical legal and political rights. Since all votes are supposed to count equally

under such a system, the ultimate validation of collective decisions is majoritarian.

This is consistent with the existence of political subunits within a state, but the basic

assumption holds that internal boundaries should reflect administrative convenience

rather than a shared history, culture and aspirations. Thus, following the French

Revolution, the ancient divisions of the country were dismantled and replaced by a

more or less rectangular grid of dpartements, roughly equal in size regardless of

their population. A further assumption is that state boundaries are relatively

impermeable, and that citizens will normally be born, grow up, live and die within a

single state.1 Under these circumstances, the state claims a loyalty overriding any

more limited ones, such as to family, class, religion or ethnic group, and is also

suspicious of loyalties that extend beyond its boundaries.

In return for this primary loyalty, the state undertakes to sustain a system of

equitable law and order and to provide public goods and services. In the postwar

Western European version common to both main political tendencies, social

democracy and Christian democracy, it also provides economic security in the face

of such contingencies as youth, age, disability and unemployment. In typical Owl of

Minerva fashion, this whole conception received its most systematic exposition in A

Theory of Justice, which was written in 1971.2 This, of course, is the very time when


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it might be argued that its utility as a charter of a politically organized society

(which is the way Rawls presents the theory) was becoming increasingly problematic.

Some of these problems arise from international developments: globalization

appears to threaten the ability of states to secure full employment, to provide

economic security and to redistribute wealth according to shared norms. To put it

pessimistically, states have not lost their capacity to do bad things (torture,

disappearances and even genocide), but their capacity to do good things. In this

article, I shall concentrate on the other source of difficulty for the model of liberal

citizenship. This takes the form of a challenge to the model itself. The idea of

uniform rules applying equally to all and decided upon by some majoritarian

procedure encompassing all citizens is currently under attack in the name of

multiculturalism and multinationalism.

******

Construed as a programme rather than as a description, multiculturalism is, it seemsto me, a potentially misleading way of describing claims made on behalf of a very

heterogeneous series of groups with very heterogeneous objectives. Endemic in the

literature of multiculturalism is the tendency to suggest that all social groups are

differentiated by culture, and have distinctive outlooks, aspirations and priorities.3

This culturalization of group conflicts in many cases provides a misleading analysis

of what is at issue. For example, those who object to being discriminated against in

education or employment on grounds of race, gender or sexual preference may

simply be demanding an equal opportunity to achieve exactly the same general goods

that others desire. They may also have distinctive outlooks, aspirations and priorities,

but they may not; and, even if they do, they may regard these (unlike discrimination)as being matters for personal choice with no implications for public policy.

However, even if the reach of multiculturalism is not as broad as some of its

exponents imply, there are undeniably in almost all contemporary liberal societies a

number of groups that are differentiated on bases such as religion and deep-seated

cultural beliefs and practices. The multiculturalist objection to the liberal model of

citizenship is, then, that the equal treatment it promises is not really equal and that

its claim to impartiality conceals a tendency to penalize cultural minorities. Even

where a piece of legislation has manifestly benign purposesthe prevention of head

injuries to motorcyclists or of cruelty to animals, for exampleit is liable to be

regarded as unfair by the partisans of multiculturalism if it has a differential impacton people as a result of their distinctive beliefs or practices.

One wayand an increasingly popular wayof conceiving of multinationalism is

to treat it as a special case of multiculturalism. On this understanding of it, a nation

is defined primarily in cultural terms, and where its members form a majority within

some territory the claim is made that they should be able to exercise political

authority so as to preserve and strengthen the culture. Although this approach to the

analysis of nationality is now dominant among the academic supporters of

nationalism, it is curiously at odds with the way in which real-life nationalists pitch

their claims. Real nationalists typically regard a nation as (notionally) a descent

group: one becomes a member of a nation purely by being born into it. Of course,

308 Brian Barry

3 See, e.g., Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ, 1990), pp. 43, 186.


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there must be criteria of nationality, such as religion, language or just residence in

an area going back some generations. However, the significance of these is to serve

as markers of membership in the descent group. The other feature present in most

real-life nationalism is the idea that a nation has the right to control a certain

territory, whether or not it is currently actually in control of that territory.

