Ebook: Culture and Equality: an Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism

Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Part I Multiculturalism and Equal Treatment; 1 Introduction; 1 Losing Our Way; 2 The Flight from Enlightenment; 3 A Brief Overview; 2 The Strategy of Privatization; 1 Cultural Diversity; 2 Privatization and Pluralism; 3 Equal Treatment; 4 The Rule-and-Exemption Approach; 5 A Pragmatic Case for Exemptions; 6 Culture and Job Discrimination; 3 The Dynamics of Identity: Assimilation, Acculturation and Difference; 1 Vive la Difference?; 2 Liberalism and the 'Ideal of Assimilation'; 3 Assimilation: Good, Bad or Indifferent?;All major western countries today contain groups that differ in their religious beliefs, customary practices or ideas about the right way in which to live. How should public policy respond to this diversity? In this important new work, Brian Barry challenges the currently orthodox answer and develops a powerful restatement of an egalitarian liberalism for the twenty-first century. Until recently it was assumed without much question that cultural diversity could best be accommodated by leaving cultural minorities free to associate in pursuit of their distinctive ends within the limits imposed by.