Two
Sometimes a college student who has been talked out of his stereotypes in a psychology course is amazed to discover, on his first trip abroad, that the Germans really are different from the Italians. —Roger Brown
This chapter goes a step farther in the attempt to delineate the parameters of liberal nationalism. Liberal nationalism attempts to capture what is essential to both schools of thought, drawing from liberalism a commitment to personal autonomy and individual rights, and from nationalism an appreciation of the importance of membership in human communities in general, and in national communities in particular. These are the two main concerns of the discussion on national choices and the right to culture, which is the focus of this chapter.
Why should the wishes of individuals to preserve their national identity and adhere to their national culture be respected? There are five different, although closely related ways of approaching this question. All are meant to demonstrate that individuals view the protection of the distinct national identity they have chosen as an important aspect of their well-being, and as an interest that justifies holding others under duty, substantiating the claim that individuals have a right to preserve the culture of their choice.1
The first approach suggests that national membership is an important and constitutive element of personal identity. It could be claimed that “there is no essence of ‘being Greek’ or ‘being English’”—that is, of belonging to a particular nation. It is merely accidental whether one is born in England, in France, or in the United States, or whether one is born a red Indian, a black, or a Jew,” but a person “is not accidentally human. Humanity is his essence or nature.”2 Obviously, “being English” or “being Greek” is not an essential feature of our concept of the person—most individuals are neither English nor Greek and are nevertheless human. There is, however, something misleading in this presentation: Although X could be replaced by any number of variants—in our case, different national groups—this does not imply that one could be none of these, meaning that one could be totally dissociated from any cultural national reference and remain human. Membership in a national culture is part of the essence of being human. The fact that individuals can define themselves as “Greek,” “American,” or “Greek-American” does not mean that these memberships are of incidental importance to them.
The second approach emerges from the description of the contextual individual. This description portrays individuals as reflective and autonomous, but as pointed out in the previous chapter, these features are contingent on the presence of a context that allows them to become strong evaluators. Were autonomy an intrinsically desirable good, national and cultural memberships could be viewed as possessing instrumental value, as means for individuals to exercise their capacity for choice and self-reflection.
The third approach ties the instrumental value of culture to its voluntary acceptance. If culture is valued only on instrumental grounds, that is, in terms of its contribution to personal autonomy, then the claim that the choice of culture merits respect might seem irrelevant. One might suggest that we should agree on the culture or cultures most conducive to this aim, and that individuals should be discouraged or even prevented from adhering to their own culture if it seems less rich or less suitable to modern times, and be forced to adopt more suitable alternatives.
But this is a self-defeating proposition since the instrumental value of a culture is contingent on its being accepted. It is only when we choose to accept our cultural affiliations as well as the values suggested by them, that culture can indeed assume its instrumental value. If after a process of reflection we were to reject the culture we were born into, then this culture would lose its authoritative stand and its ability to provide us with an evaluative horizon that could serve to guide our choices.3 It would be absurd to argue that individuals who decide to emigrate or to assimilate because they reject the cultural codes of their own national group should turn to the latter in search of an evaluative horizon. Similarly, it seems quite irrelevant to suggest that we should rely for this purpose on a set of values drawn from an unfamiliar culture that we neither know nor respect. The complex relations among acceptance, practice, and the instrumental use of culture go far beyond the scope of this book. Nevertheless, they have a direct bearing on our discussion because they imply that no argument for granting the right to culture can be detached from questions of acceptance and choice.
The fourth approach argues that unless we allow individuals to practice the national culture they willingly identify with we fall into a “paternalistic trap” that is best avoided. Respect is due to cultural preferences not by virtue of their intrinsic contents, but because they reflect autonomous choices. National cultures should therefore be protected if, and only if, their members express a reflective interest in adhering to them. Like religious and political loyalties, or the choice of a spouse, cultural affiliations should be respected because they express one’s choices regarding the kind of individual one would like to be and the kind of life one would like to live. It is not thereby implied, however, that any culture individuals might be interested in should be protected. The right to culture is by no means ultimate, and other rights may override it in situations of conflict, an argument similarly used to justify restriction of other freedoms. For example, although freedom of speech is independent of the content of what is being said, if its exercise leads to the violation of the rights of others, the latter are given priority and freedom of speech is restricted.
The fifth approach is a prudential one, implying that classifying individuals as members of a national culture they do not choose to belong to or assuming that they ought to have an interest in their native culture even though they deny it, seems preposterous. It undermines their right to autonomy and self-determination, and leads to unwarranted oppression.
Just as our belief in freedom of religion is not oblivious to the fact that most of us are born within a particular religion, arguing for the view of national culture as a matter of choice merely suggests that, having discovered the cultural and national frameworks we were born into, we can reflect on them critically and exercise choices regarding our future commitments and affiliations. In other words, a national culture is not a prison and cultural ties are not shackles. Furthermore, not only should individuals have a right to choose the national group they wish to belong to, but they should also have the right to define the meanings attached to this membership, that is, they should be the ones to decide on the cultural practices they wish to adopt, and on the ways of expressing them. It is for this reason that specific cultural demands are entitled to favourable consideration only when raised by members of a culture. For example, it is morally plausible to accept a demand for geographic distinctiveness when it is raised by members, while it is morally offensive to accept a demand by nonmembers that people belonging to a particular group ought to be isolated in a closed ghetto.
