Judith Jarvis Thomson’s essay titled A Defense of Abortion serves as a polemic against some of the common objections made by pro-lifers. The first of her objections to the pro-life standpoint is regarding the status assigned to a human fetus. The pro-lifers argue that right from the moment of conception the fetus has to be…
Category: Society
The politics of same-sex marriage
One of the issues that elicit a broad range of views from politicians, scholars and intelligentsia is rights for same-sex couples. At the very minimum, these rights would entail legal recognition for same-sex partners and enable them to adopt children. As same-sex partnerships gain greater acceptance in society, the members of this community expect to…
A brief review of W. Kymlicka’s article “Equality for Minority Cultures”
The reading ‘Equality for Minority Cultures’ deals with the set of issues that are common to societies where there are a few dominant cultural groups and numerous minority groups. In the case of Canada and the United States, the Native American population (also called the aborigines) comprise one such group. Kymlicka analyzes the contentious issue…
A brief review of O. Yiftachel’s ‘The Ethnocratic Regime: The Politics of Seizing Contested Territory’
The reading titled ‘The Ethnocratic Regime: The Politics of Seizing Contested Territory’, written by O. Yiftachel, continues on the theme of secession and focuses on its political aspects. There are three core arguments forwarded by the author. These include arguments supporting “the existence of an ethnocratic regime as a distinct identifiable type and the existence…
Boundaries, Federalism and Secessionism: A brief review of Allen Buchanan’s “Theories of Secession”
The reading titled ‘Theories of Secession’ written by Allen Buchanan deals with a topic that is rarely paid attention to, namely that of secession. Irrespective of the chaos and turmoil episodes of secession bring with them, it is better to have in place a framework for analyzing it, as opposed to neglecting it by taking…
The Cultural Division of Labour and Internal Colonialism: A brief review of Walker Connor’s “Eco- or Ethno- Nationalism?”
Walker Connor’s article titled ‘Eco- or Ethno- nationalism?’ addresses an oft discussed issue, namely the impulse underlying ethnic conflict. Connor asserts that attributes such as race, language, religion, etc, which comprise an individual’s ethnic identity are at the heart of an ethnic conflict only so far as there is evidence of tangible discrepancy in these…
The Civic-Ethnic Distinction: A review of Phillip Spencer and Howard Woolman’s “Good and Bad Nationalisms”
The focus of this reading, written by Phillip Spencer and Howard Woolman, is the distinction between healthy and unhealthy varieties of nationalism that have developed over the course of the last few centuries. The very concept of ‘nation’ is a modern one, having found meaningful expression within the last two hundred years of world history. …
Constructivist Approaches: A review of Benedict Anderson’s article “Imagined Communities”
Benedict Anderson’s essay titled Imagined Communities offers a historically informed analysis of nationalism. He asserts that the rise of nationalism was facilitated by the simultaneous decline of key cultural conceptions of great antiquity, which had erstwhile had a profound effect on humankind. The first of these changes had to do with the role of language…
The Instrumentalist approach to ethnic and national identities: A review of D. Ronen’s ‘The Quest for Self-Determination’
D. Ronen’s scholarly work The Quest for Self-Determination further explicates the nature of ethnic and national identities. In order to illustrate the complexities involved in ethnic and national identities, Ronen constructs a new conceptual framework which he calls “aggregations”. According to this theory, political discourses relating to human communities refer to the latter from one…
Primordialism and Ethnic Conflict: A brief review of Walker Connor’s “Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond”
The reading titled “Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond”, written by Walker Connor, will provide the contextual background for this think-piece exercise. The central argument of the author is that ethno-national bond is much stronger than patriotic bond. The basis for the formation of ethno-national bonds are never fully based on fact and…