In a recent article, Lea Brilmayer has argued that political philosophers are

strangely silent about this blood-and-soil nationalism.4 I entirely agree about this,

and I agree that this has a distorting effect on what they do say about it. Where I

part company with Brilmayer is in her suggestion that others have not taken this

seriously enough normatively; in other words that claims made on a basis of blood-

and-soil nationalism should be addressed on a serious basis. According to her,

adjudicating blood-and-soil type claims is difficult but not impossible, However, I

cannot seriously imagine a panel of jurists and political philosophers reaching

decisions based on such claims.

Thus, representatives of the present Israeli Government might go along to the

court envisaged by Brilmayer and make the claim that God had given the land ofIsrael to the Jews, and that this justified its policy of refusing to implement the Oslo

Accords and steadily expropriating Palestinian land in (what it would call) Judea

and Samaria. No doubt this could be supported by wheeling in a barrowload of

Biblical exegesis. But what would this tribunal do in the face of objectors who

denied the existence of God, acknowledged His existence but claimed He had been

misreported, or refused to accept that God had the authority to promise land in this

way? (The authority of His Vicar to divide the New World between between Spain

and Portugal was, it may be recalled, similarly challenged in earlier times, not only

by those whose territory was parcelled out but by other Europeans.)

Claims based on geography would be equally incapable of assessment. Irishnationalists could produce a map to show that Ireland is undeniably an island. But

how would that prove that it should be one state? The Italian Government could

exhibit a model in relief to show that, if the boundaries of Italy are to constitute the

whole of the peninsula up to the Alps, they are in the right place. But how could

that withstand a challenge from German-speakers in the Tyrol who wished to deny

that geography is fate?

Historically based claims would fare no better. Every country in Central Europe,

for example, would make claims to what it regarded as its national territory. These

claims could be defended by producing evidence that the (supposed) ancestors of its

dominant national group had at some time in the past controlled this territory, orperhaps merely controlled different bits at different times. But these claims would, of

course, in many cases be to the same areas, and the claims would be equally good

or equally bad.

That the claims made by blood-and-soil nationalists are blatantly self-serving and

cannot conceivably be expected to be accepted by anybody else does not, of course,

prevent them from being politically efficacious within the group. Indeed, the very

simplicity of the structure of blood-and-soil arguments, while rendering them un-

convincing to outsiders, at the same time makes them irrefutable. There is no

question that these arguments are incompatible with liberal premises, but they

Limits of cultural politics 309

4 Lea Brilmayer, The Moral Significance of Nationalism, Notre Dame Law Review, 71 (1995),pp. 773.


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cannot be deemed to represent a challenge to liberalism in any intellectually

interesting sense. All that can be said is that they fail to connect up with any intel-

ligible account of the welfare of individuals, and that the notion of collective

entitlements to which they appeal cannot be accommodated by liberal ideas of

justice.

The national territory of a successful blood-and-soil nationalist movement will

almost invariably include within the state boundaries people who are not members

of the dominant national group. These may be members of other nationalities

(which may or may not have a state in which their co-nationals are dominant) or

they may be members of a socially distinct group that is not a nationality, such as

the Roma. The crucial point to grasp about blood-and-soil nationalism is that it is

not a universalistic doctrine asserting that every nation should have a territory of its

own. Rather, in as far as it is universalistic, its universal principle is (as Brilmayer

describes it) that people should get what they are entitled to. But what people are

(collectively) entitled to is to control a national territory underwritten by theology,

geography or history. There is, therefore, no inconsistency, as is sometimes alleged, inZionists denying that the Palestinians have a right to an independent state of their

own, so long as the case for the existence of Israel is made on blood-and-soil lines

and not represented as a theorem of universalistic nationalism.

******

There is a widely held view that blood-and-soil nationalism is characteristically

Central European and can be contrasted with the nationalism of Western Europe.