It is on these grounds that the choice of a national identity and its cultural implications are entitled to respect. The emphasis of this argument on the elective dimension of national membership, however, might place it on an equal footing with any other preference, thus lessening its value. Kymlicka illustrates this claim through the following example: Aboriginal peoples occupy vast areas that are necessary for the preservation of their special way of life, but other Canadians want to use these areas for different purposes. If the aboriginal way of life reflects individual choices rather than fate, then granting special rights to the aboriginal peoples “would be an unfair use of political power” as it would “insulate aboriginal choices from the market.”4 The right to culture, Kymlicka argues, is to be respected precisely because cultural membership is an innate and inevitable feature of one’s identity rather than a product of choice.
Kymlicka’s objection raises an interesting point, but could be contested on two counts: (1) It creates a tie between the right to culture and the innate nature of membership, thus unjustifiably depriving, for instance, converts. (2) His position fails to acknowledge that, although we have reasons to protect cultural choices, these should not be entirely isolated from “the market of preferences.”
Sandel’s discussion of religious freedom could be helpful in furthering this discussion. The struggle for freedom of conscience, he argues, was not a struggle for the right of people to choose their beliefs, but rather for their right to exercise their religious duties without suffering civil penalties or incapacities: “It is precisely because belief is not governed by the will that freedom of conscience is inalienable.” Religious liberty therefore “adresses the problem of encumbered selves, claimed by duties they cannot renounce, even in the face of civil obligations that may conflict.”5 Sandel then cites two cases that he takes as showing that, when religious obligations are approached as merely a matter of choice, the state sees no reason to give them preference. Were religious rights perceived as “a right to exercise a duty” rather than as a right to make a choice, argues Sandel, the attitude of the courts would be different.
His first example is the Supreme Court’s ruling against granting Sabbath observers the right not to work on the Sabbath, on the grounds that the same degree of respect is due to the preference of other workers for not working on weekends, even though the latter’s decision was not made on religious grounds. The second comments on the Court’s ruling upholding the decision of the United States Air Force not to allow Captain Simha Goldman, an Orthodox Jew, the right to wear a skull-cap while serving in a health clinic, on the grounds that “the essence of military service is the subordination of the desires and interests of the individual to the needs of the service.”6
Sandel is right in claiming that these two decisions show a misunderstanding of the nature of religious obligations. He is wrong in suggesting that what is needed to correct the Court’s mistaken attitude is to adopt the view that religious freedom implies the exercise of duties by encumbered selves unable to renounce the obligations religion imposes on them.
Captain Goldman could have converted or he could have decided to become a nonobservant Jew; Sabbath observers could choose not to keep the Sabbath or to leave Judaism altogether. There are many precedents to such decisions. Until their hypothetical conversion, Captain Goldman and the Sabbath observers were encumbered by Judaism, but after renouncing this membership, it would obviously be morally wrong for the Court to force Captain Goldman to wear a skull-cap because he was born Jewish, or to forbid Jews to work on the Sabbath even had they wanted to, on the assumption that Jews cannot but wish to observe Jewish law.
Let us look at the same problem from the opposite angle and assume that Captain Goldman has converted to Judaism only recently. Would his demand to wear a skull-cap have carried less weight then? If it cannot be proven that this ought to have made a difference, then the issue is not that Captain Goldman’s Jewish feelings are so deeply embedded that he cannot but act in a particular way, but that he has chosen a certain course of action.
Neither Sandel nor Kymlicka would support a policy ensuring a right to culture to individuals only after looking at their family tree seven generations back. As claimed earlier, individuals should not be seen as encumbered by duties imposed on them by their history and their fate, but as free to adhere to cultures and religions of their choice. Indeed, after they have chosen, their memberships might impose on them certain duties, inherent in their understanding of a particular religion or culture. It should be recognised that, by making a religious choice, people have expressed a readiness to follow the practices and traditions constitutive of a particular religion. Hence, proof that a certain practice plays a constitutive role in the history of a certain religion should count as an argument in favour of allowing individuals to adhere to it.
This view makes the question regarding odd or idiosyncratic demands easier to handle. Some individuals could claim that their commitment to a certain particularistic worldview compels them to act in ways that most people would consider bizarre. If our commitment to religious or cultural practices is only a matter of choice and interpretation, why should such demands not be heeded? How can we distinguish between these claims and those staked by Captain Goldman or by the Sabbath observers?
The first question is whether it would be justified to view these demands as constitutive of these individuals’ identity. This is a test of plausibility that most personal instances of eccentricity would fail to pass. (Even assuming that eccentricity itself is constitutive of a person’s identity, not every specific eccentric act need be seen as such.) Were we persuaded that these behaviour patterns are indeed constitutive of these individuals’ identity, however, we would now have to consider to what extent these preferences can be accommodated. It seems that the best guide for what would constitute an appropriate measure of accommodation is common sense.
