Anne Phillips

Across Europe, the discourse and practices of multiculturalism are in crisis. Politicians compete to stress the importance of a strong sense of national identity and belonging, and have come to regard diversity as a problem rather than a resource. The language of integration – once perceived by many as objectionably close to assimilation – increasingly dominates debate. Newspaper articles call on immigrants to confirm that they have opted for the values of their host society, while governments insist on applicants for citizenship undergoing courses in the national language and what are said to be the values of the host country. Multiculturalism – never as powerful a force in European politics as its critics have suggested – has come to be associated with ethnic ghettos and people living ‘parallel lives’. Multiculturalism was attacked from the right almost from its inception, and was repudiated by segments of the left for allegedly burying the inequalities of race in vague celebrations of cultural difference. It was never adopted as official policy in any part of Europe, though Belgium has long pursued what might be described as policies of multiculturalism in relation to its major language groups, and Norway, Sweden, and Finland have increasingly recognized the rights of the indigenous Sami people, most notably with the creation of a Sami Parliament in Norway. In France, however, multiculturalism was rejected pretty much out of hand as at odds with republican principles;1 in Germany, as at odds with a predominantly ethnicized conception of citizenship; while in Italy or Spain, multiculturalism barely figured in either popular or political discourse until the last few years. In those countries most commonly cited as exemplars of multicultural G U E S T E D I T O R I A L

The human is a central reference point for human rights. But who or what is that human? And given its long history of exclusiveness, when so many of those now recognised as human were denied the name, how much confidence can we attach to the term? This book works towards a sense of the human that does without substantive accounts of 'humanity' while also avoiding their opposite – the contentless versions that deny important differences such as race, gender and sexuality. Drawing inspiration from Hannah Arendt's anti-foundationalism, Phillips rejects the idea of 'humanness' as grounded in essential characteristics we can be shown to share. She stresses instead the human as claim and commitment, as enactment and politics of equality. In doing so, she engages with a range of contemporary debates on human dignity, humanism, and post-humanism, and argues that none of these is necessary to a strong politics of the human.

Gender equality is sometimes claimed as a core principle of ‘modern’ society, in ways that encourage complacency about how far societies have progressed, but also feed into hierarchies of countries and cultures. From this perspective, the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which enfranchised women over the age of thirty, would appear as a key moment in the unfolding of the principle of women’s equality with men. But equal voting rights was not the major driving force in the legislation, and the story of the subsequent century has not been one of steady progress. Drawing on evidence from women’s political representation and material about the increasing gender differentiation that accompanied the so-called birth of modernity, this article argues against the attribution of a logic to modernity that will eventually deliver gender equality. It is through politics, not the unfolding of some core principle, that change occurs.

A crescente preocupação com o tema da exclusão política desafia o entendimento tradicional sobre os mecanismos representativos, em especial a percepção arraigada de que a chave da boa representação política está no programa e nas idéias compartilhadas entre representantes e representadas/os - sem qualquer referência à identidade das/os representantes. Contra isso, cada vez mais é afirmada a necessidade de presença física dos grupos excluídos nos locais de decisão, o que se traduz freqüentemente na adoção de cotas eleitorais. Mas não se trata de escolher uma ou outra forma de representação e sim de, compreendendo os limites de cada uma, buscar um sistema mais justo que incorpore tanto idéias quanto presença.

In contemporary renderings of modernity, it is patented to the West and assumed to include gender equality; a commitment to gender equality then risks becoming overlaid with hierarchies of country and culture. One way of contesting this, associated with alternative modernities, takes issue with the presumed Western origins of modernity. Another, associated with feminism, subjects the claim the modern societies deliver gender equality to more critical scrutiny. But the first is vulnerable to the charge of describing different routes to the same ideals, and the second to the response that evidence of shortcomings only shows that modernity has not yet fully arrived. The contribution of the West to the birth of modernity is not, in my argument, the important issue. The problem, rather, is the mistaken attribution of a “logic” to modernity, as if it contains nested within it egalitarian principles that will eventually unfold. Something did indeed happen at a particular moment in history ...

Why does local democracy matter? Phillips, Anne (1999) Why does local democracy matter? In: Pratchett, Lawrence and Wilson, David, (eds.) Local democracy and local government. Government beyond the centre . Macmillan Press in association with CLD Ltd, UK, pp. 20-37. ...

... in which the central problem of justice is redistribution, to a 'postsocialist' political imaginary, in which ... is no difference between private and public life, nor to the conclusion that political equality simply ... When women affirm the normative value of the care-work they do outside the ...

O texto discute os limites das democracias liberais a partir das desigualdades de gênero. As discrepâncias entre o corpo dos eleitos e o conjunto dos eleitores são o ponto de partida para a proposta de reconceitualizar a democracia tendo em mente as diferenças de gênero. A representação de grupos, e não de indivíduos, é o primeiro aspecto analisado, considerando padrões sistemáticos de exclusão e problemas relativos às identidades dos grupos. Esse ponto é retomado na parte final do texto, em que a autora estabelece distinções entre heterogeneidade de experiências e essencialização das identidades e interesses. O texto analisa, ainda, a acomodação entre igualdade na esfera pública e subordinação na esfera privada, com a convivência entre direitos formalmente iguais e privilégios de grupos sociais específicos, assim como os filtros que se impõem a uma participação política mais equânime.

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.