However, the idea of a national territory and a Staatsvolkwith a right to control it is

far more pervasive than that would suggest. To the extent that it exists in a country,it is normally seen by members of the national group that owns the country as

legitimizing their monopolization of political power. This may be achieved formally

by reserving citizenship to them, or by creating de facto first-class and second-class

citizens. This division was displayed in its most murderous form in former

Yugoslavia: The central conflict which destabilized Yugoslavia was between, on the

one hand, the desire to create or consolidate (in the case of Serbia) a state in which

one national group was dominant, and on the other, the perceived or demonstrable

vulnerability of minority populations in these projected states.5 But the idea that a

state is for only a part of its population is liable to have malign consequences

everywhere in the form of political exclusion and discriminatory public policies.Thus, a prime minister of the micro-quasi-state of Northern Ireland once declared

it to be a Protestant state for a Protestant people, despite the presence within its

borders of a one-third Catholic minority. One-party Protestant rule guaranteed that

the minority, despite having the vote, was totally excluded from power. In Israel,

whose avowed raison dtre is to be a Jewish state for a Jewish people, the exclusion

of the Palestinian minority from a share in power is achieved in a different but

equally effective way. Although the electoral system is highly proportional, parties

predominantly supported by non-Jewish citizens are omitted from the process of

coalition formation that is the lifeblood of Israeli politics. Public policy in Northern

Ireland before the Troubles was notoriously biased in favour of the majority

310 Brian Barry

5 Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (London, 1992), p. 177.


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community, and in Israel too there are respects in which the Jewish population

occupies a relatively privileged position.

All this is quite straightforwardly contrary to the liberal theory of citizenship

which (as we have seen) posits equal treatment as fundamental. But it is not, I wish

to insist, an intellectually interesting challenge, however important it may be as a

cause of institutions that violate liberal precepts. On the contrary, a recognition of

the consequences of repudiating the liberal conception should give liberals a strong

reason for reaffirming their commitment. The cultural nationalism of the academic

political theorists is more of an intellectual challenge, because it can claim to be a

genuinely universal principle (a right to national culture for all) and because it is

put forward as a more sophisticated way of achieving the liberal end of equal

treatment. However, because the nationalism of the political theorists articulates so

poorly with popular nationalism, they find themselves attached to movements that

do not fit their model.

Thus, the two causes dearest to the hearts of contemporary academic nationalists

are those of Israel (e.g., Michael Walzer and Yael Tamir) and Quebec (e.g., CharlesTaylor and Will Kymlicka).6 Yet the phenomena in these two cases obstinately fail to

fit the cultural model. Thus, the very existence of Israel in its present location is

inexplicable in the absence of the idea that a self-defined descent group can lay claim

to a national territory even if it is many generations since those that it regards as its

ancestors occupied it. Such claims are the stuff of blood-and-soil nationalism: a

good current example is the Serbian claim on Kosovo, with its predominantly ethnic

Albanian Muslim population, based on its significance to Serbs as the site of the

holiest Serbian Orthodox shrine, and the former occupation of the area by Serbs.

Another puzzle for the cultural model of nationhood is that the founders of

contemporary Israel were not interested in perpetuating the Jewish religion (most ofthem were secular) or the Jewish culture of Eastern Europe from which most of

them came (hence the decision to recreate Hebrew rather than make Yiddish the

national language). It may be said, of course, that there is now an Israeli culture for

the state to defend. But it would be hard to maintain that the preservation of this

culture has anything to do with the disadvantages in access to land, housing and

public services suffered by the minority. Finally, the law of return defines the right

to settle in Israel and become an Israeli citizen in purely ethnic terms and not

cultural terms. (In requiring no affinity with Israeli culture or knowledge of Hebrew,

it is parallel to the German provision for automatic citizenship, which demands

proof of German ancestry but does not call for knowledge of German language orculture.) All this makes perfect sense from within the blood-and-soil perspective, but

not otherwise.


6 Michael Walzers notion of a state as the guarantor of a national culture pervades all his work; see,e.g., Spheres of Justice (New York, 1983). Yael Tamirs Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ, 1993, rptwith new preface 1995) explicitly points out that in [her] account of nationalism the termsmulticulturalism and multinationalism can be interchangeable (p. xvii) in virtue of a culturaldefinition of the term nation (p. 8). Similarly, Will Kymlickas culturalization of nationalism isembodied in the title of his book Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford, 1995), which is actually aboutrelations between groups of different national origins in the United States and Canada. Charles

Taylor has acknowledged a debt to Johann Herder, for whom language and culture definenationhood, and has deployed these ideas voluminously in defence of Quebec nationalism. The bookI cite below is, again significantly, entitled Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition, ed. AmyGutmann (Princeton, NJ, 1992).