Note that the intuition that eccentric preferences need not, as a rule, be accommodated, is not grounded on the fact that they were chosen but rather on their extravagant and easily noticeable nature. Captain Goldman made a modest request, and had his demand to wear a skull-cap been accepted, his appearance would differ only slightly from that of other officers. But let us assume that Captain Goldman had demanded permission to serve in the American army without wearing a uniform and donning the standard black garb of his Hasidic group. Would not Sandel have expressed different feelings about the appropriate course of action? We may infer from this example that our readiness to accommodate personal preferences is influenced by the measure of their eccentricity rather than by the question of whether they are more or less authentic. A reasonable compromise should be sought in each case between the right of the individual to act “his own way” and factors such as the needs of the institution concerned, the degree of allowed divergence, the extent to which a precedent, perhaps a damaging one, is created for others, and the like. Claims formulated in terms of “this is our tradition” can only tilt the balance in certain cases.
The second reason Kymlicka’s position is to be contested is that it lends itself to an interpretation whereby the right to culture is granted an overly predominant role. Suppose the aboriginal people do not live in Canada but in a densely populated area, and they still demand vast areas as essential for the preservation of their culture. Conceding to this demand would imply depriving others of a chance to build their own homes. Presumably it would be justified, under these circumstances, to take away part of their lands and give it to others, even if we thereby force changes in the aboriginal way of life. In other words, the claim that “this is how we do things in our community” is a reason for special consideration, but not a conclusive justification.
Cultural choices, like religious ones, belong in the category of constitutive choices, which due to their importance to individuals, should be granted special weight. Religious allegiances take priority over a choice of restaurant, and political ideologies are more important than a preference for a specific make of car. We are therefore likely to agree to give people a day off to vote, but not to visit a car exhibition. Similarly, if Moslems or Jews work for our company, we shall feel obliged to ensure that pork is not the only option at the company’s restaurant, but we shall not feel obliged to satisfy the needs of a worker who loves Japanese food. Aboriginal people should have priority when competing for land with others wishing to build a golf club, but their case would be much weaker if they were competing with members of a persecuted religious group who have no other place to build a church.
But cultural preferences might be at a loss even when competing with other, ostensibly nonconstitutive preferences, as the following example illustrates. Jews are forbidden to eat pork and are required to follow certain procedures in the slaughter of animals. Let us assume that a small Jewish community lives in a particular area where it is only profitable to raise pigs, and all other meat imported into the area is not ritually fit. Jews are forced to import their own meat, but this becomes prohibitively expensive and they are therefore unable to eat meat at all. Does respect for their religious rituals imply that others must subsidise the import of kosher meat in order to allow Jews the same level of nutrition enjoyed by the rest of the population? While the answer will have to take into account the costs of such a subsidy and the burden it places on other members of the community, the mere readiness to consider these demands already demonstrates that we recognise the importance of cultural and religious rights.
A special reason for making special concessions meant to help members of a minority group preserve their national culture is worth noting. Membership in a cultural community is a matter of personal choice, but this does not imply that members have chosen to be a minority. This status is imposed on them by the choices of nonmembers, and could be seen as supplying a reason to support their chances of leading a meaningful and worthwhile life without having to renounce their cultural commitments. This claim implies that the process whereby individuals find themselves belonging to a minority should be a factor in deciding the extent of support they are entitled to. For instance, individuals at times emigrate, although aware that they will thereby lose their majority status and will become members of a minority. Their cultural demands are weakened under these circumstances, as it could well be argued that they have deliberately placed themselves in this position and should therefore bear the consequences. The parents’ motivations and decisions are not relevant, however, when considering demands raised by second- or third-generation children of immigrants, who were born into a given situation. The final chapter elaborates this issue more fully, and argues that the reasons motivating individuals to emigrate should also be taken into account.
It should be noted in this context that the demands of indigenous peoples or of groups that were forced to migrate—such as the blacks taken to America against their will, or the Russians forcefully evacuated to republics in the periphery of the former Soviet Union—carry the strongest weight, since these individuals were practically forced to become minorities.
Is the Right to Culture a Communal Right?
Our argument so far shows that, in point of fact, we are discussing two different rights: the right of individuals to choose their national identity and their right to adhere to the national culture of their choice. While it is quite clear that the first is an individual right, can the right to follow a culture also be considered an individual right? The right to culture is generally regarded as a communal right, on the following grounds:
Let us examine these claims one by one.
The first claim is that the right to culture should be seen as a collective right on the grounds that the interest of individuals in preserving their cultural identity derives from their membership in a collective. Although this statement is obviously true, it is equally valid regarding civil rights or religious rights, in which we have an interest only by virtue of our membership in a particular political or religious community. But the fact that we acquire an interest due to our membership in a particular group does not alter its essential nature as an individual interest. Accordingly, the right protecting it should be approached as an individual right.
The second claim argues that the right to follow a national culture is a collective right since it can only be implemented by a collective. This argument can be contested in two ways. The first hinges on what is considered to be the implementation of this right, while the second refers to the fact that a right should be defined by its justification rather than by the ways in which it could be fully realised. These two points require further clarification.
