Will Kymlicka
Biographic Data
| ID | 77425 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Will Kymlicka |
| GIVEN NAMES | Will |
| FAMILY NAME | Kymlicka |
| SIGNATURE | KYMLICKA W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen's University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6468-5174 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 152 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1687 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 138 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 14 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 23 |
Santuarios de animales de granja
Uno de los desafíos fundamentales para la teoría de los derechos animales consiste en imaginar los contornos de relaciones sociales justas con los “animales de granja”, una vez que dejemos de confinarlos y matarlos para obtener alimento. ¿Qué tipo de relaciones sociales podrían establecer las vacas, los cerdos, los pollos y otros animales con nosotros, así como con otros miembros de su propia especie o con los de otras especies? ¿Qué tipo de vida…
Membership‐Making in Diverse Societies
The traditional aim of Western social democracy has been to create a society that is a ‘common possession’ of its members (in T.H. Marshall's words). Social democratic politics has therefore been both society‐making and membership‐making, orienting people to a shared society as an object of attachment and loyalty, and nurturing membership‐based conceptions of democracy and the welfare state. This aspiration to create a society that is the common …
The value of dignity appeals
In recent decades, activists and leaders of government and nongovernment organizations have increasingly and explicitly called for greater attention to human dignity in their efforts to promote pro-social relations. In this study, we investigate whether appeals to this core human value actually influence how individuals act with regard to those who might be otherwise ignored or neglected. Using the digital advertising platform on Facebook, we ran…
Inclusive Redistribution and Perceptions of Membership
Immigrants tend to be seen as less deserving of welfare benefits than native-born citizens, but little consensus exists to explain this finding or how to build greater public support for more inclusive policies. Recent work suggests that support for redistribution may be tied to citizens’ perceptions of the “membership commitment” of immigrants. This study provides the first systematic test of this hypothesis in the comparative setting using an o…
Federalism and Decentralization in the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa
Doing Politics with Animals
An increasing number of theorists are challenging the idea that only humans can engage in politics and propose that humans must learn how to do politics with animals. But what does it mean to do politics with animals? We consider several recent developments at the frontiers of social inquiry that are relevant, including (1) proposals for the institutional representation of animals' interests in human political decision-making processes; (2) growi…
Membership Rights for Animals
It is increasingly acknowledged that animals have an intrinsic moral status, in part due to the influential work of many moral philosophers. However, surprisingly little has been written by philosophers on whether animals are owed social membership and the rights that attach to membership in society. In this paper, I explore why the idea of social membership matters, particularly in relation to domesticated animals, and how it can guide legal and…
The Exclusion of Immigrants from Welfare Programs
Nationalism, Membership and the Politics of Minority Claims-Making
Previous research has shown that the public tends to see some groups as less deserving of social rights. Our focus in this article is whether they are also seen as less entitled to engage in political claims-making. Recent theorists of inclusive nationalism argue that whether minorities are seen as having the right to codetermine the future may depend on whether the majority believes minorities are morally committed to the nation. Drawing on a un…
Shared Membership Beyond National Identity
Liberal nationalists argue that identification with the nation promotes feelings of mutual obligation, including support for redistribution. Existing attempts to test this hypothesis have focused on whether the higher sense of national identity among the majority increases support redistribution. We argue for a twofold shift in focus. First, beyond the majority’s own national identity, we need to explore their perceptions of whether minorities sh…
Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance
The Precarious Resilience of Multiculturalism in Canada
Compared to other Western democracies, there has been relatively stable support for multiculturalism in Canada since its adoption in 1971, both amongst the general public and amongst the three main political parties. Conservative opposition to multiculturalism has, therefore, typically taken the form of “stealth” reforms to undercut its progressive potential, not direct frontal attacks. During the 2015 election, however, the Conservative Party ca…