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Similarly, despite the unique degree to which Quebec nationalism has been

influenced by academic cultural nationalism, it still requires a lot of hard work to

make the reality fit that model better than the blood-and-soil model. Thus, if the

concern were exclusively for the integrity of French language and culture, an

independent Quebec would not merely accept but welcome the loss of those areas

occupied by anglophones and native Americans. Yet Quebec nationalists are un-

willing to give up any territory, even parts ceded to Quebec by the Dominion

government in 1898 and 1912.7 (This, incidentally, illustrates the tendency for the

national territory to be defined so as to cover the largest area ever controlled by the

national group.)

The proposal for local referenda allowing for a decision to opt into or out of an

independent Quebec, modelled on the way in which the Swiss handled the division

of Canton Berne, has been derided as appropriate only to the pays de gruyre.8 But

even if the anglophone enclaves in western Montreal and the Eastern Townships

(contiguous with the United States but not the rest of Canada) were incorporated in

an independent Quebec, a large anglophone area along the western border and aneven larger (though lightly populated) area in the north-west with a native American

majority could be ceded without compromising the territorial integrity of the

remaining area. If thegruyre objection were the only one, it would not hold in these

cases. The resistance to the opportunity to create a more linguistically and culturally

pure Quebec is quite understandable, however, if the current boundaries are taken to

comprise the national territory, and the national majority is taken to have a valid

claim to the whole of the national territory.

As far as the language is concerned, there can, of course, be no question but that

speakers of French should be able to be educated (to the highest level), have access

to a wide array of occupational opportunities, and conduct their relations withgovernment in French. The rationale for this has the implication that the same

should be guaranteed to the anglophone minority. However, it is hard to see why the

French language should die out so long as French speakers choose to use French in

private and public. The pedantic thoroughness of the legislation that puts English in

an officially subordinate position makes more sense, I suggest, if understood as a

way of asserting ethnic superiority (with language as the marker dividing

communities) rather than as a response to any such threat.

In Northern Ireland the fault-line between the communities is a history of

conquest, and the Protestant marching season is a not very subtle reminder of that

history. In Quebec, the fault-line is language, and linguistic legislation the formtaken by the symbolic politics of ethnic superiority. Charles Taylor has argued that

there are no fundamental rights to things like commercial signage in the language of

ones choice.9 (The issue alluded to here was whether, given that all shop signs

should be in French, it should be permissible for signs to be in English as well or

whether public signs in English should be banished altogether.) Perhaps it could

equally well be said that there is no fundamental right not to have the members of a

community whose ancestors defeated yours march down your street in fancy dress

while playing pipes and drums to celebrate these ancient victories. But in both cases,

312 Brian Barry

7 Scott J. Reid, The Borders of an Independent Quebec: A Thought Experiment, The Good Society(PEGS), 7 (1997), pp. 1117.

8 Ibid., p. 15.9 Charles Taylor, The Politics of Recognition, in Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism, p. 59.


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the very unreasonableness, amounting to absurdity, of the majority action makes it a

symbol of raw power, a daily or recurrent demonstration of political superiority.

The practice of marching might, indeed, be defended as an aspect of the majority

groups culture, and it is amusing to observe that the language of culture has

penetrated even the ranks of hardline Ulster loyalists. In the face of a long-overdue

proposal by the British Government to set up a commission to regulate marches

(instead of leaving it to the Royal Ulster Constabulary) a spokesperson for the

Orange Order said, There is nothing in this legislation for us and we reject totally

the thinking that allows our faith, tradition and culture to be treated with such

contempt.10 If it were simply a matter of marching through areas in which the

marchers were welcome, the practice could perhaps with some stretching be treated

as a harmless cultural tradition. But then it would not need to be regulated, because

the Catholic minority do not object to marches as such (though they would, in my

view, be quite justified in doing so). Problems arise typically where loyalist marches

have attempted to go through districts which were once predominantly Protestant

but which have over the years become Catholic.11 What is going on here, then, is anexhibition of microscale blood-and-soil nationalism. As members of the Orange

Order have in the past told reporters, they feel that by rerouting their marches they

would be publicly recognizing a loss of communal territory.