What is entailed by the implementation of the right to follow a national culture? It is quite clear that one can declare oneself Israeli, Palestinian, Basque, or French even when alone, and that some features of national culture can be retained even in complete solitude, or within the boundaries of one’s home (reading to oneself in one’s own language, reciting poems, or practicing some traditional ceremonies).
Isolated individuals are undoubtedly more restricted in their ability to enjoy the full benefits of a culture, since a wide range of national cultural expressions requires the presence of a community. It is probably the case that the ability to express one’s national identity grows in line with the size of the group, although there is a critical mass beyond which size does not necessarily influence the ability of members to lead a full national life.
But does this imply that individuals are not to be allowed to follow their national culture by themselves, to the best of their abilities? A musician can play solo, in a trio, in a quartet, in a chamber group, or in a philharmonic orchestra. Although the richness of the musical experience might vary with the size of the group, no one will claim that musicians, who for some reason cannot play in a philharmonic orchestra, would be better off not playing at all. Similarly, it makes no sense to suggest to those who cannot express their nationality and culture in optimal ways, that they should refrain from expressing them in more modest and restrained ones.
The second way of contesting this objection is to draw a distinction between the individual interest protected by the right to practice a national culture and the fact that these practices have a strong collective dimension. This distinction is by no means unique to the right to culture. Many individual rights have communal aspects. This implies that the practice of these aspects is contingent on the presence of a sufficient number of interested individuals, which justifies imposing a duty to allow, or even to support, their implementation. For example, individuals have religious rights, but the state’s decision to allocate public space and public resources to establish houses of prayer or communal and educational institutions is contingent on there being sufficient numbers of interested citizens. It is quite obvious that the interests of a single individual cannot justify the establishment of a church, a Sunday school, or a community centre, and that an isolated individual could not put such institutions to use.
Similarly, individuals have a right of association but the practice of this right requires the presence of a group. If the association is to enjoy government assistance, society might even set a threshold and decide that only groups numbering more than one hundred individuals are to have free access to certain facilities necessary to the functioning of voluntary associations—tax-free status, meetings in the town hall, and the like. Such a decision could not be seen as violating the freedom of association of members in smaller groups, unless it could be proven that the threshold was set so as to exclude a particular group. As long as the threshold is determined in light of practical considerations—for instance, the need to limit the use of the town hall, or the expense entailed in sponsoring the activities of voluntary associations—it cannot be claimed that the members of smaller groups have been wronged simply because others, belonging to larger ones, are more successful in satisfying their preferences.7
Does this imply that the obligation to support the building of a church, the establishment of a Sunday school, or the granting of a tax exemption derives from a communal right? The nature of a right derives from its justification, not from the ways in which some of its aspects are best implemented. Since the justification of all these rights, be they religious or political, is grounded in the interest that individuals have in pursuing them, they should be considered individual rights. There is no reason why the right to follow a culture should be an exception to this rule.
The third claim argues that the right to follow a national culture should be seen as a collective right because its realisation might impose far-reaching demands on others. In and of itself, a person’s interest cannot justify imposing such extensive obligations on so many individuals. This conclusion obviously hinges on the assumption that realising the right to culture will necessarily impose heavy burdens on others. The practice of a national culture, however, can be realised at different points along a continuum, from the right of individuals to do whatever they can on their own, all the way to the establishment of national autonomy. It would then be enough to claim that the balance between costs and benefits should determine when, and to what extent, one should seek to realise this right, but this holds true for every right. Hence, there are no grounds for excluding in advance the possibility that some aspects of the right to follow a culture may entail minor burdens, and it will therefore be justified to grant it even to isolated individuals.
A distinction must be drawn between matters of principle and matters of policy. As a matter of principle, the right to practice a culture, like all other rights intended to protect the interests of individuals, is an individual right. As a matter of policy, it might be justified to obligate others to carry the burdens that follow from the realisation of this right only if there is a minimal number of individuals who will benefit from it. Hence, the size of the group deriving benefits from a particular policy may influence the prospects of its implementation: the larger the number of individuals who will benefit from the implementation of a right, the stronger the justification to burden others with the costs entailed by this implementation.
