Comments on Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture

• Published in: Constellations (Oxford, England) Vol. 11; no. 2; pp. 258 - 265
• Main Author: Pensky, Max
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK; Malden, USA Blackwell Science Ltd/Inc 01.06.2004
• Subjects: Cultural Conflict; Cultural Pluralism; Democracy; Discourse; Identity Politics; Majority Groups; Plural Societies; Social Constructionism; Traditional Societies; Western Society
• ISSN: 1351-0487; 1467-8675
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1351-0487.2004.00375.x

A comment on Seyla Benhabib's book, The Claims of Culture (2002), which presents a constructivist view of cultures as dynamic, contested, & overlapping, praises her view of cultural politics & agrees that the insights of deliberative democracy are the best model for clarifying the status of multicultural democracies. However, questions are raised about whether Benhabib succeeds in her attempt to reconcile discursive democracy & plural cultural goods. It is contended that her view that all cultures are subject to three midlevel principles in the same way ignores the core problem of the "relation between a largely secular, procedural, & formal majority culture in Western-style democracies, versus the various forms of traditional cultures." Emphasis is placed on the need for democratic theory to address this asymmetrical relation as the main problem of pluralism rather than varied forms of culture-to-culture conflict. It is also maintained that Benhabib's principle concerning the voluntary ascription of cultural membership is not necessarily compatible with a coherent sense of what it means to be a member of a cultural group. J. Lindroth