Boundaries and Justice
Animales
Multicultural Citizenship
Modern societies are increasingly confronted with minority groups demanding recognition of their identity, and accommodation of their cultural differences. This is often phrased as the challenge of &s;multiculturalism&s;. But the term &s;multicultural&s; covers many different forms of cultural pluralism, each of which raises its own challenges. Immigrant groups and religious minorities could, in principle, seek the legal power to impose tradition…
Freedom of Association
Animal Labour
Is animal labour inherently oppressive, or can work be a source of meaning, solidarity, and social membership for animals? This challenging question drives this thought-provoking collection which explores the possibilities and complexities of animal labour as a site for interspecies justice. The book assembles an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars who carefully grapple with the many facets, implications, and entanglements of an…
Re-Mapping Centre and Periphery
Historians often assume a one-directional transmission of knowledge and ideas, leading to the establishment of spatial hierarchies defined as centres and peripheries. In recent decades, transnational and global history have contributed to a more inclusive understanding of intellectual and cultural exchanges that profoundly challenged the ways in which we draw our mental maps. \n \nCovering the early modern and modern periods, Re-Mapping Centre an…
Membership without Social Citizenship? Deservingness & Redistribution as Grounds for Equality
Western societies have experienced a broadening of inclusive membership, whether we consider legal, interpersonal, or cultural membership. Concurrently, we have witnessed increased tensions around social citizenship, notably harsher judgments or boundaries over who “deserves” public assistance. Some have argued these phenomena are linked, with expanded, more diverse membership corroding solidarity and redistribution. We maintain that such a concl…
Deschooling multiculturalism
In recent work, Geoffrey Brahm Levey has argued that we can distinguish various schools of multiculturalism on the basis of their methodology (in particular, how they relate theory to practice), and their substantive normative commitments (in particular, their normative commitments regarding liberalism and nationalism). In this article, I offer some reservations about Levey’s analysis. I suggest instead that the various authors Levey discusses in…
Women’s Participation in the Public Domain Under Human Rights Law
This chapter explores how human rights law has contributed to the shift towards participatory gender equality by legitimating the adoption of quotas and parity mechanisms to ensure women’s equal participation in decision-making. Since the adoption of CEDAW, human rights law has moved away from formal equality notions that simply affirm women’s equal political rights. Instead, we see growing endorsement of substantive equality doctrines that valid…
Multiculturalism without Citizenship?
The model of multiculturalism that emerged in Canada in the 1970s was intimately linked to national citizenship. Multiculturalism was premised on the assumption that immigrants would settle permanently and become citizens, and multiculturalism was seen as an attribute of Canadian citizenship, and a way of enacting citizenship. This tie to citizenship arguably served the interests of both immigrants and the native-born majority. For immigrants, it…
Chimpanzee Rights
Since 2013, an organization called the Nonhuman Rights Project has brought before the New York State courts an unusual request—asking for habeas corpus hearings to determine whether Kiko and Tommy, two captive chimpanzees, should be considered legal persons with the fundamental right to bodily liberty. While the courts have agreed that chimpanzees share emotional, behavioural, and cognitive similarities with humans, they have denied that chimpanz…
Contemporary Political Philosophy
"This new edition of Will Kymlicka's best selling critical introduction to contemporary political theory has been fully revised to include many of the most significant developments in Anglo-American political philosophy in the last 11 years, particularly the new debates on political liberalism, deliberative democracy, civic republicanism, nationalism, and cultural pluralism." "The book now includes two new chapters on citizenship theory and multi…
Is there really a backlash against multiculturalism policies? New evidence from the multiculturalism policy index
In much of the western world, and particularly in Europe, there is a widespread perception that multiculturalism has ‘failed’ and that governments who once embraced a multicultural approach to diversity are turning away, adopting a strong emphasis on civic integration. This reaction, we are told, “reflects a seismic shift not just in the Netherlands, but in other European countries as well” (JOPPKE 2007). This paper challenges this view. Drawing …
Return of the Citizen
Multicultural Odysseys
The Rights of Minority Cultures