The final claim relates to the fact that culture is a collective good: If the justification of a right is contingent on the good it promotes, then rights concerned with protecting the pursuit of collective goods cannot be considered individual rights, and this for two reasons. First, the value of collective goods can only be appreciated in reference to their collective benefit, namely, their benefit to the group as a whole. Second, collective goods are nonexclusive, and even when granted to isolated individuals, other members of the collective can enjoy them. Communal goods, argues Waldron, cannot consequently be regarded as the subject of individual rights:
[A] claim of right does two things: it specifies a good, and it specifies a person—a beneficiary, a right-bearer—for whom, or for whose sake, the good is to be brought about. What is distinctive about a right is that the benefit to the individual is seen as the ground of the duty, as a “sufficient reason” for it, in Raz’s phrase.8
Waldron defines communal goods as goods jointly produced and nonexcludable. Moreover, no account of their worth to anyone can be given except by concentrating on what they are worth to all. The duty to realise such goods, he argues, must be grounded in an adequate characterisation of their desirability. Since no adequate account of this desirability can be pinned on either X or Y or Z, there can be no point in saying it ought to be pursued as X’s or Y’s or Z’s right.9
It is true that the desirability of communal goods cannot be fully captured by calculating their worth to particular individuals. The benefit of living within a prosperous culture, experiencing solidarity, sharing a language, or suffering from the destruction of such communal goods might be larger than the cumulative benefit or damage to specific individuals. But the fact that the value of a communal good exceeds the value it has for the individuals who enjoy it only suggests that such a reductive process will not capture the full worth of this good, yet does not prove that we cannot estimate its value to individual members. It might then be the case that we desire to preserve a communal good—a national culture in our case—because of its comprehensive general value, but this would be different from granting individuals the right to preserve their national identity and participate in the social, cultural, and political life of their group. The latter must be based on the interests individual members have in following their culture, while the former might take into account the interest of nonmembers as well.
Note that if we base a claim for the right to preserve a particular culture on the interests of nonmembers we might find ourselves in the paradoxical situation of granting the right to culture to individuals who, in fact, wish to waive it. We may think, for instance, that Indian culture should be preserved because of its artistic and poetic achievements, but this cannot justify granting the right to culture to Indians if they do not care for it. The opposite is also true: Members of groups whose culture is not appreciated by others, or is even seen by them as decadent, have the same right to culture as members of groups held in high esteem.
If we accept that granting an individual the right to preserve and express a national culture in which he has no interest is not only absurd but could even lead to severe oppression, we must conclude that, in determining when a person should be granted a right, external preferences should not count.10 The right to culture ought to be justified only in reference to its value to members, even if this value fails to capture the full worth of preserving a culture.
But what is the practical difference of granting a nonexclusive communal good to individuals rather than to a group? The difference lies in the status of individuals vis-à-vis the group, as according a right to a collective embodies a possible threat to individuals. The fact that a right is granted to a collective implies that it is incumbent on the group to decide whether to claim this right and how to implement it. This puts pressure on the group to define a unanimous, or seemingly unanimous, set of demands. Under these conditions, those wishing to withdraw from membership are pressed not to do so, and those who would like to realise this right in ways unacceptable to the majority are denied this possibility. The final outcome of granting rights to groups may therefore be that certain rights, to which all are entitled, are enjoyed only by some members of the group. For instance, Israeli law grants religious rights to the various religious communities in the country. This right is given to the community as a collective rather than to individuals, with the result that one group, Jewish Orthodoxy, dominates both the interpretation and the practice of this right while all other Jewish religious movements are excluded.
There is, however, another reason why the right to culture should be seen as an individual right, and it concerns the difficulty of defining the group. National groups, as demonstrated in Chapter 3, are informal, quite amorphous, constantly changing, imagined communities. Unlike commercial companies or other formal organizations, national groups lack clear criteria of membership, and the idea of granting them rights is fraught with theoretical and moral difficulties.
An interesting phenomenon deserves mention in this context. Policies reflecting an attempt to treat all individuals with equal respect could at times be mistakenly interpreted as directed toward groups. For example, a policy of affirmative action, or a policy that grants every group, irrespective of size, the same number of representatives in a governing body, could be interpreted as an attempt to ensure equal treatment to groups. The justifications of these policies, however, will reveal that they were devised in order to ensure equal opportunities to the individual members of these groups. For example, granting equal voting powers to representatives of small and large groups, as is the case in the General Assembly of the United Nations or in the American Senate, is intended to safeguard the interests of individual members of these states and to protect them from being automatically outvoted. These policies are also meant to allow members of small groups the possibility of enjoying the benefits that derive from the public recognition of a group’s uniqueness, and from the acknowledgment of its right to be an autonomous source of interests and preferences.
Similarly affirmative action can be described as a way of redressing wrongs inflicted on individuals whose self-image has suffered because they were not judged on their own merits, but rather in terms of their membership in humiliated and persecuted groups. This presupposes that the image of a group is a collective good to be either enjoyed or borne by all its individual members. It is individuals who profit or suffer from the group’s image, and it is their personal suffering and the prospects of improving their individual well-being that motivate policies of affirmative action. Hence, policies granting representation to groups, or arguing that various groups should be proportionally represented in all public positions, are not motivated by concern for the welfare of the group, but by concern for its individual members.