The Ulster Protestants could, admittedly, claim with perfect accuracy that it is

part of their culture to monopolize political power in the province, and to reinforce

this symbolically by playing the national anthem on every possible occasion, making

lavish use of the royal title and insignia (no other police force in the UK is royal,

for example), and marching through predominantly Catholic areas. No doubt, if

defenders of the Old South had had access to the currently fashionable vocabulary,

they would have explained that their culture (as romanticized in Gone with the Wind)was inextricably linked with the Peculiar Institutionand they would have been

right. But this simply illustrates that the appeal to culture is less than conclusive, to

say the least. All too often, the appeal to culture is an attempt to legitimate either

the oppression of one group by another, or the oppression of some members of a

group by others within the group in the name of an internally inegalitarian and

illiberal culture.

******

The gravamen of my complaint against academic supporters of multiculturalismand multinationalism is that they have failed to penetrate what is, in essence, an

ideology in the strict Marxist sense: an otherworldly rationalization of a distasteful

reality. Whereas in recent decades historians and social scientists have concentrated

on unmasking the pretensions of these movements, political philosophers have been

willing to act as intellectual accomplices. Nevertheless, I believe that the focus on

culture has raised some questions that have characteristically been neglected by the

liberal tradition and that need to be addressed. In its simplest formthe form that I

began by depictingliberalism has no theory of political boundaries. Yet it seems

absurd to suggest that any boundaries are as good as any others, so long as the


10 Anger Greets Ulster March Proposal, Independent, 18 Oct. 1997, p. 12.11 Ibid.


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territories they enclose have liberal institutions. If we take it as given that blood-and-

soil nationalism cannot be reconciled with liberalism, it is surely plausible that a

liberal account will have to appeal to culture in some shape or form. To this degree,

the cultural school can be said to be vindicated.

Here again we come up against the importance of language, not this time as an

ethnic marker (the mother tongue) but simply as a means of communication. In

earlier times, it was perfectly feasible (as in parts of the Habsburg Empire) for the

towns to be linguistic enclaves surrounded by a peasantry that spoke another

language. So long as there were some intermediaries and officials that could speak

both languages, life could go on quite satisfactorily for all concerned, so long as they

accepted the political and economic status quo. But a democratic state requires for

its most effective functioning a single public discourse, which entails either a single

language or true bilingualism. The latter is not impossible. It exists, for example, in

the Alto Adige (or Sdtirol, depending on which language you speak) in Italy. But

the conditions for its flourishing are highly peculiar. What is usually called a

bilingual society is one in which the state offers services in both languages butindividuals are not themselves necessarily bilingual and form communities that

speak one or other language.

A single polity may contain more than one long-standing linguistic community of

this kind, because it has been put together in a way that cuts across a linguistic

frontier (or more than one), like Belgium or Switzerland. Alternatively, autoch-

thonous communities may have been overrun but not assimilated, as in much of the

New World. In all such cases, forcible imposition of a single language as the only

legitimate public means of communication would clearly be oppressive. This means

that liberals must accept certain group rights: the different linguistic communities

have a valid claim to conduct their collective life in their own language.However, what must be acknowledged is that this kind of arrangement takes its

toll on the functioning of a democratic regime. If one linguistic group is a minority,

it is liable simply to be excluded from the majority discourse and hence mar-

ginalized. Even where all linguistic groups count, as in Switzerland and Belgium,

what corresponds to ordinary political debate in unilingual countries tends to occur

in parallel within the different linguistic communities (almost all Swiss cantons are

unilingual), with federal policies brokered by elites in a bargaining process. The

connection between language and democratic politics seems inexorable: it helps to

explain, for example, the redivision of the Indian states along linguistic lines since

independence.Contemporary liberalism is committed to equality of opportunity. This leaves a

great deal of room for dispute about what equality of opportunity entails. But what

is at any rate fairly clearly a violation of it is a situation in which members of

different groups within a society have systematically different prospects of educa-

tional and occupational achievement, even if they have comparable levels of ability

and motivation. The existence of different linguistic communities is compatible with

equality of opportunity understood in this way, so long as these communities are

able to maintain educational and economic institutions that provide a range of

opportunities of roughly equal value, even if they are not exactly the same oppor-

tunities. Belgium and Switzerland both meet these conditions adequately. Thedemands of multiculturalism begin to bite only where such conditions are not

fulfilled.

