ABSTRACT
One of the key developments in the recent history of multicultural political philosophy has been the shift towards more empirically informed or contextual analyses of multicultural questions. What precipitated this shift was a growing sense that the first wave of multicultural political philosophy, led by theorists like Kymlicka (1989), Young (1990) and Taylor (1992), suffered from an excessive degree of theoretical abstraction, a problem that had also plagued some of the earlier debates between liberals and communitarians (see Chapter 4). 1 The concern was that by distancing itself from the facts on the ground multicultural political philosophy was undermining its persuasive power and its relevance to public policy and institutional design. Contextualists therefore called for a new approach to multicultural political philosophy that was more sensitive to the specific claims, characteristics and circumstances of different cultural minorities, that paid attention to the different ways in which those demands could be justified and accommodated in policy terms, and that had something to say about the practical feasibility of adopting those policies in concrete political settings. 2