The Problem of Authenticity
The tendency to view the right to culture as a collective right is spurred by an undesirable tendency to refrain from applying criteria of justice to intracommunal affairs. This tendency relies on two fallacies. First, it assumes that, in primordial communities, there is no need for rights and principles because matters are settled on grounds of affection and mutual interest. This approach comes through clearly in Sandel’s description of ideal communities or in Rawls’ decision to grant rights to heads of families rather than to their individual members, of which feminists have been highly critical. The second fallacy is that the right to culture is interpreted as the right to preserve the culture in its “authentic” form. This interpretation obviously serves the interests of those holding power within the community, but does it represent fairly the interests of all members? Interpreting the right to culture as the right of a community to preserve its authentic culture leads Kymlicka to endorse communal rights even at the expense of violating certain individual rights. For instance, Kymlicka accepts that Canadian Indian women should be denied the right to continue living on the reservation when they marry non-Indian men, although Indian men who marry non-Indian wives are allowed to remain in the community.11 This is a clear example of how males, who presently rule the community, link the right to culture with the preservation of their dominant status, by depriving women who have chosen to marry outsiders of their right to make a cultural choice. Had the right to culture been granted to individuals rather than to the community, Indian women could have demanded that the community respect their right to marry non-Indians while allowing them to retain membership in the community. They could have required changes in the traditional patterns of decision-making, perhaps through an arrangement whereby the Indian spouse in a mixed marriage, whether male or female, would be the one to represent the family within tribal institutions, or else threaten to exercise their right to culture by establishing an alternative Indian community.
One might question the very notion of an “alternative community.” But the right to culture is not only meant to grant individuals the right to follow their culture as given, but also to re-create it. The ultimate result of a series of moral and communal choices is a proliferation of ways of life, interpretations of culture, and the emergence of new national groups. In the process of choosing, individuals may draw from different national traditions and give rise to new, as yet undefined cultural versions. There will be cases in which it may be hard to indicate whether individuals have assimilated into another culture or changed their own. Many third world countries, which gained access to Western culture through their contact with imperialist powers, provide a good illustration of a variety of possible outcomes. In many cases, a new cluster of features emerged, a melange distorting both the native cultures and the colonial patterns and creating a new cultural reality. Describing the Kenyan elite, an English officer remarked: “The settlers played golf and polo, went to horse-races or on royal hunts in red coats and riding breeches. . . . The Black pupils now do the same, only with greater zeal: golf and horses have become ‘national’ institutions.”12 This might appear as a merely superficial adoption of cultural patterns, but for many Africans “cricket was not just a game. Rather, it was a uniquely British institution that embodied so many of the values and ideals which . . . they aspired to.”13
The African example illustrates an important aspect of choice. Choice does not necessarily mean selecting between two well-structured alternatives, but can also involve creating a series of variations combining the old and the new, which may result in a proliferation of cultural alternatives.
Nationalists reject the proliferation of cultural options for two reasons. First, it challenges the aspect of continuity discussed above, opens the way for the disintegration of national identities based on cultural similarities, and brings about a proliferation of “private” cultures. Second, it is feared that new, modified traditions might be so thin as to lack all meaning.
The first concern would appear to be justified, at least to some extent. Individuals aware of the presence of options may indeed find it easier to leave their group of origin, or attempt to challenge the existing interpretation of their culture and aspire to change it. Such processes could challenge the integrity of existing frameworks and lead to the creation of new ones.
As for the fear that national cultures and consequently membership in national communities might become meaningless because of the “thinness” of newly emerged cultural options, this concern seems slightly exaggerated. Steinberg claims that the identity of American ethnic groups is threatened because the “core elements of the traditional culture have been modified, diluted, compromised, and finally relinquished.” For members of these groups, those elements of the traditional culture that have been preserved are “removed from the social and cultural matrix in which they once belonged.”14 Ethnic communities thus face a crisis of authenticity. Their cultural patterns, once rooted in the exigencies of life, appear to be increasingly irrelevant or even dysfunctional; ethnicity becomes symbolic, and thus culturally thin.
There is a dangerous dimension in claims about authenticity. These claims are commonly used to imply that there is one genuine interpretation of a national culture, whereas all the others are factitious and invalid. Agents of revision are therefore likely to be called disloyal and their products inauthentic. “And though authenticity is, one would think, always relative to a particular national history (and dubious even in its relativity, given the actual variousness and the internal contradictions of all such histories), nationalist intellectuals often reach for a stronger argument: that their culture, morality, and politics is authentic tout court—real, historical, orthodox, organic, faithful, uncorrupted, pure, and enduring—and so superior to all the synthetic, unnatural, and hybrid creations of other peoples.”15
The term “authentic” could thus serve as an instrument of conservatism and social oppression. To claim that individuals should be authentic is to suggest that they should accept the identity or the roles ascribed to them by some “Council of Elders” and that, were they to deviate from these roles, they would be guilty of developing a false conscience or hiding their “true” selves.
In nineteenth-century England, for example, it was widely agreed that “a person who accepts his class situation, whatever it may be, as a given and necessary condition of his life, will be sincere beyond question. He will be sincere and authentic, sincere because authentic.”16 The idea that individuals were meant to be what they were born to be contradicts the view of individuals as free, choosing agents, as authors of their own lives. For those who embrace the discourse of authenticity, a converted Jew, a liberated woman, or a commoner marrying gentry are always guilty of fraud, since they will constantly be hiding what they were meant to be. There is, however, an alternative understanding of authenticity: The authentic person is someone who creates himself.17 This position is expressed in its most extreme form by existentialists, who believe in the ability of every person to choose for himself his attitudes, purposes, values, and ways of life. According to this view, “the only ‘authentic’ and genuine way of life is that freely chosen by each individual for himself.”