314 Brian Barry


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Manifestly, a Cree or Inuit in Canada who does not speak English or French is at

a severe disadvantage in the national job market. Anyone who wants to integrate

into the mainstream economy will have to learn English or French. But it should be

noted that there is no demand for the creation of an entire parallel economy for

those whose only language is that of a native band. What those who choose to

identify with a native American group want is to have a quite different set of options

from those offered in the mainstream economy. They will be satisfied if they have the

opportunities that are valuable to them. This calls for measures to give control over

the resources they need for a distinctive way of life, not the creation of a parallel

economy functioning in their language.

The point to be made here is that nothing in this case carries over to that of

immigrants. Immigrants to liberal societies are normally attracted by job

opportunities in the mainstream economy: they have no wish to create a completely

distinctive, self-enclosed economy, on the lines of a native American band. There are

a few exceptions such as the Hutterites and the Amish in North America. These

raise some questions about equal opportunity in as far as their educational practicesleave those who choose to leave the community at a disadvantage in the mainstream

job market; but, for those who stay, nobody would regard it as an objection that

membership is incompatible with a career in banking or nuclear physics. The

singularity of these cases highlights their difference from that of the general run of

immigrants.

A claim characteristically made by exponents of multiculturalist pluralism is that

no group should be placed at a disadvantage as a consequence of adhering to its

own distinctive beliefs and practices.12 This is taken by some to imply that

immigrants and their descendants should be able to retain their original language

without suffering educational or occupational disadvantage. Furnishing anythingapproaching equal educational and occupational opportunity would entail con-

structing a parallel educational system (up to tertiary level) and a parallel economy.

Otherwise, those who do not speak the dominant language will be condemned to

menial jobs in the mainstream economy under the direction of a bilingual super-

visor, or to providing services for members of the immigrant community only.

Even where it entails these stunted opportunities, there may well be community

leaders who urge the maintenance of linguistic enclaves. This is, however, more

plausibly seen as an intergenerational conflict of interest within the immigrant group

than as a straightforward conflict between its interests collectively and those of the

host society. For the older generation, there is the advantage of not having to adapt.In addition, there are for the community leaders the power and other rewards that

come from being needed as the intermediaries between the ordinary group members

and the political and administrative structures of the wider society. (Charac-

teristically, the community leaders do not practise what they preach, in that they are

themselves bilingual.) For the children, there is much less to lose and much more to

gain from the acquisition of the means of moving freely in the larger society.13


12 See Young, Justice, esp. pp. 16883.13 Russell Hardin argues that the forc[ible] institutionalization of minor languages as required for

official and business transactions, and other such communally motivated policies, often have as theirsad consequence the fettering of the lives of future generations, who, in a sense, are used by thepresent generations merely to make life a bit more comfortable for themselves. Russell Hardin, One

for All: The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton, NJ, 1995), p. 220.


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Liberal societies are committed to the ideal of equal opportunity for all. Now, it is

true that the first generation may well find themselves at a disadvantage if they are

unable to become fluent in the language of business and public affairs in their new

home. But many newly arrived immigrants are in any case at a disadvantage as a

result of coming in with an education that restricts their occupational opportunities.

It is, I suggest, an unrealistic demand to place on any society that it should provide

equal opportunity to newly arrived immigrants, if this entails creating conditions

under which they will have the same range of occupations open to them as those

who speak the language in which the mainstream economy operates. Immigrants

themselves are normally content if their lot has improved over the one that they left

behind. Where equality of opportunity is relevant is among those who are born and

grow up in the host country. Fortunately, the experience of immigrants all over the

world testifies to the ease with which young children learn the local language, even if

their parents speak it poorly or not at all. (Indeed, itinerant academics who take

young children to a foreign country for just a year are regularly amazed to hear

them rattling away in the local language after a short time.) It is what naturallyhappens in the absence of deliberate attempts by the immigrant community to

impede it, especially where these attempts include the provision of public education

employing the communitys language as a medium of instruction.

Equality of opportunity is, then, a criterion on which a society can properly be

judged. But it should be construed as an opportunity to acquire the countrys

language, to achieve educational success in that language, and to gain employment

on the basis of those qualifications without suffering discrimination. These are hard

enough objectives to achieve, and most countries of immigration have at best a

spotty record in ensuring them. But they are objectives whose validity nobody who

accepts basic liberal principles can deny. In contrast, the provision of genuineequality of opportunity without linguistic assimilation would be, if not impossible,

fantastically burdensome. In practice, the maintenance of linguistic diversity is a

recipe for condemning successive generations to dead-end jobs (or unemployment)

and inability to take part in public affairs except as voting-fodder for a politics of

sectional interest. The rest of the society has a legitimate direct interest, not only a

paternalistic one, in avoiding such an outcome. For it has a legitimate interest in all

its citizens having the capacity to be economically productive and being equipped to

take part in its national politics on an individual basis.