This text collects together the most important contemporary articles on the rights of minority cultures. While drawing on particular case studies, the articles focus on the more general theoretical and normative issues raised by the accommodation of cultural differences. The authors come from a variety of countries and disciplines and reflect a wide range of opinion. Topics include the nature and value of cultural membership, models of cultural p…
Is there really a retreat from multiculturalism policies? New evidence from the multiculturalism policy index
The rise and fall of multiculturalism? New debates on inclusion and accommodation in diverse societies
There has been much talk recently of a retreat from multiculturalism across western democracies. While people disagree about what comes after multiculturalism, there is a broad consensus that we are indeed in a post‐multicultural era. In this article I explore and critique this rise and fall narrative and suggest an alternative framework for thinking about the choices we face. Both the rise and fall of multiculturalism have been very uneven proce…
Solidarity in diverse societies
In the postwar period, projects of social justice have often drawn upon ideas of national solidarity, calling upon shared national identities to mobilize support for the welfare state. Several commentators have argued that increasing immigration, and the multiculturalism policies it often gives rise to, weaken this sense of national solidarity. This creates a potential “progressive’s dilemma”, forcing a choice between solidarity and diversity. My…
The Rights of minority cultures
Immigration, Multiculturalism, and the Welfare State
Popular opposition to immigration is rooted in many factors. In this essay, we focus on one specific issue that has become prominent in recent debates—namely, the fear that the welfare state is being undermined by the impact of increasing ethnic and racial diversity. There are actually two concerns here: first, that ethnic and racial diversity as such makes it more difficult to sustain redistributive social policies because it is difficult to gen…
Multicultural citizenship within multination states
In many western democracies today, there are calls to strengthen a sense of common citizenship as a way of building ‘social cohesion’ in increasingly diverse societies. Citizenship is to be promoted by, amongst other things, adding or strengthening citizenship education in schools, providing citizenship classes to immigrants, imposing new citizenship tests for naturalization, and holding citizenship ceremonies. In this article, I will examine thi…
National Identity and Support for the Welfare State
This paper examines the role of national identity in sustaining public support for the welfare state. Liberal nationalist theorists argue that social justice will always be easier to achieve in states with strong national identities, which, they contend, can both mitigate opposition to redistribution among high-income earners and reduce any corroding effects of ethnic diversity resulting from immigration. We test these propositions with Canadian …
Multiculturalism in Asia
This book explores the different ways that issues of ethnocultural diversity are conceptualised and debated in South and East Asia. It looks at the legacies of precolonial and colonial traditions for managing diversity, their reinterpretation under postcolonial independence and globalisation, and their relationship to Western liberal models of multiculturalism and emerging international norms of human and minority rights. It shows that political …
Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa
The paradox of efforts over the past twenty years to reinvent democracy in Africa has been that rather than dampening the fires of ethnic conflict, they have often made them more intense and in the past decade have been accompanied by the explosion of violent conflicts of autochthony, confrontations of ‘sons of the soil’, that threaten the very bases of social order and cohesion in multi-ethnic societies. This essay explains the relationship thro…
Membership without Social Citizenship? Deservingness & Redistribution as Grounds for Equality
Western societies have experienced a broadening of inclusive membership, whether we consider legal, interpersonal, or cultural membership. Concurrently, we have witnessed increased tensions around social citizenship, notably harsher judgments or boundaries over who “deserves” public assistance. Some have argued these phenomena are linked, with expanded, more diverse membership corroding solidarity and redistribution. We maintain that such a concl…
Migration and welfare state spending
Is international migration a threat to the redistributive programmes of destination countries? Existing work is divided. This paper examines the manner and extent to which increases in immigration are related to welfare state retrenchment, drawing on data from 1970 to 2007. The paper makes three contributions: (1) it explores the impact of changes in immigration on social welfare policy over both the short and medium term; (2) it examines the pos…
Canadian Multiculturalism