The debate about the nature of authenticity is closely related to the debate about the “thinness” or “thickness” of modern nations. The idea that a nation that has undergone a slow and organic process of development is more authentic than one that has developed in a less stable and continuous way, or that a society that exhibits a more congruous set of values and beliefs is more authentic than one that is new, pluralistic, and therefore heterogeneous, should then be viewed with some suspicion.
The assumption that individuals can exercise choice regarding both their communal affiliations and their moral identity entails respect for dynamic and pluralistic views of culture. It views with favour the fact that, at any given point in time, different cultural interpretations compete for recognition within each nation. Membership in the cultural community would then be expressed by participating in this debate, rather than by following one specific interpretation.
Interpretations of culture may spring from ancient sources, be recently invented, or bring together the old and the new. Modern cultures need not necessarily be the linear continuation of long historical traditions beginning in the rural practices of small, closed communities entrenched in an ethos of the soil. They can be urban, open, and democratic, even populistic. They can mirror such distinct spheres as rock music, soccer games, TV advertisements, talk shows, and newspaper columns. Such cultures are valued not because they revive old traditions or preserve a ruling culture, but because they allow individuals to participate in a cultural process they regard as their own.
If the only alternatives were closure and cultural coherence or openness and the destruction of culture, then all modern national cultures would be seriously threatened. Modern cultures are open to influence and change. They may not be preserved in their old structural form, and may include mutually inconsistent norms, values, and social habits, as well as largely symbolic acts, but they nevertheless play a significant role in their members’ lives.
The revival of ethnic languages, the renewal of national identities, the search for roots, all suggest that, in the modern world, individuals attach great importance to the expression of their national affiliations. This is true irrespective of whether the national culture is self-professedly new, grounds a claim to authenticity on its ancient roots, or claims to be old wine in new vessels. Israelis do not care less than the members of long-established European nations about their national culture because it is newly invented, and are in fact more likely to be aware of it and more involved in its re-creation. Similarly, Palestinians, presently involved in the process of developing an independent Palestinian culture, show deep allegiance to the symbols of their newly emerging national identity.
It could be claimed that our ability to choose among national cultures is parasitic on previous generations, and on the closure and the thickness of past forms of life. Will such options be open to future generations? Will the newly emerging modern cultures provide future generations with a sufficient range of alternatives to choose from, or will we leave a wasteland behind us?
Such fears reflect the assumption that cultures are in the process of moving from the age of authenticity to the symbolic (used as synonymous with superficial) age. This assumption attempts to use “original” culture as a yardstick in light of which new variations are evaluated. But there is no Archimedean point from which we can evaluate the authenticity of cultures. Why are the Jewish practices of a New York Reform community less authentic than those of an eighteenth-century Orthodox community in Eastern Europe? Why is American-Italian culture less authentic than Italian culture in Milan? Is it because it is heavily influenced by American culture? But was not Italian culture itself influenced by neighbouring cultures? The view that in the past there were genuine and coherent cultures, while now we have thin and superficial ones seems questionable. It probably reflects our stronger awareness of change and innovation in modern cultures. Past cultures thus seem to us more comprehensive and rigid, less threatened by change and external influences, and therefore more valuable. But why identify the value of a culture with closure and rigidity? A common culture in our days, says Raymond Williams, cannot be “the simple all-in-all society of the old dream. It will be a very complex organization, requiring continual adjustment and redrawing.”18 The idea of a common culture brings together “at once the idea of natural growth and that of its tending. The former alone is a type of romantic individualism; the latter alone a type of authoritarian training. Yet each, within a whole view, marks a necessary emphasis.”19Williams’ words summarise well the importance of openness, creativity, and diversity within cultures.
The Individual Practice of the Right to Culture
What are the implications of the claim that the right to practice a culture is an individual right? What rights are due to a culturally isolated individual? This question is meaningful only if we admit that culture, although by definition a communal creation, has dimensions that can also be expressed individually.
Ms. X lives in Yland, a society that defines itself as liberal and fair. She is the only person practicing X culture in Yland. It is obvious that Ms. X’s right to identify herself with the X community and to preserve its culture in her private domain should be recognised—her right to sing in her own language in the shower, to purchase and read books on her own culture, to wear special clothes, and so forth. This interpretation of the right to culture, however, is covered by the right to privacy.
