Securing Diversity: A Review of Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship

Will Kymlicka’s seminal work on Multicultural Citizenship has done much to advance the case for minority rights worldwide. Agreeing with communitarians that culture is important, yet unwilling to relinquish liberal equality and fairness, Kymlicka builds on John Rawls’s monumental Theory of Justice to show group rights are not only accord with liberalism, but are its true fulfilment. Yet, while Kymlicka’s theory has received accolades for elegantly tying liberalism and culturalism together theoretically, it has been met with equal scepticism over the tenability of its praxis. In this book, I argue that much of the criticism wielded against Kymlicka’s theory results from his crucial reliance on the definition of societal cultures and the contradictions embedded therein. This is further compounded by the tendency of Kymlicka to neglect his commitment to dynamic culture and liberalism in favour of a monolithic treatment of culture, leading us down the path to illiberal conclusions. I suggest that for Kymlicka’s theory of “Multicultural Citizenship” to embrace a truly vibrant multiculturalism, the theory must overcome its internal contradictions and reaffirm its commitment to a multi-layered and recursive approach to group rights. I shall review the strengths and weaknesses of Kymlicka’s theory set against contemporary debates on the topics of nationalism and minority rights and will suggest how the theory can reduce its inner tensions to embolden its critical support for multiculturalism in Canada and worldwide