Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights: charting the disciplinary debates
- Part I Ethnicity and ethnic groups
- Part II The state and minority claims
- 6 New nationalisms and collective rights: the case of South Asia
- 7 Justice and security in the accommodation of minority nationalism
- 8 Two concepts of self-determination
- Part III New directions
- Index
8 - Two concepts of self-determination
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Ethnicity, nationalism, and minority rights: charting the disciplinary debates
- Part I Ethnicity and ethnic groups
- Part II The state and minority claims
- 6 New nationalisms and collective rights: the case of South Asia
- 7 Justice and security in the accommodation of minority nationalism
- 8 Two concepts of self-determination
- Part III New directions
- Index
Summary
In a speech he gave before a 1995 meeting of the Open-Ended Inter-Sessional Working Group on Indigenous Peoples' Rights, established in accordance with the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Craig Scott appealed to a meaning of self-determination as relationship and connection rather than its more common understanding as separation and independence.
If one listens, one can often hear the message that the right of a people to self-determination is not a right for peoples to determine their status without consideration of the rights of other peoples with whom they are presently connected and with whom they will continue to be connected in the future. For we must realize that peoples, no less than individuals, exist and thrive only in dialogue with each other. Self-determination necessarily involves engagement with and responsibility to others (which includes responsibility for the implications of one's preferred choices for others) … We need to begin to think of self-determination in terms of peoples existing in relationship with each other. It is the process of negotiating the nature of such relationships which is part of, indeed at the very core of, what it means to be a self-determining people.
Scott's plea is very suggestive, but he neither develops a critical account of the concept of self-determination from which he distinguishes his own, nor does he explain the meaning, justification, and implications of the concept he proposes.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Minority Rights , pp. 176 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
- 16
- Cited by