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they belong. Do communities have rights, indeed even an existence, which are not merely the hypostasis of the individual rights and existences collected in them? This conflict is then more striking as it was a conscious decision of the or ganizers of the workshop to focus attention on what might broadly be called liberal democracies: those societies which share a commitment to the princi ples of democratic participation, to the right of equal concern and respect of all members of the community, and to the basic liberties of association, ex pression, and thought. Ours was not the smug premise, however, that every so ciety which proclaims these principles is sufficiently or even truly devoted to them. But we did assume that we would have enough to do if we explored the implications of these widely shared ideals for the topic of linguistic, ethnic, and national minorities as these problems arise in societies where an appeal to them is not an empty gesture. The nations from which our participants were drawn are societies in which appeal to these principles has some point. They are all societies in which the efforts of politicians and the intelligence of schol ars need not be devoted exclusively to the tactical issues of winning some mod icum of respect for basic human rights from unwilling regimes. And yet all these societies have experienced significant difficulty in determining what the concrete meaning in actual situations of these general principles might be.
List of contents
Towards the Development of a Typology of Minorities.- The Nature, Causes, and Implications of Ethnic Identification.- Group Identity and Social Comparisons.- Ethnic Consciousness Among Immigrants.- Identity Options.- Identity As a Complex Network.- Formation of Consciousness.- Group Report.- The Communicative Bases of Social Inequality.- Conflict and Community Survival.- The Children of Aliens in West German Schools: Situation and Problems.- Uses and Functions of the Media.- Minorities' Influence on the Majority: Reactions of the Majority in Political, Institutional, and Social Scientific Spheres.- Minority Demands, Majority Reactions?.- Group Report.- States and Minorities.- Patterns of International Migration Policy: A Diachronic Comparison.- Ethnic Pluralism: The U. S. Model.- Immigration and Citizenship in Postwar Britain.- The Political, Social, and Legal Status of Aliens and Refugees in the Federal Republic of Germany.- Humane Incorporation: The Shape of Acceptable Options for Relations Between Majorities and Minorities.- Group Report.- Policies for Police-minority Relations.- Writing a Constitution to Protect Minorities: The Canadian Experience.- The Right of Ethnic Minorities to Political Representation.- Political Community in Plural Societies.- Affirmative Action and the Rights of the Majority.- Politics of Affirmative Action: Race and Public Policy in America.- The Case for a Group Libel Law in Great Britain.- Forms of State and Rights.- Group Report.- List of Participants.- Author Index.
