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Culture and citizen-a comparative study of Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a comparative study of Michael Walzer and Will Kymlicka¡¦s theories on citizenship. By comparing their different perspectives on conception of person and political equality, I demonstrate that due to their differing views on the significance of culture, they, as a result, have divergent theories of citizenship. Looking from a liberal multiculturalist perspective, Kymlicka defends the centrality of personal autonomy and sees cultures as important references that allow persons to choose their respective ideal ways of life. Walzer, on the other hand, faults liberalism for its hyper-individualist assumptions and misunderstanding of the significance of culture to human agency. Walzer insists that culture is not a resource/object for humans to appropriate but a constitutive part of human self-understanding that cannot be disregarded in human actions. These two distinct ideals of citizenship, I maintain, can therefore be seen as a continuation of the liberal-communitarian debate in the 1980s.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0821107-053739
Date21 August 2007
CreatorsWu, Li-Chiang
ContributorsChing-Chane Hwang, K-S. Roy Tseng, Man-To Leung
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0821107-053739
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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