Where language is concerned, a state cannot adopt a neutral stance: it must

provide its services in one or more languages, decide if a linguistic test for employ-ment is to count as illegal discrimination, and so on. At the same time, however, it

can be said of language as of no other cultural trait, that it is a matter of con-

vention. No doubt every language has its own singular excellencies, but any language

will do as the medium of communication in a society so long as everybody speaks it.

This is the one case involving cultural attributes in which This is how we do things

herethe appeal to local conventionis a self-sufficient response to pleas for the

public recognition of diversity.

Charles Taylor is quite right to say that, in general, saying no more than This is

how we do things here would be crude and insensitive.14 If it were the only reason

offered for holding to uniform laws that make no exceptions for those whose culture

316 Brian Barry

14 Taylor, Politics of Recognition, p. 63.


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or religion would result in their being inconvenienced by these laws, it certainly would

be very inadequate. But only an unargued relativism leaves us with nothing between

that and a multiculturalist politics of recognition. What both of these alternatives

have in common is that they assume there to be nothing except my culture and your

culture. It is not even My culture, right or wrong, because that still presupposes

that right and wrong can have a content independent of culture. Rather, it is My

culture provides the measure of what is right for me, and yours does the same for

you. Each culture is a moral monad. This is, manifestly, the pluralization of the

romantic nationalist idea of the incommensurability of national moralities.

******

Liberals must thus resist the multiculturalists false dichotomy. For one culture to be

imposed simply because its bearers have the power to do so is bad. But there is no

reason for thinking that it is any better simply to say that the different cultural

groups should fight it out in the political arena. Indeed, unless that arena can betightly constrained by rules of the game it may be a lot worse. What is lacking in

both scenarios is any notion of a principled resolution of group conflict. That would

be, as postmodernist cant has it, monological, which is merely to say that it would

be somebodys view about the substantive right answer, rather than a vacuous appeal

to dialogue. The same substitution of process for substance gives rise to the equally

absurd, and potentially lethal, notion that something called a peace process can

somehow bring about peace in the absence of any agreement on what the terms of a

just peace might be.

In any political system open to lobbying, it is quite understandable that well-

organized groups will often be able to obtain special concessions for their members.If there is (as is commonly the case) no similarly well-organized group on the other

side, governments and legislatures are naturally tempted to take the path of least

resistance and cave in to these group demands. But such ad hoc concessions may well

lack any coherent rationale. Liberals should have the courage of their universalistic

convictions and insist that it makes sense to seek for principled solutions to group

conflicts. At the minimum, they can reasonably demand that policies should be

capable of passing a test for internal consistency. I believe that the exemptions for

cultural minorities commonly cited by partisans of multiculturalism fail this elemen-

tary requirement. In a nutshell, my contention is that there are sometimes good

reasons (whether everybody accepts them or not) for having laws that prohibitcertain kinds of conduct. If the reasons are strong enough, then exceptions should

not be made for anybody; conversely, if a good case can be made for saying that

exceptions should be granted, this suggests that the reasons for having the law in the

first place are inadequate.

Let me illustrate with the two examples that I mentioned in passing earlier, both

of which are widely cited as the kind of thing there should be more of. Under the

Slaughter of Poultry Act (1967) and the Slaughterhouses Act (1979), Jews and

Muslims may slaughter poultry and animals in abattoirs according to their

traditional methods.15 Traditional methods is a euphemism for bleeding animals to


15 Bhikhu Parekh, The Rushdie Affair: Research Agenda for Political Philosophy, Political Studies, 38(1990), pp. 695709, at p. 704.


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death while they are conscious, rather than stunning them prior to killing them, as is

otherwise required. Now it can be argued that, just as the decision to eat meat at all

is left to the individual conscience, decisions about the way in which animals are

killed should be left to the conscience of the consumer. This argument is parallel to

that used to oppose the prohibition of blood sports, another culturally validated

custom central to the lives (and livelihoods) of a minority. The implication would be

that meat should be labelled with information about the way in which the animal

was killed but that there should be no other kind of regulation beyond that entailed

by considerations of hygiene. Alternatively, the case can be assimilated to the ban on

cockfighting and dogfighting, customs in their time equally deep-rooted but prohi-

bited nonetheless on animal welfare grounds. Taking this line, the implication would

be that there is a certain point beyond which cruelty to animals is a legitimate matter

for collective decision-making, and that kosher/halal butchery is over that line.

