Liberal ethnicity: beyond liberal nationalism and minority rights

This paper tries to make the case for a variant of the good life based on a synthesis of liberalism and ethnicity. Liberal communitarianism's treatment of ethnicity tends to fall under the categories of either liberal culturalism or liberal nationalism. Both, it is argued, fail to come to terms with the reality of ethnic community, preferring instead to define ethnicity in an unrealistic, cosmopolitan manner. A further problem concerns the tendency of these theories to focus on political and cultural questions, while ignoring the deeper issues of ethnic boundary-maintenance and mytho-symbolic particularism. In contrast, this essay squarely confronts four practices that are central to the reality of ethnic community: symbolic boundary-maintenance; exclusive and inflexible ethnic mythomoteurs; the use of ancestry and race as group boundary markers; and the desire among national groups to maintain their ethnic character. This paper argues that none of these ethnic practices need contravene the tenets of liberalism so long as they are reconstructed in such a way as to minimise entry criteria and decouple national ethnicity from the state. The notion of liberal ethnicity thereby constitutes an important synthesis of liberal and communitarian ends.