THE LIMITS OF CULTURAL POLITICS

This article argues against a recent development within angle-phone po litical philosophy which treats almost all group conflicts as deriving from cultural differences, thus downplaying the notion that conflicts may simply be over the distribution of things to which all the partic ipants attach value: power, money, land and so on. Normative political philosophy, it is claimed by those who take this view should be prima rily concerned with issues of identity, recognition and culture at the expense of issues concerning distribution. There is however little ba sis for these claims, whose implications are sketched in here and form the foundation for a defence of a liberalism 'that has confidence in its own insights, a liberalism possessed of clarity as well as compass ion'.