Introduction

A crucial stage in deconstructing the dilemma examined in the previous chapter is to regard a minority group's values as relevant to an assessment of its members' interests in a robust, deliberative approach. Doing so does not mean that we should ignore the admittedly sizeable risks involved in ‘talking “culture” ’ (Razack 1984), or the dangers of presupposing that cultures have timeless, immutable ‘essences’; but it does involve accepting that, on account of the plurality of values and inequalities of power that pervade human lives, women's interests are likely to vary according to their cultural location. Accordingly, this chapter defends what I call ‘the right to mediation’ or the right of minority groups to participate in consultative fora in order to articulate the values that inform their practices in the course of justifying their claims. This approach does not deny that human beings share certain interests cross-culturally, such as in health, nutrition, literacy and a degree of control over their environment; and it does not entail an uncritical acceptance of all minority demands. Yet it acknowledges that we cannot begin to understand women's differences and their similarities nor, therefore, the relation between the universal and the particular in a multicultural feminist theory until, in Chilla Bulbeck's words, ‘we question ethnocentric descriptions of … cultural practices and the universal applicability of individualistic rights-based discourses’ (Bulbeck 1998: 218).

Following the previous chapter's overview of theories of recognition, one might be wary, however, of relying on intercultural deliberation as a means to respond to feminist and multicultural concerns.