Reseña De Kymlicka En Inglés

Kymlicka and “Multiculturalism citizenship. A liberal theory of minority rights.” By Celia Escudero van der Beek
Introduction

In these globalized world where we live, the difference between different cultures have increasingly become more and more visible -instead of disappearing, as many would have thought-. This diversity makes of our world a rich place that broadness our options and lifestyles. But at the same time, so phenomenon has raised important issues that have to do with how to handle such situation. Nowadays, people of different cultures share the same space, increasing the need of coexistence. We have does that have always lived and developed their community in a certain territory, but now are forced to coexist with others that usually try to impose their culture andrules to the former ones. The other typical situation is that one where people leave their original territory and immigrate to a new one in which they are expected to assimilate the dominant culture. As we can see, both situations arise many dilemmas. The central one has to do with which rights should prevail for each of these types of groups. Should they be assimilated by the dominant culture orshould the minority rights prevail in such shared territory? The answer to this is filled with dilemmas as balancing human rights and allowing the freedom of every individual and community to choose their own live and worldview (the right of self determination). To answer such matters Kymlicka’s book “Multicultural citizenship. A

liberal theory of minority rights” (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995)show itself very useful. As he states in his introductory chapter, the aim of his book is to propose “A liberal theory of minority rights (which) must explain how minority rights coexist with human rights(...)” (1995:6) not forgetting the necessity of the survival of the ‘societal cultures’ as those that provide people with the basic background which enables them to value their options and freelychoose their life style. Therefore, the contribution of this book rests in the need of finding answers, of achieving a new theory which is able to resolve issues that have to do with accommodating multiculturalism in international democracies, since little has been done in that direction, and since most of the countries have become multinational states which need the allegiance of the variousnational groups to the larger state in which they cohabit for it to survive and function.

Summary

After the introduction in which the aim and need of this book are explained, Kymlicka goes on to resolve some important theoretical issues which are key to understanding the claims of ethno-

culture minorities and to respond to their demands in an efficient and just way from a liberal perspective.One of the main definitions he provide us with has to do with the multicultural

states, where we have to distinguish between ‘multination’ states, which refer to those ones that incorporate previous self governing cultures into the larger community (for example, by conquer), and ‘polyethnic’ states, which include individual or familiar voluntary immigration, usually creating loose ties insidetheir new residence. While the first ones claim for a certain degree of autonomy, been their form of resistance national liberation, the second ones seek for measures to integrate in the mainstream society with out loosing their rights to still maintain their differences (ethnic pluralism). The second distinction he makes refers to the forms of

group differentiation rights which democracieshave conducted in respond to the demands of multiculturalism: self-government rights ( typical for the first group), poly-ethnic rights (demanded too by the second ones), and special representation rights, as a temporary measure to achieve equality in the large state. In chapter 3 he resolves the issue concerning the ambiguity of the term ‘collective rights’. This one is usually viewed as going...