The Paradox of Multicultural Vulnerability: Individual Rights, Identity Groups, and the State

Abstract

Abstract Ayelet Shachar is a good deal less ‘catholic’, pointing at the losses in individual rights that multicultural accommodation may entail. She calls a ‘paradox of multicultural vulnerability’ a situation in which group members may reap some benefits from multicultural accommodation, while individuals with ‘other’ identities (for instance, women) bear disproportionate costs for preserving their group's identity. Discussing religious family law in Israel, she puts her finger on a sore spot in Kymlicka's theory of multicultural citizenship, which prohibits individual rights violations in principle but lets them pass in practice.