Second, under the Motor-cycle Crash-helmet Act (1976), Sikhs are excused from

wearing crash helmets provided they are wearing turbans.16 Again, it is possible to

make an argument that uniformity should be brought about by repealing the Act. Itcan, obviously, be said against it that it is paternalistic legislation, and that if people

choose not to wear crash helmets the resultant injuries are (literally) on their own

heads. Libertarians may object on principle to having to adhere to such a law, and so

may those for whom the thrills of riding a motorcycle at high speed are severely

compromised. (A former colleague in North America assured me that nothing

matches riding a Harley-Davidson at full throttle down a deserted freeway, and that

a bare head is essential to the value of the experience.) But there is, of course, the

competing argument that it is a valid aim of public policy to reduce the number of

paraplegic, quadriplegic and permanently comatose young men (as most victims are)

in the neurological wards of the hospitals. But if this is a valid objective, it is validacross the board. That the law will result in some people who would otherwise have

ridden motorcycles not doing so is not a good reason for making an exception in

their case.

******

To sum up, much group conflict does not arise from different beliefs or preferences

but simply reflects a struggle for positional advantage, defined in terms of access to

goods that are valued by all the parties. The groups may be distinguished by culture

to some degree, but in these cases culture is not what is at stake. If a man and awoman or a white and a black who have the same qualifications fare differently in

the job market, that is simply old-fashioned discrimination of the kind that liberal

principles are well equipped to condemn. If we leave these cases on one side, we are

left with those in which cultural differences are genuinely relevant. Some of these

will also be straightforward cases of discrimination: unequal treatment in an

undeniable sense. Thus, a blasphemy law that protects Christianity but not other

religions is discriminatory on its face. A liberal will of course say that the crime of

blasphemy should be abolished rather than that its protection should be extended to

all religionsand perhaps, to be completely fair, also extended to avoid offence to

the susceptibilities of atheists.

318 Brian Barry

16 Ibid.


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Finally, we have cases in which laws and rules that are not discriminatory on their

face nevertheless have differential impact on people as a result of their distinctive

religious beliefs, culturally rooted practices and norms, and so on. This is the kind of

case in which exponents of multiculturalism argue for special exemptions. I have

suggested that the examples normally cited in this context are not good ones. If

there is a sufficiently compelling reason for having the law in the first place, its

inconveniencing some people (for whatever reason) is not a basis on which

exemptions should be granted. The fact is that almost all laws are more burdensome

to some people than to others. The paradigmatic liberal achievement of freedom of

worship manifestly suits those whose religious beliefs are compatible with it better

than those whose beliefs commit them to the imposition of a religious orthodoxy. A

law prohibiting drink-driving does not bother non-drinkers, a law against paedo-

philia restrains only those inclined to it, and so on. So long as there are sufficiently

good reasons for having uniform laws, their having a differential impact is no reason

for making exceptions to them.17

This, of course, presupposes that there are such things as good reasons, not justmy reasons and your reasons. But that is the price we pay for living together in a

society bound by overarching norms of civility, and in a world that has the moral

resources needed to call brutish regimes to account. Deference to the autonomy of

other beliefs, other values, other cultures has become an all-too-easy alibi for moral

isolation. When we need action, we get hand-wringing. When we need forthright-

ness, we get equivocation. We need a liberalism that has confidence in its own

insights, a liberalism possessed of clarity as well as compassion.18


17 Rawls articulated the point fundamental to a liberal theory of justice when he wrote that equalcitizenship defines a general point of view and that many questions of social policy [as well as thoseinvolving basic rights] can be considered from this position, including reasonable regulations tomaintain public order and security or efficient measures for public safety. Rawls, Theory of Justice,

p. 97. As Rawls makes clear, what this means is that questions of distributive justice are out of placehere, even if policies have incidental distributive effects.

18 Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Ethics and Ethnicity, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,51 (1997), pp. 3653, at p. 47.

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Barry Limits of Cultural Politics