In much of the world, and particularly in Europe, there is a widespread perception that multiculturalism has failed, and Canada has not been immune to these rising global anxieties. A number of commentators have argued that smug complacency is blinding Canadians to growing evidence of stresses and failures in ethnic relations in their country. In this article, we explore this evolving debate. We briefly review the global backlash against multicul…
Finding Our Way
Nation-building and minority rights
Until quite recently, the area of ethnocultural relations has been surprisingly neglected by Western political theorists. For most of this century, ethnicity was viewed by political theorists as a marginal phenomenon that would gradually disappear with modernisation, and hence was not an important topic for forward-looking political theorists. As a result, even into the mid-1980s, there were very few political philosophers working in the area. Th…
The Rights of Minority Cultures
Marketing Canadian Pluralism in the International Arena
ONE OF THE STATED GOALS of Canada's foreign policy is to promote a greater understanding and appreciation of values. Many of these values are in fact widely shared across the western democracies, if not around the world-e.g., human rights, peace, development, the environment. But some of these values are more distinctively Canadian. Foremost amongst these is the value of or pluralism. When Canadian politicians and diplomats act on the internation…
Testing the Liberal Multiculturalist Hypothesis
For much of the 1990s, the academic literature on multiculturalism was heavily normative, dominated by political philosophers who developed idealized theories of a distinctly liberal–democratic form of multicultural citizenship. This “liberal multiculturalism hypothesis”—the notion that multiculturalism policies can be adopted without jeopardizing core liberal–democratic values—has been quite influential, shaping debates not just within the field…
Being Canadian
This article is one of a series commissioned byGovernment and Oppositionexploring identity politics in several national and international contexts. Most discussions of ‘the Canadian identity’ focus on how ‘being Canadian’ relates to various sub-state group identities, such as Québécois, Aboriginal or immigrant identities. There is often said to be a distinctly Canadian model of reconciling national identity with sub-group identities. I argue that…
Shared Membership Beyond National Identity
Liberal nationalists argue that identification with the nation promotes feelings of mutual obligation, including support for redistribution. Existing attempts to test this hypothesis have focused on whether the higher sense of national identity among the majority increases support redistribution. We argue for a twofold shift in focus. First, beyond the majority’s own national identity, we need to explore their perceptions of whether minorities sh…
Immigration, Citizenship, Multiculturalism
Multicultural Citizenship
Liberal Multiculturalism as a Political Theory of State–Minority Relations
Human Nature and Social Change in the Marxist Conception of History
Discussion de G. A. Cohen : Karl Marx's Theory of History (Princeton University Press, 1978). Les AA. defendent cet ouvrage contre une critique de J. Cohen (ibid., 89, 5, mai 1982, pp. 253-273). La controverse porte sur la these du developpement contenue dans l'ouvrage de G. A. Cohen : Les forces productives tendent a se developper a travers l'histoire . Les AA. examinent en particulier la notion de tendance presente dans cette these et en recons…
Liberalism and Communitarianism
It is a commonplace amongst communitarians, socialists and feminists alike that liberalism is to be rejected for its excessive ‘individualism’ or ‘atomism,’ for ignoring the manifest ways in which we are ‘embedded’ or ‘situated’ in various social roles and communal relationships. The effect of these theoretical flaws is that liberalism, in a misguided attempt to protect and promote the dignity and autonomy of the individual, has undermined the as…
Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality
Two theories of justice
Liberalism and the Politicization of Ethnicity
Most liberal democracies exhibit cultural pluralism, that is, citizens of the same country belong to various cultural communities, and so speak different languages, read different literatures, practice different customs. Most contemporary liberal political philosophy, on the other hand, assumes that countries are “nation-states”. Citizens of the same state are assumed to share a common nationality, speak the same language, develop the same cultur…
The Ethics of Inarticulacy
In his impressive and wide‐ranging new book, Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor argues that modern moral philosophy, at least within the Anglo‐American tradition, . offers a ‘cramped’ view of morality. Taylor attributes this problem to three distinctive features of contemporary moral theory ‐ its commitment to procedural rather than substantive rationality, its preference for basic reasons rather than qualitative distinctions, and its belief in …
Books in Review
Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance
In his most recent work, John Rawls argues that political theory must recognize and accomodate the ‘fact of pluralism’, including the fact of religious diversity. He believes that the liberal commitment to individual rights provides the only feasible model for accomodating religious pluralism. In the paper, I discuss a second form of tolerance, based on group rights rather than individual rights. Drawing on historical examples, I argue that this …
Liberalism, Community, and Culture
Liberalism, Autonomy, and Neutrality
Social Contract Theory
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Social Contract Theory. Edited By Michael Lessnoff. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. 233. Price £10.95 pb.). James W. Child James W. Child Bowling Green State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 42, Issue 168, July 1992, Pages 375–378, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219689 Published: 01 July 1992
The Rights of Minority Cultures
This text collects together the most important contemporary articles on the rights of minority cultures. While drawing on particular case studies, the articles focus on the more general theoretical and normative issues raised by the accommodation of cultural differences. The authors come from a variety of countries and disciplines and reflect a wide range of opinion. Topics include the nature and value of cultural membership, models of cultural p…
Le libéralisme et la politisation de la culture
Le libéralisme contemporain a échoué à reconnaître le pluralisme culturel et à s'y adapter.Au Canada, cela a eu comme résultat une résistance injustifiée face aux revendications légitimes des Canadiens français et des peuples aborigènes.On impute communément cet échec au fait que le libéralisme est intrinsèquement trop « individualiste » ou trop « universaliste » pour comprendre le sens que les gens accordent au fait d'être membres d'une culture …
Moral Philosophy and Public Policy
In this paper, I will express some reservations about the usefulness of moral philosophy for the analysis of public policy issues.... My question is whether taking morality seriously requires taking moral philosophy seriously. This paper focuses on one particular public policy context -- namely, government commissions into new reproductive technologies, such as Britain's Warnock Committee, Australia's Waller and Michael Committees, Canada's Baird…
Reply to Modood
In reply to Dr. Modood, I re-examine two examples where recent British Muslim demands conflict with liberal-democratic norms. Such conflicts are not unique to Muslims, but arise with most religious communities
Communitarianism, liberalism, and superliberalism
Although Roberto Unger is sometimes described as a communitarian critic of liberalism, his recent three‐volume work on Politics disavows the major tenets of contemporary communitarianism—for example, the "embedded self," the critique of rights, the rejection of universalizing theory. Instead, Unger's aim is to criticize liberalism from the perspective of a "superliberalism"—a perspective which takes the original liberal desire to emancipate indiv…
Return of the Citizen
The Rights of minority cultures
Problematic Ethics
Toleration and Its Limits
Discusses how liberals should respond to situations in which a minority demands the right to restrict the basic civil and political liberties of its own members, in violation of the liberal commitment to individual autonomy, which it does not share. Does it follow that liberal states should impose liberal norms on liberal minorities? This raises complicated issues about the meaning of tolerance and its limits. The chapter discusses the relationsh…
Justice and Minority Rights
Explores the main arguments in favour of group‐differentiated rights for ethnic groups and national minorities. In particular, it distinguishes between equality‐based arguments, which aim to show that the minority is facing some sort of unfair disadvantage that can be rectified by a group‐differentiated right, and various history‐based arguments, which aim to show that the minority has some historical claim to the group‐differentiated right, base…
Social Unity in a Liberal State
Around the world, multiethnic states are in trouble. Many have proven unable to create or sustain any sense of solidarity across ethnic lines. The members of one ethnic group are unwilling to respect the rights of the members of other groups, or to make sacrifices for them, and have no trust that any sacrifice they might make will be reciprocated. Recent events show that where this sort of solidarity and trust is lacking, the consequences can be …
Multicultural Citizenship
The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of rights for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing su…
The Rights of Minority Cultures
Liberal Accommodation
Political science (138 works) · Law (120 works) · Sociology (120 works) · Politics (98 works) · Law (52 works) · Philosophy (45 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (45 works) · Political economy (43 works) · Multiculturalism (42 works) · Gender Studies (32 works)