Problems arise when individuals wish to carry their culture into the public sphere: when Jews wish to wear skull-caps, Algerian schoolgirls in France to don veils, Palestinians to tie kaffias around their shoulders, Scots to wear kilts, Sikhs turbans, and Indian women saris when other clothes are de rigueur for everyone else. As the case of Captain Goldman showed, even these minimal expressions of cultural distinctiveness could evoke conflict. Should a Sikh be allowed to wear a turban while working at a construction site where everybody is forced to wear a helmet? Should Moslems be free to leave work an hour earlier during the month of Ramadan so that they can get home in time for the evening meal? Should Hispanics be permitted to present their case in an American court in Spanish? Should a Palestinian living in Israel be allowed to write matriculation exams in Arabic? Those who deny individuals the right to the public practice of their national culture often hide behind the claim that public life should be culturally neutral. But culture cannot be restricted to the private sphere, and only those living in a society expressive of their own culture could be oblivious to this fact. The separation of state and religion in French schools reflects their civic national culture. Compelling Jewish or Moslem children from religious homes to come to school bareheaded or without a veil is not merely to demand that they confine the practice of their national culture to the private sphere, but requires them to betray fundamental aspects of their culture. In these cases, refusing individuals the right to express their culture in the public sphere in compliance with the ruling culture compels them to forgo their identity. Note, however, that Jewish boys have a right to wear skull-caps and Algerian girls to don veils only if they have chosen to do so. Children may quite clearly be placed under pressure to conform with their parents’ wishes, but it is of educational value to stress the relation between their choice and their right, teaching them not only to respect their culture but also their own individuality.
When no culture enjoys state support, the right to follow a culture merely amounts to the right to follow one’s culture to the best of one’s ability without state interference. If the state supports specific cultures, however, there are further implications to be considered. Suppose that Ms. X can prove that, in Y society, a certain amount of funds is spent in support of Y culture. She then claims that, as a taxpayer, she is entitled to receive her fair share of cultural funding and use it to practice those aspects of her culture she can practice on her own, or within a small circle of followers. This is a justified demand, and, as a matter of principle, Ms. X is entitled to her fair share of cultural expenditure. This approach calls for distributing an equal number of cultural vouchers to each citizen, and allowing individuals to consume culture according to their own preferences. (Note that individuals might decide to donate their vouchers to support the practice of a culture not their own.)
This does not imply that isolated individuals will have enough vouchers to materialise their cultural preferences, but it does suggest that state investment in cultural services should be based on a per capita calculation. In other words, if the state decides to distribute cultural goods, it should distribute them equally among all its members. State-sponsored language teaching, book publishing, social and historical research, the formulation of national curricula—all should be equally assured to all citizens. The right to culture thus justifies the introduction of a relevant yardstick by which state spending in the cultural domain might be measured.
Satisfying these demands may require the creation of a pluralistic system providing differential services. The system of “separate but equal services,” despite its notorious reputation, may thereby attain rehabilitation, demonstrating once more that it is crucially important to inquire who desires separate frameworks and why.
Even if Ms. X were to obtain a fair share of cultural vouchers, however, this would not solve her problems. Since Ms. X is culturally isolated, she may not be able to give expression to any of her culture’s collective aspects, and her ability to practice her culture could thus be restricted to those activities she is able to perform on her own. Hence, at some point, Ms. X may decide to move to Xland, or to a community where there are more Xs, or to accept compromises in the expression of her culture, and there will be nothing unjust about that.
Let us now assume that several families that practice X culture move to Yland at some point. Adherents of X culture are now able to improve, although still modestly, the public practice of their culture. They soon realise, however, that since they are a relatively small group, their per capita expenses in organizing a festival, for instance, are higher than those of the rest of the population: Producing 10,000 flags, or bags, or hats, will make the production cost per item cheaper than producing only fifty. Therefore, members of the X community get the same number of cultural vouchers per capita, but can do much less with them than members of the Y community. If we wish to ensure that all cultural choices enjoy an equal chance, we may wish to supplement the funds granted to members of the X community. This may allow them to follow their culture in a more satisfying manner, but it will obviously not compensate them fully for the fact that they are a minority.
In the realisation of their right to culture, members of minority communities are affected by both an “internal” and an “external” restriction. Certain rituals or practices require a minimal number of participants, and this creates an internal restriction. Yet, when a cultural practice cannot be followed due to a lack of participants, it cannot be claimed that the right to culture of a particular individual interested in practicing it has been violated, unless it can be proven that deliberate obstacles were placed in the way of publicising an event, or in the attempts to convince individuals to participate, or that individuals were intimidated or prevented from participating. In fact, in order to receive state support on a par with other citizens, members of minority groups must prove that there are, in fact, sufficient numbers of individuals to make the practice feasible. For example, Jewish tradition requires a minimum of ten adult males in order to conduct public prayers; in a community where there are only five adult Jewish males, there is no basis for demanding that space be allocated to build a synagogue, even when other religious groups do receive state help to set up houses of prayer. (The definition of “a sufficient number” may differ among cultures, and among different practices within the same culture.)
The external restriction is not intrinsic to specific cultural practices and derives from the fact that minority groups may have to incur higher cultural costs to attain similar ends, due to their size. In most cases, irrespective of the state’s fairness and generosity, unless sizable groups of individuals are interested in following a particular culture, vouchers given to isolated individuals will not suffice to ensure the provision of cultural services. Hence, even if social resources are fairly distributed, minority groups will be more limited in their ability to practice their national culture. Therefore, due to no fault of society, members of national minorities may feel culturally deprived and continue to wish that they lived in a community in which they constitute the majority.
These conclusions serve as the starting point of the next chapter, where I discuss a particular development of the right to follow the national culture, namely, the right to national self-determination.