Cultural Accommodation and Domination

Abstract

When should burdened social practices be granted special accommodation? One issue of concern—raised by Okin and others—is that some social practices involve domination, and so the accommodation of those practices might (inadvertently, perhaps) support social injustice. Suppose one wants to take this concern very seriously. Starting from the assumption that freedom from domination is an especially important value, this article examines whether cultural accommodation would ever be advisable. Approaching the problem of multicultural accommodation from this point of view greatly clarifies the debate and yields some interesting results. In particular, the discussion concludes that there are circumstances under which the goal of minimizing domination itself would be furthered by policies of special accommodation.