Trans-Groups Duties and Common Sense or the Politics of Multiculturalism

  • Abstract:

    In the debate on multiculturalism, there is wide disagreement over which rights are basic in the relevant sense. At the heart of this article, in turn, there are two different commitments. First, the idea that multiculturalism has a dual dimension: the politics of multiculturalism and the realm of everyday interactions. Second, the awareness that special rights do not guarantee a profound understanding of the relational element that distinguishes multicultural societies. In this paper, by drawing upon Markell’s notion of acknowledgment, I argue that, in contexts featuring multiple perspectives, a crucial need for political philosophers is to investigate how views are mutually related. First, by sharing a communal network of transactions and exchanges, people are bounded to consider different outlooks. Then, frequent interactions allow people to articulate their perspectival limits. Finally, this self-assessment makes people elaborate their cultural burdens and to design mechanisms of collaboration. The issue, thus, is to set institutional strategies to make this interaction possible. Decentralization, I argue, can be seen as positive answer in this respect.